Not call the police, not call the embassy, not call the bank — call Mom and Dad, because the last remaining move, when a scheme collapses, is to reach past the person asking the hard questions and find the softer source of money behind her.

I do not think Monique was being calculating.

I think she was drowning and reaching for the nearest hand.

But the shape of the reach was the same shape the whole thing had always had: get the careful one to open a door to the trusting one, and let the money flow through.

There it was.

She could not call them herself, she admitted when I pressed, because they would ask what happened — and the question I had carried for days finally closed itself, because the shape of the answer was now plain.

The money she had shared.