Dad had been dead six years.

Officially, he’d lost control of his truck on a wet county road late one night.

There had never been another vehicle identified.

Mom reached across the table.

“Don’t.”

I looked at her.

“Don’t what?”

“Start connecting things that might not be connected.”

I folded the offer and put it back inside the envelope.

“Then tell me what is connected.”

Mom stood and carried her coffee to the sink.

She wouldn’t answer.

Everyone Saw Nothing

The next morning, I went to the diner before sunrise.

Mom had been opening that place at 5:30 every morning for almost thirty years. Dad used to handle the grill while she ran the counter. After he died, she hired two cooks but refused to change anything else.

Even his old coffee mug was still hanging on a hook beside the kitchen door.

I stood near the booth where Mom had fallen.

Her glasses had landed underneath it in the video.

That was the image I couldn’t get out of my head.

A seventy-five-year-old woman on the floor while a room full of people pretended not to see.

By seven, the regulars began arriving.

I knew most of them.

I started asking questions.

“Were you here Tuesday?”

A man named Frank looked down at his coffee.

“For breakfast.”

“Did you see what happened to Mom?”

He stirred sugar into his cup for several seconds.

“Not really.”

“You were sitting six feet away.”

His spoon stopped.

“Sarah, your mom fell.”

At the next table, a retired teacher told me she had been facing the window.

Another customer said he’d been in the restroom.

A third suddenly remembered he’d left before it happened.

By eight-thirty, I had spoken to seven people.

Nobody had seen anything.

Then Sheriff Mark Collins walked in.

He had known my father for years. When I was a teenager, he’d eaten Sunday breakfast in this diner with his wife.

He removed his hat and nodded at me.

“Heard you were back.”

“You heard why?”

His expression didn’t change.