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Her bob of perfectly smooth ash blond hair was cut too short to flatter her round face, and she favored boxy suits in harsh colors like puce and orange. She moved her small, bejeweled hands when she spoke, and reminded Ian of a tropical bird.
    “You have fifteen calls already this morning, Dean Corbin,” she said in greeting, bobbing up from her seat to wave a handful of papers at him.
    Ian took them from her into his office while she flapped along behind him chattering on about a faculty meeting and other commitments. He barely heard her, focused instead on the view out the two large windows that dominated the back wall of the office.
    Here was the University of Wickfield depicted on postcards undergrads sent home to their parents. The rolling green lawns and massive brick and stone buildings, the bell tower where generations of students had carved their names, the avenue of stately elm trees that had been saplings when President McKinley visited Wickfield, and the gentle curve of the river just visible at the farthest edge of campus that Ian could see. He knew that at this very moment more than one pencil-thin scull was slicing cleanly through its silver surface.
    In the far right corner of his window he could see an edge of the field where the new Performing Arts Center would be built. This was why he’d been wooed, and allowed himself to be wooed, away from NYU. The chance to be part of something like this center came once, if it came at all, in a career. The building would be a design masterpiece, something that would stand for generations, and he would be part of the creative process.
    Of course, it was still in the planning stages. They wouldn’t break ground, wouldn’t even be able to name the place, until funding was secure. Finding the money and convincing the rest of the university community to back this project would be his biggest challenges this year, but just the thought of being able to look out this window and see the product of his hard work excited him.
    “Would you like me to call Mrs. Corbin to let her know about the reception?”
    The question doused his sense of satisfaction like a splash of dirty water. Mildred Wooden paused in the doorway waiting for an answer, fidgeting now with the chain of multicolored pebbles supporting her reading glasses.
    Ian turned his bark of startled laughter into a cough just in time. Ask Kate to attend two events in one week? The old Kate, yes, she’d loved socializing, but not the new one.
    Ever since the assault, she couldn’t bear to be around crowds. She also couldn’t bear to be touched. He understood this rationally. It had made complete sense to him after what happened, and he’d been so careful in those first few months not to so much as brush casually against her.
    But that was eight months ago. Eight damn months and he couldn’t even move his hand toward Kate, much less touch her, without that shuttered look coming over her face and her body stiffening in a way that told him without words that he wasn’t wanted.
    It was hard not to take that personally. It was hard not to think that this withdrawal from the world was also a withdrawal from him.
    The secretary he’d inherited from his predecessor was still fidgeting in the doorway. “No,” he said at last to Mildred Wooden. “I’ll call her myself.”

Chapter Three
     
    A new semester meant a fresh start. Barbara Terry repeated this like a mantra as she walked along Penton Street, killing time before her class. Last semester was a thing of the past and she couldn’t change it, couldn’t make those C’s into A’s, couldn’t go back in time and choose to study instead of attending those frat parties.
    A new year meant a new beginning. She’d let herself get distracted last year, new to college, new to an independent life. Saturday night parties became Friday and Saturday nights and even Thursdays sometimes. She’d told herself that she’d catch up on studying, that everybody’s grades