I should have asked what she was doing.

Instead, my phone rang.

It was my father.

“Your mother is upset.”

I leaned back against the couch.

“I’m missing almost $150,000, Dad.”

“And we’re trying to keep this family from tearing itself apart.”

“Then call the person who took the money.”

His voice hardened.

“I’m asking you to give your sister a few days.”

I looked toward Maya.

She had stopped typing.

“She already had a few days. She used them to fly to Dubai.”

I ended the call before he could answer.

Maya watched me for another second.

Then she lowered her eyes to the tablet and kept working.

Maya Asked One Strange Question

Sunday evening, Maya brought her tablet into the kitchen while I was making grilled cheese.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“If somebody has the same picture but a different name, does that mean they’re lying?”

I turned from the stove.

“What do you mean?”

She held up the tablet, but before I could see it clearly, a notification covered the screen.

She tapped it away.

“Never mind. I think I figured it out.”

“Maya.”

She smiled.

“It’s okay.”

I pointed the spatula at her.

“No buying anything.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I’m not buying anything.”

That night, after she went to bed, I checked on her. Her tablet was charging on the nightstand beside a stuffed rabbit she’d had since kindergarten.

I didn’t touch it.

Maybe I should have.

Monday morning, the bank investigator called.

There had been movement on the receiving side.

The money had arrived overseas, but apparently not all of it had moved where Monique expected. The investigator couldn’t tell me much because another institution was involved.

“Is it frozen?” I asked.

“I can’t confirm that.”

“Can it still be recovered?”

“There’s now a better possibility than there was Friday.”

That was the first good sentence I’d heard in three days.

I wrote it in my notebook.

At 11:17 that morning, Monique called from Dubai.

She wasn’t calm anymore.

The moment I answered, she screamed my name.

“KESHA! WHAT DID YOU DO?”

I pulled the phone away from my ear.

Across the room, Maya looked up from her tablet.

And smiled.

That was when I remembered what she’d told me three days earlier.

“Mom, it’s okay. I’ve got this.”

For the first time, I wondered whether my nine-year-old had meant it.

The Man in Maya’s Search Results

“What happened?” I asked.

Monique was breathing hard.

“Don’t play stupid with me. The account is locked.”

I sat down at the kitchen table.

“Which account?”

“The investment account. Chad can’t access anything. The bank is asking questions, and now somebody from his company is saying they need additional verification.”

“You mean the account holding my money?”

“Our money.”

I looked across the table at Maya.

She had gone very still.

“No, Monique. My money.”

“Kesha, please. Chad is losing his mind.”

A man’s voice shouted something behind her.

Then Monique lowered her voice.

“Did you report him?”

That word caught me.

Him.

Not her.

“Why would I report Chad?”

Silence.

“Monique?”

“Just fix it.”

“Fix what?”

“Tell your bank it was authorized.”

I looked at Maya again.

She was staring at her tablet.

“I’m not doing that.”

Monique’s voice cracked.

“Kesha, you don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Then explain it.”

She didn’t.

The call ended.

I put my phone on the table.

Maya immediately stood up.

“Are you mad?”

That was not the question I expected.

“At you?”

She nodded.

I pulled out the chair beside me.

“Come here.”

She sat down slowly and placed the tablet between us.

“Show me.”

What My Daughter Had Actually Done

It wasn’t hacking.

It wasn’t some impossible computer trick.

It was something much simpler.

Maya had searched Chad’s name.

Then she’d searched his photograph.

She knew how because her teacher had recently shown the class how to check whether pictures used in online assignments came from reliable sources.

One of Chad’s photographs led her to an old public social-media page.

Same face.

Different last name.

Then another.

Maya had started clicking.

“I thought maybe there were two Chads,” she explained.

She showed me a photograph of him standing beside a woman in Miami.

The post was almost three years old.

The woman had written a long public warning underneath it.

Chad Mercer wasn’t the name she’d known him by.

According to her post, he’d convinced her to put money into an overseas investment and disappeared after the transfer.

My mouth went dry.

“Did you message her?”

Maya looked nervous.

“Yes.”

I stared at her.

“What did you say?”

She opened the conversation.

Her message was painfully nine years old.

Hi. Sorry if this is weird. Is this man named Chad? My aunt is in Dubai with him and she took my mom’s money.

The woman had answered twenty minutes later.

Honey, please have your mom contact me immediately.

Maya hadn’t wanted to wake me because I’d finally fallen asleep on the couch.

So she sent the woman my name.

The woman found me on LinkedIn.

I had ignored her connection request because I didn’t recognize her.

Then she’d apparently contacted the fraud department listed in one of Maya’s screenshots.

I looked sharply at my daughter.

“What screenshot?”

Maya swallowed.

“The one on your desk.”

My fraud case confirmation.

I had printed it Saturday morning and left it beside the laptop.

The woman hadn’t gained access to anything. She’d simply contacted the bank, provided her own previous reports about Chad under another name, and linked them to my existing fraud case.

Suddenly the bank wasn’t looking only at an authorized family transfer.

It was looking at a transfer connected to a man who had been reported before.

I sat there staring at the screen.

Maya twisted the sleeve of her sweatshirt around one finger.

“Am I in trouble?”

I took the tablet from her and set it on the table.

“You are never supposed to send strangers personal information without asking me.”

Her face fell.

“I know.”

“And you definitely don’t send pictures of my paperwork.”

“Okay.”

I waited.

Then I pulled her against me.

“But you may have found something very important.”

She hugged me around the waist.

“So I did handle it a little?”

I laughed for the first time since Friday.

“A little.”

Chad Wasn’t Waiting for Monique

The woman Maya found was named Rebecca Sloan.

I called her myself that afternoon.

She didn’t tell me a dramatic story. She didn’t need to.

She gave me dates.

Names.

Two old police report numbers.

And the name Chad had used when she knew him.