Run Away(89)

Simon nodded. “I do.”

“Where did you go, if I can ask?”

“Here.”

“Columbia?” They crossed over College Walk toward Butler Library. “Did you know what you wanted to be when you arrived?”

“Not a clue. I started off in engineering.”

“People say college opens the world to you. In some ways, of course, that’s true. But for the most part, it does the opposite. You come in thinking you can do anything when you leave. Your options are endless. Point of fact though, your options dwindle every day you’re here. By the time you graduate, again, reality has splash-landed.”

“What does this have to do with Paige?” he asked.

He stared off, a smile on his lips. “She did all that quickly. But in the best way. She found her calling. Genetics. She wanted to be a doctor. A healer like her mother. She knew that within weeks. She started coming to office hours as often as I’d let her. She wanted to know what track to take to become my TA. I thought she was doing really well. And then something changed.”

“What?”

He kept walking. “There are rules, Mr. Greene. I need you to understand that. About what we can tell parents of students. If a student asks for confidentiality, we have to give it to them—up to a limit. Are you familiar with the campus rules on Title IX?”

Simon’s blood froze. Eileen Vaughan had said something when he’d visited her at Lanford, something about how Paige and Eileen’s mutual friend Judy Zyskind suspected Paige had been the victim of a sexual assault at a frat party. Simon had sort of blocked on that because one, it was too awful to even consider, but two, more importantly, Paige had dismissed it when Judy confronted her about it. That was the part that had stuck with Simon. Judy had pushed Paige, and according to Eileen, Paige had not only denied it but finally ended the conversation: “She said there were problems at home…”

They veered off the path and reached the glass-enclosed structure called Lerner Hall. There was a café on the bottom floor. Van de Beek reached for the door, but Simon grabbed hold of his elbow.

“Was my daughter sexually assaulted?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Think so?”

“Paige came to me in confidence. She was distraught. There had been an incident at a campus party.”

Simon felt his hands tighten into fists. “She told you about it?”

“She started to, yes.”

“What does that mean, ‘started to’?”

“The first thing I did, before I let her go into details, was to inform her that I’d have to follow the Title IX guidelines.”

“What guidelines?”

“Mandatory reporting,” he said.

“Meaning?”

“If a student tells me about an incident of sexual assault, no matter what that student wants, I have to report it to the Title IX coordinator.”

“Even if the victim doesn’t want you to?”

“Even if, that’s right. Frankly I don’t love this rule. I get it. I understand the reasoning. But I think it makes some students less likely to confide in a teacher because they know, like it or not, that the teacher will have to report it. So they clam up. And that was what happened here.”

“Paige wouldn’t talk to you?”

“She more or less stormed out. I tried to follow, but she ran away. I called. I texted. I emailed. I stopped by her room once. She wouldn’t talk to me.”

Simon felt his fingers tighten up a little more. “And you didn’t think to tell her parents?”

“I thought about it, sure. But again there are rules about such things. I also checked with the Title IX coordinator.”

“What did she say?”

“It was a he.”

For real? “What did he say?”

“He talked to Paige. She denied anything happened.”

“And you still didn’t think to call her parents?”

“That’s right, Mr. Greene.”

“So instead my daughter, who was possibly raped, just suffered in silence.”

“There are guidelines. We have to follow them.”

That was crap and when this was all over, Simon would do what he could to get payback, but right now he had to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t want to. He wanted to collapse and cry for his daughter.

“So is that when Paige started to spiral?”

Van de Beek thought it over. His answer surprised him. “No, not really. I know how that sounds, but the next time I saw her—”

“Which was when?”

“A few days later. Paige showed up in class. She seemed better. I remember standing behind the lectern and looking at her, a little surprised to see her, and she gave me this nod like ‘I’m okay, don’t worry about it.’ A few days later, she started coming to office hours again. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to see her. I tried to raise the topic, but she said it was no big deal, that she overreacted. I’m not saying she was totally fine. I could see that she was trying to block. I urged her to get help, to talk to someone. One of the hardest parts is that the girls are still on the same campus as their alleged attacker.”

“Rapist.”

“What?”