And Evelyn, they didn’t just walk out on a four-hundred-dollar check.

Look at it.

Those people weren’t dine-and-dash.

They were private investigators.”

Private investigators.

The words did not compute at first, because they belonged to a genre my life did not participate in.

Private investigators were for cheating spouses and insurance fraud and rich people’s divorces, not for waitresses supporting their little sisters on tips.

People like me did not get investigated; we did not have anything worth the cost of a stakeout, no hidden fortune, no scandal, nothing anyone would pay good money to uncover.