Free An Eye for an Eye by Leigh Brackett Page A

Braden or Wolff or whoever can take it. Consider this a vacation ahead of time. I’ll give you a month in advance, how’s that?”
    “You don’t have to,” she said. But he knew what was in the back of her mind. Doubt and a question. Once the normal pattern is disrupted it almost never settles back again exactly as it was. There is nearly always some degree of permanent change. Grace had no idea how great that change was likely to be, but she must be thinking about her job. He did not want her to be cheated.
    He put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get busy.”
     
    At twelve-fifteen they were still calling clients and other law offices, making arrangements. He left Grace to finish it and close the office.
    “I won’t be back,” he said.
    He thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. “I’ll see that everything is taken care of. And, Mr. Forbes, promise me you’ll let me know the minute you hear anything. And if there’s anything I can do, anything at all—”
    “Thanks, Grace. I will. Have a good time.”
    He shut the office door behind him and walked out of the building and it was as though in doing so he walked out of his whole life and all that had gone into the making of it. He entered, a stranger, into a new land.
    He drove the two blocks to Blackstone’s and found the employees’ entrance and waited.
    At twelve-thirty a bunch of people, mostly women and girls, came out of the door, buttoning their coats and tying scarfs over their heads, laughing and chattering back and forth. Ben got out and stood by the car. Then he saw Lorene. She had another girl with her, a tall slim dark one with hair cut fashionably short, an attractive but not pretty face, and an air of good-natured competence.
    Lorene brought her over and introduced her. Then she said anxiously:
    “You’re real sure there’s nothing wrong, now?”
    “I told you there wasn’t.”
    “I know, but Vern wanted to know why you were there last night, and I told him, and he said it sounded funny to him. He got kind of upset about it. Of course he just hates the sound of Al’s name—”
    “The divorce,” Ben said steadily, “is perfectly okay.”
    “I certainly hope so,” Lorene said. “I just don’t know what we’d do if anything was to happen now. We’re planning to get married just as soon as it’s final, you know.”
    “Yes,” said Ben, “I figured that.”
    And so had Al Guthrie. She’s too beautiful, he had said. Some other guy will take her and paw all over what belonged to me and I won’t have that. I’ll kill her before I let some bastard have her.
    “Time’s wasting,” said Mary Catherine, looking at her watch.
    Ben held the car door for her. Lorene said, “Well, ’bye, and I’ll tell Vern what you said. I’m meeting him for lunch.”
    She walked away. Ben went around the car to the driver’s side and got in. Mary Catherine looked after Lorene and smiled.
    “That’s sure a pair of lovebirds,” she said. “They both act like they invented it. Lunch every day, dinner every night, phone calls—yi! I’ll be glad when they get married.”
    Ben pulled out of the side street and drove as fast as he could through traffic, east on Market Street.
    “Kratich seems like a decent chap,” he said.
    “Oh yes. Not my cup of tea, but he’s okay and he’s sure crazy about Lorene. But you wonder. I guess Lorene just goes for older men. Al was a lot older too, wasn’t he?”
    “Seven or eight years. Not too much.”
    “But she was only a kid in her teens then. It makes a difference.”
    “I suppose so,” Ben said. I’ve got to get something for my nerves, he thought. Look at my hands. And I’ve had a pain in my stomach since Tuesday that won’t go away.
    “I guess Lorene had a pretty hard time of it at home, though,” Mary Catherine said. “Eight other kids and no money in a country town. I guess Al looked pretty good to her. Better than working in the dairy store and giving all the money to her old