I had really traveled for work, so his story of my abandonment borrowed the truth of my absences.

Every lie he told had a true thing at its center, and the true thing was what made the lie so hard to see, because when you checked the lie against reality, you found, at its core, something that checked out, and the confirmation of the small true thing made you accept the large false thing wrapped around it.

It is the most effective form of deception there is, far more effective than outright fabrication, and it is the method of every skilled manipulator: never lie completely, always build the lie around a seed of truth, so that the victim’s own verification works in your favor.

Understanding this did not just help me defeat George’s specific forgeries.