“My grandfather was the live-in super in this building for nearly fifty years,” said Zoe, walking over to the large window that framed the park below. She picked up a black-and-white photo of a dark, handsome man with a mustache on a nearby table. “This was my grandfather when he was a young man. I really miss him.”

Agents Wallace and Brandt nodded.

“When the building went co-op in the late 1970s, this neighborhood wasn’t quite as fancy as it is now. My grandfather took out a loan and was somehow able to buy this place at a significantly reduced insider price. My father always suspected the other tenants chipped in to thank him for all his years of service. Everyone loved my grandfather. When I was thirteen, my mom died and my dad and I moved in here with him. I’ve lived here ever since.”

Zoe didn’t mention that shortly after her mother died she started to suffer from bulimia that lasted for most of her teen years. It was around then that she started embellishing stories and turning little things into bigger ones. Therapists had told her father his daughter’s illness was probably caused by grief and the loss of control after losing her mother so young.

“Why do you think you invent stories?” asked her therapist at the time.

“I don’t invent them,” Zoe had replied. “I have a more acute sense of things than most other people.”

“This is your time, Zoe, so if you’re not going to be honest, you won’t make any progress,” said her therapist. “I’m here to help, not to judge.”

Zoe’s sad teenaged eyes had filled with tears as she swallowed several times to keep herself from crying. After a long silence, she spoke. “I guess I enhance certain things to make my life feel more exciting, so I can be more like other people. When my mom died, the world went gray. Dad and I moved in with my grandfather but nothing was ever the same. To everyone, I’m the girl with the dead mother. I wasn’t like all the other kids anymore with a mom and a dad. I think a piece of my dad died when my mother passed away. When I exaggerate or make up stories, it makes the world full of color.” Zoe had only been fourteen then, and could still recall the sad look on that therapist’s face.

“You’ve got quite the place here,” said Agent Brandt, standing up and walking over to the window to look out at the park.

“When my grandfather died,” Zoe said, “the apartment went to my dad. My father died last year, so now it’s all mine and here I am.”

“It’s really something,” said Agent Wallace, pacing the four corners of the living room.