But I thought you hated chicken.
He laughed. “ Oh, Amy. You know me better than that. ”
“ Send me a selfie, right nowadays, ” she commanded him one night. To her relief, she got a photograph moments later. There he was, sitting on a terrace in the sunlight on the other english of the world.
Psychologists call this “ confirmation bias ” — if you love person, you look for reasons they are telling the truth, not reasons they are lying. We tend to find what we are looking for. And Amy was looking, desperately, for reasons to trust Dwayne, because the money was very adding up .
“ How do I know you ‘re not a nigerian swindler ? ” she once asked, playfully .
He laughed. “ Oh, Amy. You know me better than that. ”
Besides, he ‘d be there on February 28. She planned to make dinner for him that first night. She bought all his darling foods — fresh salmon, sourdough bread, a courteous Merlot. The slip would take more than a day : He had to fly to Beijing, then Chicago, and ultimately connect to Virginia. He ‘d call her a soon as he got to Chicago. His final message was a brief text that he said he sent from the airport in Kuala Lumpur .
I’ll be home soon my love.
The truth behind the lies
then, when the day finally came, Amy ‘s earphone remained silent, despite her efforts to get in refer. Something must have gone faulty. Why had n’t he called or texted her back ? He constantly called. Always.
She tried to tamp down the pinpricks of panic. When she collapsed into bed that night, she thought about how this had been the foremost sidereal day in about three months that they had n’t spoken .
There was n’t a single thunderclap of realization. But that workweek, it all came apart .
Dwayne finally contacted Amy three days former. He sent a unmarried text. Something about being held up by immigration at the airport in Kuala Lumpur and needing money to bribe the officials. This was the third time that Dwayne had failed to show, the third gear last-minute calamity. placid, she wired him the money .
Amy ‘s sister-in-law was the first to figure it out. “ You need to see this, ” she told Amy, sending her a radio link to a late episode of the Dr. Phil show, in which the television therapist confronted two women who claimed to be engaged to men they ‘d met on-line. Amy watched in growing horror .
A few days by and by, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared. This was the lapp Beijing-bound path Dwayne had planned to be on earlier. As the story of the fly airliner filled the airwaves, Amy could n’t help but worry that Dwayne had been aboard — possibly he ‘d managed to take a belated flight ? last, he called her. But the call went to her home land line, not the mobile telephone she ‘d been using. They spoke for only a few moments before it broke up. She was relieved but besides disturbed — and curious. Something was different .
The daily siege of calls and emails and messages had ended. suddenly, she was n’t tied up for hours every day. alone with her thoughts for the inaugural time in months, everything about their relationship seemed to blur.
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How much do I really know this guy?
One by one, she started feeding the photograph Dwayne had sent her into Google ‘s image search, trying to trace where else they might have come from. finally, up popped the LinkedIn page of a man with a name she ‘d never heard. Whoever Dwayne was, this was n’t him .
She Googled “ romance victimize ” and started reading. even as she discovered the truth, part of her held out hope that her case was somehow different — that she was the lucky one. But the while had broken. It was like waking up from a deeply sleep — those strange moments when the dream dissolves and the real world comes rushing back .
