Free Guilt by Association by Susan R. Sloan

me.”
    “The police?” Beverly echoed sharply. “What for?”
    “They’re investigating what happened.”
    Her parents exchanged a glance that was too quick for Karen to catch.
    “What did you tell them?” Beverly asked.
    “I told them everything I could remember.”
    Beverly settled herself in her chair. “Well then, I guess maybe you’d better tell us, too.”
    Karen took a moment to search for the right words, the right phrases that would convey the facts of that night to her parents without the horror. The last thing she wanted was to upset them unnecessarily.
    “You went to Jill’s party,” Beverly prompted.
    “Yes,” Karen said. “I went to Jill’s party. And right after I got there, I met a friend of a friend of Andy’s former roommate,
     named Bob, from Harvard Law School. I don’t knowwhat his last name is—he never told me, but he seemed very nice and he was attentive, and we sort of spent the evening together.”
    “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” Beverly commented.
    “That part wasn’t,” Karen agreed with an uncustomary hint of bitterness in her voice. “When the party was over, Bob offered to help me get a cab to Aunt Edna’s. It was pretty late, after two o’clock, and I thought that would be all right. We waited and waited but we couldn’t find a cab, so then he suggested that we walk across the park.”
    “A nice young man from Harvard Law School offered to escort you across Central Park at two o’clock in the morning?” Beverly summarized.
    “That’s right.”
    “Well, I guess that explains how you got there, although God knows why you would go into such a dangerous place in the middle of the night, even if you were with a friend of a friend of Andy’s former roommate.”
    “It was cold,” Karen told her. “Walking seemed like a better idea than standing around.”
    “So, you were in the park. Then what happened?”
    Karen took a deep breath. “He attacked me.”
    “Who attacked you?” Beverly asked, looking blank.
    “Bob did. He made a pass. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t let me go.”
    Beverly stared at her daughter with a combination of dismay and disbelief. “You were, you were… damaged”—she couldn’t even bring herself to say the right word—”by a Harvard Law student?”
    “Yes.”
    “It was someone you knew?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?” Beverly cried.
    “Why what?”
    “Why would the young man behave like that? What did you do?”
    “What do you mean, what did I do?” Karen replied. “I didn’t do anything.”
    “Well, there must be something you’re not telling us,” Beverly said flatly. “Nice young men from Harvard don’t go around taking advantage of innocent girls for no reason.”
    “Well, this one did,” Karen retorted.
    “Oh my God,” her mother muttered, springing up, almost knocking over her chair.
    “What’s the matter?” Karen asked.
    Beverly looked to Leo for support, but Leo was looking at the crease in his trousers with a very pained expression on his face.
    “I thought we were talking about some maniac. I thought some very sick stranger grabbed you off the street, and you couldn’t defend yourself.”
    “I couldn’t defend myself,” Karen insisted. “He was too strong.”
    “I just don’t understand you at all,” Beverly snapped. “You keep telling us you’re madly in love with Peter Bauer. So why on earth would you take up with someone else like that?”
    “I didn’t take up with him,” Karen protested, tears filling her eyes, forgetting for the moment that Peter Bauer had never fit into her mother’s narrow category of acceptable suitors. “He said he was taking me to Aunt Edna’s. That’s all. I believed him.”
    “And you’re sure you didn’t lead him on in some way, or give him any reason to expect that you might be receptive to his advances?”
    “No.”
    “You didn’t lean up against him, say, in a manner that he might have misconstrued?”
    Karen remembered Bob pulling