“Nicole.” Her voice was weaker than usual but carried the same firmness that had once caught me sneaking out my bedroom window at sixteen. “You didn’t need to fly all the way home for this.”

I sat and gently held her good hand. “Mom, someone hit you. Someone knocked you onto the floor of your own diner.”

“I’m fine.” She squeezed my fingers; even injured, her grip carried four decades of lifting coffee pots and working twelve-hour shifts. “It looks worse than it is.”

“It looks like an assault, because that’s exactly what it was.”

She looked toward the parking-lot lights. “Please, honey. Don’t make this bigger than it needs to be.”

I searched her face. “What aren’t you telling me?”