After the woman left, Evelyn leaned toward me.

“Remember that moment,” she said.

“There are people who see exactly what happened.”

PART 12

The store manager called a few days later.

Maya had asked for available records, and the manager had found a customer-service incident entry written by the employee who was on duty that Friday.

A child had returned a ring to a woman describing the missing item, it said, and the woman had departed with it.

The store’s limited video, retained under its normal policies, showed the exchange from a distance.