“But I’m an accounting major, so the first thing I did after hanging up was log into my student portal at noon.

There was five thousand dollars sitting in my campus account.

He transferred it six months early.”

I stopped writing.

“Five thousand dollars?”

“He added a typed note in the memo line,” Sophie said, and I could hear the faint click of her silver class ring twisting around her thumb.

“It said: Save every penny, don’t spend this on books yet.

Why would he say that?”