“I didn’t see anything.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes, wiping the same clean section of countertop over and over. “I was in the back.”

I asked the cook. Same answer, different words. Finally I walked over to the two older men who had eaten breakfast in this diner nearly every morning of my childhood — men my mother had served on credit whenever money was tight and pride was too strong to ask for help.

“Did either of you see what happened?”

One stared into his coffee. “Didn’t see a thing, Nicole.” His hand shook around the mug.

I want you to understand that feeling. It wasn’t anger — not yet. It was something colder: the realization that you could stand in a place that had known you your entire life and discover everyone there had quietly agreed to look the other way.

I asked for the security footage. Because my mother leased the building, the surveillance system belonged to the property owner. He calmly explained that the cameras had suffered a technical failure that afternoon.