Catherine expected inquiries about the weekend’s big incident, but single-minded Leila whispered theatrically, “Tom came in early this morning!” The girl’s brown eyes were open wide at this unprecedented beginning to a Monday.

“He didn’t have to drive down from Memphis,” Catherine whispered back, reminded of Leila’s infatuation in time to stop herself from saying, “So what?”

“Was she down here?”

“She” must be Tom’s fiancée.

Leila would have to find out sooner or later.

“They broke up,” Catherine said expressionlessly.

She had given Leila the keys to heaven.

“Ooh,” Leila said, as if she had been hit on the back.

Catherine shook her head as she crossed the reporters’ room to her desk. Tom was hard at work already, typing furiously, taking swift sideways glances at the notes by his typewriter. He acknowledged her with a look and a nod that said he didn’t want to be interrupted, and hunched back over the keys. His long thin fingers flew.

“Such activity on a Monday,” Catherine muttered, whipping the plastic cover from her own typewriter. Then she realized that Tom was writing what would be the lead story, about Leona’s murder. She paused with her hands in her lap, the cover clutched half-folded between her fingers.

I have a lot to do, and this can’t get in the way, she told herself sternly. She stuffed the cover into its accustomed drawer with a resolute air, and pulled out a sheaf of papers from her Pending basket. As she flipped through them, she kept an ear cocked for Randall’s voice.

Gradually, as she became caught up in her work, she forgot to listen. When that dawned on her, she thought, All to the good.