She was sixty-one, a retired school nurse in Bakersfield, widowed since 2019, and nobody had asked about her day in four years. He asked every morning at 6:40. He remembered her sister's name, the knee surgery, the dog's medication schedule. On the third day he used the word soulmate, and she wrote it in the margin of the crossword she does at the kitchen table.

The customs fee was $2,400, and the second one was $3,100. Her son found out in March and handled it the way sons do. What she has not told him is that she does not much miss the money. She rereads the messages from that first week, before any of the asking started, and they remain the kindest things anyone has said to her.