“As you get older, your news is only bad. Your friends die, your knees hurt more, your ears stop working, the tests show nothing, your children become impatient. Then, out of the blue, you hear from someone who has wonderful news. He has all the time in the world. He speaks slowly. He’s amazed that you’d like to do such a generous thing for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He says you sound so nice that he’d like to visit you in Kansas City someday. The main reason my mom trusted him, she told me later, was that he kept calling her, for more than a week: Why would someone be willing to spend that much time with her if he wasn’t for real?”