CHECK, PLEASE!
Yvonne broke her M&M’s cookie into four
pieces, picked up one, and covered the other bits with her napkin.
She finished the first piece and reached for the second. Though
she’d said she needed to talk to me, she didn’t seem eager to begin
the conversation.
Which could only mean there was something she
didn’t want to tell me. I considered possibilities. Due to seasonal
affective disorder, she never smiled when it was cloudy. Or, thanks
to family issues, she’d need to bring—I scanned her face, trying to
estimate her age—her daughter to work three times a week. Or, due
to a bizarre medical problem, her doctor had said she shouldn’t
operate a computer keyboard. Or—
“I was in jail.”
Or she’d been in jail. If I’d had a month, I
might have come up with that possibility, but probably not.
“Actually, it was prison.” She gave me a darting
glance. “There’s a difference.”
Prison. Yvonne? She didn’t look as if she would
swat a mosquito that was poking its pointed nose into her skin.
What could she possibly have done to end up in prison?
She pulled out the third piece of cookie. “I was
convicted of murder.”