I'll Walk Alone Read Online Free PDF

swatches here?” she suggested as she took the portfolio from him.
    She was with Kevin Wilson for nearly two hours as she explained her alternate approaches for each of the three model apartments. When they were back in his office, he laid her plans on the table behind his desk and said, “You’ve put an awful lot of work into this, Zan.”
    After the first time he had called her Alexandra, she had said, “Let’s keep it simple. Everybody calls me Zan, I guess because when I was starting to talk, Alexandra was too big a mouthful for me.”
    “I want to get the job,” she said. “I’m excited about the layouts I showed you and it was worth the time and effort to give them my best shot. I know you invited Bartley Longe to submit his plans, and of course he’s a superb designer. It’s that simple. The competition is stiff and you may not like anything that either of us has planned.”
    “You’re a lot more charitable about him than he is about you,” Wilson observed dryly.
    Zan was sorry to hear the note of bitterness in her throat when she answered, “I’m afraid there’s no love lost between Bartley and me, but on the other hand I’m sure you’re not treating this assignment as a popularity contest.” And I know I’ll come in at least a third cheaper than Bartley, she thought, as she left Wilson at the imposing entrance to the skyscraper. That will be my ace in the hole. I won’t make much money if I get this job, but the recognition will be worth it.
    In the cab going back to the office, she realized that the tears she had been able to hold back were streaming down her cheeks now. She grabbed her sunglasses out of her shoulder bag and put them on. When the cab stopped on East Fifty-eighth Street, as usual she gave a generous tip because she believed that anyone who had to make a living driving every day in New York traffic deserved one.
    The cabbie, an elderly black man with a Jamaican accent, thanked her warmly, then added, “Miss, I couldn’t help notice you were crying. You’re feeling real bad today. But maybe tomorrow everything will look a lot brighter. You’ll see.”
    If only that were true, Zan thought, as she whispered, “Thank you,” gave a final dab to her eyes, and stepped out of the cab. But everything won’t look brighter tomorrow.
    And maybe it never will.

8

    F r. Aiden O’Brien had spent a sleepless night worrying about the young woman who, under the seal of the confessional, had told him that she was taking part in an ongoing crime and would be unable to prevent a murder. He could only hope that the very fact that her conscience had driven her to begin to unburden herself to him would also force her to prevent the grave sin of allowing another human being’s life to be taken.
    He prayed for the woman at morning Mass, then with a heavy heart went about his duties. He especially enjoyed helping with the meals or the clothing distribution that the church had been carrying on for the needy for eighty years. Lately the number of people they fed and clothed had been rising. Fr. Aiden assisted at the breakfast shift, watching with satisfaction as hungry people’s faces brightened when they began to eat cereal and scrambled eggs and sip steaming hot coffee.
    Then, in the midafternoon, Fr. Aiden’s own spirits were cheered considerably when he received a call from his old friend Alvirah Meehan, inviting him to dinner that evening. “I’ve got the five o’clock Mass in the upper church,” he told Alvirah, “but I’ll be there about 6:30.”
    It was something to look forward to, even though he knew that nothing could remove the burden the young woman had laid on his shoulders.
    At 6:25 he got out of the uptown bus and crossed Central Park South to the building where Alvirah and Willy Meehan had lived ever since the forty-million-dollar lottery windfall. The doorman got on the speaker to announce him, and when the elevator stopped at the sixteenth floor, Alvirah was waiting to