I'll Walk Alone Read Online Free Page A

the Hudson River on the lower west side. If she did get the job of furnishing three model apartments, it would not only be a major breakthrough for her, it would be her first successful toe-to-toe with Bartley Longe.
    It still was incomprehensible to her that the employer who had so valued her while she was his assistant had so utterly turned on her. When she first began to work for him nine years ago, right after she graduated from FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, she had eagerly embraced the demanding schedule and put up with his volatile temper because she knew she was learning a lot from him. Divorced, then in his early forties, Bartley was very much a man about town. He had always been extremely difficult, but it was when he turned his attention to her and she made it clear that she was not interested in an involvement that he had begun to make her life miserable with his biting sarcasm and endless criticism.
    I kept putting off going to see Mom and Dad who were living in Rome, Zan thought. Bartley would get furious if I said I needed a couple of weeks off. I delayed that trip for six months. Then when I finally told him I was going, whether he liked it or not, it was too late.
    She had been in the airport in Rome when the car her father was driving to meet her had crashed into a tree, killing him and her mother instantly. An autopsy showed that her father had suffered a heart attack at the wheel.
    Don’t think about them today, she warned herself. Concentrate on the model rooms. Bartley will be submitting his plans. I know the way he thinks. I’ll beat him at his own game.
    Bartley would have undoubtedly created designs for both a traditional and an ultramodern décor and one that combined elements of both. She made herself concentrate to see if there were any better way she could find to improve the sketches and color samples she would be offering.
    As though it mattered. As though anything mattered except Matthew.
    She heard a key turn in the door. Josh was there. Her assistant was also a graduate of FIT. Twenty-five years old, smart, looking more like a college kid than a gifted interior designer, Josh had become something of a younger brother to her. It almost helped that he had not been with her when Matthew disappeared. Somehow she and Josh just clicked.
    But today the expression on his face made Zan realize that the concern she was seeing was different. Josh began without a greeting, “Zan, I stayed here last night catching up on the monthly statements. I didn’t want to call you because you said you were going to take a sleeping pill. But, Zan, why did you buy a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires for next Wednesday?”

6

    T he little boy heard the sound of a car coming down the driveway even before Glory heard it. In an instant, he slid off the chair at the breakfast table and ran down the hall into the big closet where he knew he must stay “like a little mouse” until Glory came back for him.
    He didn’t mind. Glory had told him it was a game to keep him safe. There was a light on the floor of the closet, and a rubber raft just big enough for him to lie down and go to sleep on if he was tired. It had pillows and a blanket. When he was there, Glory told him, he could pretend he was a pirate and sailing on the ocean. Or, he could read one of his books. There were lots of books in the closet. The one thing he must never do, however, was to make a single sound. He always knew when Glory was going to go out and leave him alone because she would make him go to the bathroom even if he didn’t have to go, then she would leave a bottle in the closet for him to pee in. And she would leave a sandwich and cookies and water, and a Pepsi.
    It had been that way in the other houses, too. Glory always made a place for him to hide, then put some of his toys and trucks and puzzles and books and crayons and pencils in it. Glory told him that even though he never played with other children he was going to be smarter