The kid’s name is Henry, and fortunately, it didn’t take long for us to find his mother.

Carlos and his team learned Henry and his mom had been separated when getting off a train from Grimmsville, where they lived. His mother had been worried sick, searching all over the train station. When she saw her little boy being led over by Carlos, Evie, and Jane, she let out a yelp of relief and ran to them, scooping up the boy in her arms and kissing his face over and over.

Carlos felt happy watching Henry be reunited with his mother, but he also felt a twinge of jealousy. His own mother never ran to him like that. Never scooped him up in her arms like that. His mother never showed him any affection. She barely paid him any attention unless she needed him to run an errand for her or scrape the bunions from her feet.

“Thank you!” Henry’s mother said to the team after setting her little boy down. She turned to Carlos and did a double take. “Wait a minute, are you…”

“Yes, Mommy!” the boy chirped. “It’s him! It’s Carlos De Vil!”

The mother’s smile tripled in size. “Well, what do you know? It is him! What a wonderful day this is.” She turned to Carlos. “He’s your biggest fan. He’s really into computers. When he found out you were, too, you became his hero.”

“Can we take a picture? Can we? Can we? Can we?” The boy started jumping up and down, tugging on his mother’s hand. “Please! Please! Please!”

Carlos couldn’t help chuckling. “Okay by me, bro.”

The mother pulled her phone out of her purse and went to turn on the screen. Her face fell with disappointment. “Oh, no. Sweetie, I’m so sorry. My battery is dead.”

The boy looked like someone had just told him fairies weren’t real.

“That’s okay,” Carlos said, stepping in to save the day once again. He pulled his own phone out and handed it to Jane. “We can use mine and I’ll send the picture to you. How’s that?”

The boy’s mother flashed Carlos another grateful smile, and Carlos and Henry posed in the center of the beautiful glass-walled train station. Carlos got down on one knee so he was the same height as Henry. He put his arm around Henry’s shoulders and beamed toward the camera. Jane snapped the photo.

After sending the photo to Henry’s mom and saying their good-byes, Carlos and his team returned to the platform where they’d been waiting for the Charmington train.

Carlos’s shoulders sagged when he saw that the platform was completely deserted. The train had emptied and all the passengers had left. The students who had been milling around, waiting to take photos of tickets, were also gone.

They were all twenty points richer now.

And Carlos’s team was, once again, leaving empty-handed.