“There has to be a mistake.

I wire between two and three thousand dollars a month to my mother, for Maya’s care.” Mrs.

Ortega went still.

“Every month?” she said.

I pulled out my phone, and opened my banking app, and I showed her five years of monthly wire transfers, an unbroken column of them, month after month after month.

She stared at the screen for a long moment, and then she looked back up at me, and her face had changed.

“Then,” she said quietly, “we have a very serious situation here.”