He said: “Mrs.

Vance, in 2008, did you believe you were making an investment?”

And Patricia had told me — in a hallway, forty minutes earlier, because she knew it was coming — do not be clever, do not help, answer it.

So I said: “No.”

He said, “Thank you.”

And I said, “I believed I was married.”

Patricia told me afterward that I should not have said it and that it was the best thing anybody said in four days and that both of those are true and that I should never do it again.

Part Twenty-Nine: The Number