“But now we have something concrete to work with.”

I returned to Malcolm’s café and finished a shift that seemed to last sixteen hours.

A little girl left a crayon drawing of a purple cat with her tip.

I taped it inside my locker.

It reminded me that work was not only about surviving the worst thing that had happened to me.

PART 11

A reporter named June Park called me on a Thursday afternoon.

She worked for a Baltimore newspaper and had heard that a waitress was fired after summoning emergency help for a private-room customer.