For Eight Months I Thought I’d Found Love After My Divorce — Then a Woman I’d Never Met Recognized His Photo and Said “When I Knew Him, He Went by a Different Name,” and I Understood Every Breakfast Had Been Reconnaissance

My legs gave out and I sat down hard in a plastic chair, and Christopher crouched in front of me and took my cold hands.

“She’s safe, Alison.

Abigail’s safe.” “I know,” I said.

“You listened to her in time.” I shook my head, because that was not quite the truth of it, and the truth mattered.

“No,” I said.

“She saved us.

All of us.” Because she had.

In the weeks that followed, investigators pulled apart a whole web — photos of other women’s homes, forged IDs, template contracts — and Colette’s statement brought other victims out of the silence they’d been living in.