It had taken an eleven-year-old to point out that my sister was about to wire a lifetime’s savings into a sentence.

And sentences, I knew from twenty years of work, are the cheapest thing in the world to manufacture.

Anyone can say property and logistics.

Anyone can say initial capital requirement, business account overseas, time-sensitive position.

The words cost nothing to produce and carry no proof inside them, which is exactly why the careful thing to ask for is never more words but the one document the words are supposed to be describing — the registration, the contract, the thing with a verifiable name and a traceable address.

Chad had produced an ocean of sentences for my sister.