Beyond Eden by Catherine Coulter Page B

regardless. They really have no choice, since Sydney stayed with Alessandro and played the contrite wife wrapped in a coat of endless remorse. I found I could still be surprised, even after all these years. Sydney is different in some ways, Lindsay, but you would have to see her for yourself to understand how I mean it. She was here by herself a couple of weeks ago. There’s a brittle hardness about her, but also an inwardness, an awareness, that makes her not quite like her former self. It’s as if she were now responsible for the world. Odd, but true somehow. It’s been four years, hasn’t it, since you last saw her? Since that awful time in Paris?”
    Lindsay went still. Her grandmother knew she hadn’t seen Sydney since that horrible time in Paris. Why was her grandmother calling that all up? It didn’t matter; an intelligent adult with sharpened insight always dealt with things and smiled and went on with life.
    â€œShe told me the prince is as he always was, and I take that to mean that he still likes young girls. Forgive me if this makes you uncomfortable, Lindsay, but it has been four years now and it’s time for you to face up to it. I saw at Christmas how guarded you were,how you wouldn’t even get near that nice boy, Cal Faraday, who is Clay and Elvira’s son and a very smart boy in his first year of medical school. I know what your father says, Lindsay, this damnable litany of his, but he’s wrong and you mustn’t believe him. The rape wasn’t your fault, none of it. Grow up, my dear girl, put this behind you—”
    Lindsay raised her head and looked out over the Columbia campus. How very easy it was to analyze and to judge, to proffer well-meant advice to another person. That was something else she’d learned as a psychology major.
    She quickly folded the letter and stuffed it back into the depths of her bag. She walked to the psych building, up the indented stairs to the second floor and into room 218, and sat down in her usual chair. No one said much of anything. Every male and female in the room scented the finish line. Everyone just wanted it done and over with. Dr. Gruska and his graduate assistant handed out blue books; then they handed out a single sheet of paper with essay questions on it. She pulled out her ball-point pen and began to write.
    She wrote for three hours, filled up two blue books, handed them silently to the graduate assistant, didn’t look at Dr. Gruska, and quickly left the building. The day was even warmer now. She had no more classes. She was free. She was through with Columbia. Soon she would have a B.A. degree and no job and no ideas for a job.
    She took the ferry across to the Statue of Liberty and sat there in the hot sun watching early tourists wander around and exclaim and gawk, and thinking about precisely nothing.
    That evening, to her surprise, Cal Faraday called her and asked her out to dinner and a movie. He’djust finished his first year at Johns Hopkins and was in New York for a few days visiting friends. She said no, her voice very friendly, and went to bed with a mystery.
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    Taylor
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    Taylor was off-duty. He was wearing his favorite dark brown corduroy pants, a white cotton shirt, and a leather jacket slung over his shoulder. He was on his way to pick up Dorothy Ryan for dinner at her apartment at Lexington and Sixty-third. He was whistling, feeling better about things and about himself. Dorothy was pretty, funny, and quickly climbing the ladder in advertising. He’d first seen her at a Giants game when the Tennessee Titans had carved up his team like a Christmas goose. She’d been yelling and cursing and soon he found himself watching her instead of the game. He’d bought her a beer and a hot dog and they’d gone to bed that night.
    She had fun with sex, teasing him, kissing him all over, making him squirm and moan, and then letting him bring her to orgasm. She was loving