We All Killed Grandma

by Fredric Brown

  I was back in less than a minute. I said what there was to say and got out quickly. It’s not good to watch a man crying.

  Robin still stood there in the rain; she hadn’t walked toward the car.

  I said, “Robin, will you marry me again? I know now that I can let you have children, and that was the main reason we broke up.”

  “But—but not the only reason, Rod. Shouldn’t we think it over a while? And—what are you going to do about Arch, what he did to you?”

  There was a taste of bitterness in my mouth, but not from thinking about Arch. My eyes followed Robin’s to the lighted upstairs front window of the house next door. Arch was home.

  I said, “Yes, I know the matter of children wasn’t all. And the rest of it won’t change, Robin. It’s just the way I am. You think, right now, that I should go up there and knock hell out of Arch. But I’m not going to. I feel sorry for Arch. I feel sorry for anybody who could love money enough to do a thing like that to get money. And even if I could hate him I wouldn’t enjoy hurting him. So I’m a softie, a Milquetoast, and I won’t ever get rich or be important because I don’t enjoy fighting.”

  I said, “That won’t change, Robin. I love you to pieces but if you want some other kind of guy from the kind of guy I am then there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  I guess I forgot that I had a car there. I turned and walked away down the long sidewalk into the rain. I walked nineteen steps before I heard her voice, “Rod, wait!” and the click of her heels on the concrete, and I turned and breathed and lived again.

  Fredric Brown was an American mystery and science fiction writer. Born in 1906 in Cincinnati, Ohio, he is perhaps best known for his expertise in the short form and his use of humor. He is the author of more than twenty mystery novels, including The Fabulous Clipjoint, which won the Edgar Award for outstanding first mystery novel, The Screaming Mimi, and The Lenient Beast; more than two hundred and fifty short stories, including “Arena,” and “Knock”; and several science fiction works, including What Mad Universe and Martians, Go Home. Brown died in 1972.