“Don’t cry, Mom,” he whispered into my ear, fast and low.

“Just wait for me.”

Then he let go before I could answer and hurried back to his father, toward the checkpoint, and was gone.

In the taxi home I reached into my pocket and drew out what he’d left there: a plain black metal card, no bank name, no logo, no printed number, nothing.

And almost the instant I was holding it, my phone buzzed with a text from a number I didn’t know.

Mom, there’s six million dollars in that account, and the PIN is your birthday.