The balance on that card was not five hundred dollars. It was four hundred sixty-two thousand dollars. I gripped the edge of the counter to keep from falling. The teller asked if I needed to sit down, and I nodded, unable to form a single word. For five years I had gone hungry, slept in a room that smelled of mildew, and collected bottles for coins, all while carrying a fortune in my coat pocket that I had been too proud and too wounded to ever check. My mind reeled trying to understand how three hundred, no, five hundred dollars, had become nearly half a million.

The teller printed the transaction history, and that was when I began to understand. The deposits had come steadily, month after month, for five years. Small at first, then larger. Every single one from the same source. An account belonging to Vincent Carroll. The man I believed had thrown me away with a parting insult had been quietly putting money into that card every month since the day we divorced. My hands shook so badly I could barely hold the paper. I asked the teller if there was any message, any note attached to the account. She checked, then slid a sealed envelope across the counter. My name was on it, in Vincent’s handwriting.