Free Vengeful Bounty by Jillian Kidd Page B

go after him,” I said with a laugh.
    â€œHoney, in all honesty, he’s not worth your time.”
    A waiter-bot hovered over to our table. It waited for a moment until it knew we were finished talking. The cylindrical disc with flashing yellow lights around the rim spoke in a small, echoing woman’s voice:
    â€œMay I get you anything else?”
    â€œHow about some more coffee,” Mrs. Newton said. “And bring Mina one of those cinnamon crumb cookies.”
    â€œOh, you don’t need to do that—”
    â€œHoney, they’re wonderful. You need one. You’re too skinny as it is.”
    I laughed and tried arguing with her. I was in pretty darn good shape, if I say so myself, but like most women, my weight had steadily crept up a tad over the last few years; I couldn’t get into my college jeans now even if I used lubricant all over my hips to squeeze in them. Good ol’ aging metabolism. But being a stocky, well-fed woman of 60, she thought I was full of it and demanded that I eat the damn cookie.
    â€œAll right,” I said, smiling at her determination. “If you insist. They do sound good.”
    â€œMore coffee and one cinnamon crumb cookie?” the waiter-bot asked after we had paused from our conversation for several seconds.
    â€œThat’s correct,” Mrs. Newton said.
    â€œYes, ma’am. Be back in a moment.”
    The deli was surprisingly full, considering the hour and the fact that it was very early on a Monday morning. The crowd was eclectic. At one table sat a group of college kids studying for an exam. At another was an old man with bushy white eyebrows. He read something on a hand-held electric device. The door bell chimed, and strolling inside to order were a middle-aged man and woman who had enjoyed a late night of drinking, forgotten their age, and were holding hands, their fingers intertwined.
    â€œDoes Alyssa know you’re her real mother?” I asked Mrs. Doyle.
    She sighed. “Honey, I just gave birth to her. Her real mother is the one that raised her. And I’m okay with that. That’s the way it should be. I didn’t want to complicate things with my presence. Her parents told her she was adopted, but she’s never tried to find me. I’ve often rehearsed what I’d say if she showed up on my doorstep. But if it really happened, I think I’d be too stunned for words.”
    â€œI can imagine.”
    â€œYou know, half the women that give birth to babies don’t raise them. They just serve their sons and daughters as examples of what not to be.”
    I couldn’t help but think of my own mother. But I wouldn’t talk about her tonight. Tonight was about Mrs. Doyle.
    â€œBut the same goes for men,” she said. “Plenty of people in general are too selfish to know real value when it’s staring them in the face, even when it’s an extension of their own blood. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to send my students’ parents to boot camp and whip them into shape. Too many times, I’d ask a student why she flunked my test, and she’d say she hadn’t studied because she had to work because her dad left and her mom was using all the money on herself and there were brothers and sisters to feed. It’s a disaster. You know, kids need to be kids. There’s plenty of time for adulthood when you get there.”
    The group of college students erupted into laughter and cheering. They had replaced their calculators and notebooks with playing cards. One of the students, an extroverted and good-looking young man in glasses, playfully punched the shoulder of his taller classmate to his right. The taller man shoved him back and began shuffling the cards.
    The bot returned, and two thin metallic hands extended from its sides, one pouring Mrs. Newton more coffee, the other handing me my cookie on a little pink plate. I took a bite, and closed my eyes in