Freedom's Treasure Read Online Free Page B

she came by to wordlessly re-fill their coffees. Back at the counter the young girl was studying for her final exam while occasionally looking to their table. They were the only people in the place and Anna could almost feel the spotlight. The man who she thought must be the cook was sitting at a table near the counter, smoking a cigarette and shouting at the sports show on cable while pretending he couldn’t hear them. His stained apron indicated something with a lot of red sauce had been the day’s special.
     
    “I don’t know yet, actually. It’ll be fiction, of course. Who moves out to the woods to write a biography of someone besides Walt Whitman? I feel a mystery with some tinges of FBI. I have notes on my laptop that I’ve been working on for a while.” Anna poured another tablespoon of sugar into her coffee hoping to disguise the flavor.
     
    “Want some coffee with that sugar, Sugar?” His eyes flashed humor at her and Anna’s first leap to offense at being called Sugar took the backseat.
     
    She lowered her voice. “How can you drink this stuff? It’s thicker than my grandmother’s homemade lamb stew.”
     
    Hunter laughed. “I had worse in the service. Becca?” he waved his hand to get the young girl’s attention. She looked at Hunter, blushed and hopped up. “Could we have some water and maybe a hot tea over here?” He looked askance at Anna, who nodded.
     
    “With lemon, please.”
     
    “So why now?” he asked.
     
    “So why now, what?” Anna was confused. “I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want to be rude.”
     
    Hunter laughed. “No! Why now for the book?”
     
    “Oh! Sorry,” she nearly giggled. She never giggled. And what kind of word was giggle anyway? A stupid one, if you asked Anna. Say it enough times and it could mean anything. Avoiding the mental tangent she decided to give Hunter the honest answer, or as close as she had.
     
    “I wrote for the newspaper in Grand Rapids, the social pages. You know the ones, I’m sure. A new bar opens up and someone has to go review it so everyone knows if that’s their type of place.” Hunter nodded. “Basically I got paid to go out every night and explore every aspect of the town and then write about it. My column was popular and I loved it, don’t get me wrong.
     
    “After a while I started writing more about the people that I met while I was out instead of the places. I’d find out all about them, what they were celebrating or mourning, like that.” Becca delivered her tea and Anna thanked her graciously. It tasted like water with a hint of lemon but was far better than the coffee had been.
     
    “If you buy some people a drink, they will tell you the most intimate details of their lives. Soon I realized I knew more about random strangers than I did myself,” Anna trailed off. This felt like a tangent. She waited for Hunter to say something.
     
    “Let me guess, was there a man? The final straw? He breaks your heart, you run off to the deep, dark woods to heal and write his death over and over?” He was digging, had been trying to think of a way to ask this question from the moment she walked into the diner. Maybe even from the moment he realized she had one heck of a right hook.
     
    “No, I haven’t dated in ages. Anywhere I went on a date turned into a review. Dating started to feel like work so I gave it up for a while.” She couldn’t believe she had shared that and was slightly mortified. She quickly added, “I was at a coffee shop last month. Instead of writing a fantastic first chapter of a book I found myself watching the people, writing about them and, of course, giving the place a mediocre review. I couldn’t get out of the newspaper mentality. So, here I am.”
     
    “Yeah, here you are. Is it time to learn how to be Anna again?”
     
    “You could say that.” Several teenagers came into the diner greeting Becca loudly and clamoring for pizza and breaking apart what was nearly an