Transfer canceled.

Returned balance.

The number I had been afraid to look at for a week was simply back, whole, unglamorous, exactly itself.

It had not grown and it had not shrunk.

The man in Dubai had reached for it across an ocean with everything he had, and the careful, boring machinery of a bank review had reached back and closed its hand, and the money had never actually left the hallway between the two rooms.

I did not feel triumphant.