“So my father did steal the money,” I say, deflating. I don’t know why I’m disappointed. Actually, I know exactly why. Because despite all the evidence, I was convinced my father wasn’t a thief. I needed to believe that, needed to believe Finn was full of shit.

“That’s not the whole story,” Yousef says.

“What does that mean?”

“I got a special visa to emigrate to the U.S., along with my wife and my baby girl. Your father said that once we were in the States he would figure out how to send our shares of money—mine and Hector Cortez’s. He said he could use his credentials to get the money transferred from the Kuwaiti bank to an American bank. But before he went home after finishing his tour of duty, he told me he was having second thoughts.”

“Second thoughts? About giving you your share?”

“About taking the money at all.”

“What are you saying?” And then, oh, dear sweet baby Jesus Christ, I get it. “He called the DoD because he wanted to tell them about the money.”

Yousef nods. “That’s what he said he was going to do. I argued with him, but I knew he was right. Nothing good had come of that money …” He trails off and looks at me, then glances away. After a moment he turns his head to look at me as if he’s forcing himself to do it. “It took me longer to get out of Iraq than I thought it would, almost another year. After I moved to the States, I called your father. He was upset that I called. He told me the money was cursed, that nobody wanted it, nobody wanted to talk to him. Then he hung up.” Yousef pauses. “Two weeks later, I tried calling him again to tell him it was okay, that I understood. And I did, honestly. I thought he would be calmer after some time. But when I tried to call, his number was disconnected. So I looked for him on the internet, and … that’s when I learned he had died, just two days after I last talked to him.”

He died. Everything comes back to that, my parents’ deaths. The primal formative event in my life. I close my eyes and lower my head as if in prayer. It’s like a stain I can never rub out, never erase. It would be easier to erase the sun.

“Are you all right?” Yousef asks.

“No,” I say, my eyes still closed. “You mentioned money earlier. How’d you get it?”

“That was the strangest thing of all,” he says. “Six months later, I open my front door one morning and find a duffel bag on the porch.”

My mouth is dry. “Let me guess,” I say. I open my eyes and look at Yousef. “It was two million in cash, and a typed note that said, ‘From Jimmy.’”