“Check the cameras.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t have time to go through footage during dinner service.”
Then he said the words I had been dreading.
“You know the policy. Walkouts come out of the server’s pocket.”
I stared at him.
“That’s over four hundred dollars.”
“Then consider it a lesson.”
A lesson.
As though I had personally invited two strangers to steal from me.
At the end of my shift, I paid the bill.
My hands were shaking when I signed the paperwork.
By the time I stepped outside, I had already cried once in the employee bathroom.
Four hundred dollars was gone.
My mother was still missing.
And I had no idea how I was going to explain any of it to my family.
I barely slept that night.
At eight the next morning, Jett called.
“Can you come in?”
“My shift doesn’t start until five.”
“I know.”
His voice sounded strange.
“Just come as soon as you can.”
Twenty minutes later, I walked back into Bellamy’s wearing yesterday’s jeans.
I expected another lecture.
Instead, I found Jett standing beside table twelve.
He looked pale.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The cleaning crew found something.”
He held up a small plastic bag.
“It was wedged behind the booth. They almost missed it.”
He hesitated before handing it to me.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I should have checked the cameras.”
Then he looked at the bag.
“And after seeing this, I think you need to know what happened.”
Inside was a gold ring.
The second I saw it, I stopped breathing.
Thin band.
Three tiny diamonds.
A pale blue center stone.
One bent prong near the setting.
I knew every scratch.
Every flaw.
Every detail.
Because I had spent four months staring at photographs of that ring.
It belonged to my mother.
She had worn it every day for twenty-three years.
She wore it while cooking.
While sleeping.
