I closed the folder.

“That,” I said, “is exactly what I needed to hear.

I drove home turning the instructions over like the rules of a game I had not chosen to play.

Keep the originals.

Write down the dates.

Do not send more money while you verify.

They were not dramatic rules.

They were the dull, procedural, deeply unglamorous rules that actually protect people, the kind nobody makes a film about, and I understood on the drive that my entire defense was going to be built out of exactly the sort of careful paper-keeping that my sister teased me for and that a scam counts on its victims being too hurried or too embarrassed to do.”