The number on the statement had far too many digits to be four hundred dollars. I counted them twice, certain my failing eyes had betrayed me. Two million, three hundred thousand dollars. I gripped the edge of the counter to keep from falling, and the teller quickly came around to steady me, guiding me into a chair. “There have been deposits,” she said softly, scrolling through years of records on her screen. “Monthly. Small at first, then larger. The most recent one was three weeks ago.” My mind could not hold the shape of it. For five years I had eaten from trash bins and slept with my stomach screaming, while this account quietly filled with a fortune I never knew existed.

I asked her who had been making the deposits, my voice barely a whisper. She hesitated, checking whether she was permitted to say, then turned the screen slightly toward me. The name on every single transfer was the same, and it was not Raymond Sullivan. It was a name I knew as well as my own heartbeat, a name I had rocked to sleep and taught to walk. My son. The child I had refused to burden, the one I had lied to about how bad things were, had been putting money into the card his father handed me in that courthouse hallway, every month, for five years, believing all along that I had been using it.