We had been together fourteen months by then. He knew the story — the version, the one with the bank alert and the deduction about the jeweler and the ambulance.

He liked that story enormously. He had introduced me to people using pieces of it.

What I told him at that table was the collection. Sixty-three people. Twenty thousand four hundred and eighty dollars. Renata Ossorio saying she must have known in a break room.

And Colton said, “That’s not on you.”

I said, “I know.”

He said, “No, seriously, Stella — you were the victim of that lie. That’s the most twisted part of the whole thing. He used your death to raise money.”