Because that was the trap underneath the trap, and I could feel its edge even in the middle of my sister’s fear: that if I sent money now — for the hotel, for a plane ticket, for anything — I would be wiring funds into the exact situation the bank was in the middle of freezing, feeding a live fraud at the moment it was finally being starved.

Every dollar I sent would be a dollar someone could point to later and say the family kept paying.

The most loving thing available to me, in the worst hour of my sister’s panic, was not to send her money.

It was to help her find the people who could actually help her — the hotel, her bank, the authorities — and to keep my own savings exactly where the review could still protect them.

It did not feel like love.