Free Full Circle by Danielle Steel

“I'll be all right.”
    “Are you sure?” She seemed so quiet, so subdued, so suddenly grown up. It was as though the bump on her head in the car accident had stolen her youth from her. Perhaps the fear itself had done that. Jean had never seen such a dramatic change in such a short time. And Arthur kept insisting that Billy had been fine, remorseful, but almost his old self by the time he left for his summer holiday, which was certainly not the case here. “Look, sweetheart, if you don't feel up to it, just come home. You want to start college in the fall feeling strong.”
    “I'll be all right.” It was almost all she said before she left, clinging to her single bag. She took the bus to Vermont as she had twice before. It was a summer job she had loved, but it was different this year, and the others noticed it too. She was quieter, kept to herself, and never seemed to laugh anymore. The only time she talked to anyone at all was with the campers themselves. It saddened the others who had known her before, “something must be wrong at home.…” “Is she sick … ?” “Wow, she's like a different girl.…” Everyone noticed, and no one knew. And at the end of the summer, she got on the bus and went home again. She had made no friends this year, except among the kids, but even with them, she wasn't as popular as she'd been before. She was even prettier than she'd been in previous years but all of the kids agreed this time, “Tana Roberts is weird.” And she knew herself that she was.
    She spent two days at home with Jean, avoided all her old friends, packed her bags for school, and boarded the train with a feeling of relief. Suddenly, she wanted to get far, far from home … from Arthur … from Jean … from Billy … from all of them … even the friends she'd had at school. She wasn't the same carefree girl who had graduated three months before. She was someone different now, someone haunted and hurt, with scars on her soul. And as she sat on the train and rolled through the South, she slowly began to feel human again. It was as though she had to get far, far from them, from their deceptions, their lies, the things they couldn't see, or refused to believe, the games they played … it was as though ever since Billy Durning had forced his way into her, no one could see her anymore. She didn't exist, because they couldn't acknowledge Billy's sin … but that was only Jean, she told herself. But who else was there? If her own mother didn't believe her … she didn't want to think about it anymore. Didn't want to think about any of it. She was going as far away as she could, and maybe she'd never go home, although she knew that too was a lie. Her mother's last words to her had been, “You'll come home for Thanksgiving, won't you, Tan?” It was as though her mother was afraid of her now, as though she had seen something in her daughter's eyes that she just couldn't face, a kind of bleeding, open, raw pain that she couldn't help and didn't want to be there. She didn't want to go home for Thanksgiving, didn't want to go home ever again. She had escaped their tiny, petty lives … the hypocrisy … Billy and his barbaric friends … Arthur and the years and years he had used Jean … the wife he had cheated on … and the lies Jean told herself … suddenly Tana couldn't stand it anymore, and she couldn't go far enough to get away from them. Maybe she'd never go back … never.
    … She loved the sound of the train, and she was sorry when it stopped in Yolan. Green Hill College was two miles away and they had sent a lumbering old station wagon for her, with an old black driver with white hair. He greeted her with a warm smile, but she looked at him suspiciously as he helped her load her bags.
    “You been on the train long, miss?”
    “Thirteen hours.” She barely spoke to him on the brief drive to the school, and had he even seemed about to stop the car, she would have leapt out and begun to scream. But he sensed