The Wire That Stopped at My Kitchen Table

That, I would come to understand, is the real engine of a scam.

It does not only use the victim’s hope.

It uses everyone else’s reluctance to be the one who says no.

I want to be truthful about that, because it would be easy to tell this story as though I were calm and clear-eyed the whole way through.

I was not.

The number frightened me, and part of what frightened me was how badly some small cowardly part of me wanted to simply say yes — to be the generous sister, the one who believed, the one who did not pick at every detail until her own family called her jealous.

It would have been so much easier to say yes.