“I believe this belongs to me,” I said, and I meant more than the necklace, and I think she understood that, because she burst into tears and fled the ballroom through a gauntlet of gasping guests and raised phones.

I have wondered, since, what I felt toward Victoria in that moment, and the honest answer is: less than she probably imagines, and less than the story wants me to.

She was twenty-three.

She had let herself be sold a fantasy by a practiced liar twice her age — the house in Aspen, the promises, the story that his marriage was already over and I was merely a formality he was waiting to dissolve.

She was not innocent; she wore my necklace to a party thrown by the firm she knew he was robbing, and there is a hardness in that I do not excuse.