Chương 5
Opened eight months ago.
Limit: $75,000.
Balance: $72,914.
Status: delinquent.
I stopped breathing properly.
Riley whispered my name.
Another account sat beneath it.
Another.
Then another.
Not all were active.
Some had been paid.
One had been closed.
One showed me as an authorized signer on a corporate card tied to a company name I had never seen.
Mitchell Urban Holdings II.
I clicked through the details until the numbers blurred.
The total exposure crossed six figures before we finished the first report.
Riley stood so abruptly her chair scraped the floor.
“We’re calling the police.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I need to understand this first.”
“Amber, your dad stole your identity.”
“We don’t know that.”
She stared at me.
I hated the sentence as soon as I heard it.
It sounded like my mother.
We don’t know.
Let’s not overreact.
There could be an explanation.
Riley’s face softened in a way that made me angry.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m stupid.”
“I’m not.”
“Then stop.”
“I’m looking at you like your father trained you to defend him before you defend yourself.”
I stood.
“Do not psychoanalyze me.”
“I’m not.”
“You just did.”
“Fine.”
She stepped back.
“You’re right.”
I wanted her to fight me.
Her surrender made the anger collapse.
I sat again.
Winston wandered into the kitchen, carrying a sock he was not supposed to have.
Riley took it from him and pointed toward the hall.
He ignored her.
My phone lit up on the table.
Mom.
Not blocked anymore.
The screen vibrated until the call ended.
Then Dad called.
Then Mom again.
Then Dad.
Riley and I watched the phone without touching it.
A message appeared from Mom.
Amber, please answer.
Another from Dad arrived ten seconds later.
We need to discuss a serious misunderstanding.
I laughed.
It sounded awful.
Riley sat beside me.
Then another message from Dad.
Do not speak to Scott Thompson.
Another from Mom.
Please come home.
Then Dad.
This involves your financial future.
My phone began ringing again.
Riley looked at the screen.
“Your mom.”
I declined it.
Dad called immediately.
I declined that too.
The calls kept coming.
By midnight, there were nine missed calls.
At twelve-thirteen, there were fourteen.
At twelve-forty, twenty-one.
I turned the phone face down.
At one sixteen in the morning, after the thirty-fifth missed call, the apartment finally went quiet.
Five unread messages remained on the screen.
The last one was from my mother.
It said, Amber, if you don’t help us, your father could lose everything.
I read the message until the words stopped looking like something a mother would send her daughter.
Riley was standing at the sink rinsing a glass she had not used.
She turned when she heard me laugh.
“What?”
I slid the phone across the table.
She read the message and set it down very carefully.
“That’s not an apology.”
“No.”
“That’s not even concern.”
“No.”
“It’s leverage.”
I looked at the business credit line on the laptop.
My name sat beside numbers that belonged to a life I had never lived.
For twenty-four years, my parents had described dependence as my defining flaw.
Now, in the blue light of Riley’s kitchen, I was looking at evidence that they had been depending on me.
I opened Mom’s other messages.
The first said she was worried about me.
The second said Dad had made a mistake but that families handled mistakes privately.
The third warned me not to let outsiders manipulate me.
The fourth asked whether Scott had contacted me.
The fifth was the one about Dad losing everything.
Not one mentioned the restaurant.
Not one asked whether I had gotten home safely.
Riley leaned against the counter.
“You need screenshots.”
“I have the messages.”
“Screenshots anyway.”
I did it because doing something mechanical felt easier than thinking.
We saved copies of the credit reports as PDFs, emailed them to a new address Riley helped me create, and changed passwords on my banking account, email, and phone carrier.
When the carrier asked for a new security PIN, my first instinct was to use my childhood address.
Riley stopped me.
“Nothing they can guess.”
I chose four numbers that meant nothing to anyone.
That felt strange too.
At two in the morning, we finally turned off the laptop.
Winston was asleep beneath the table with his nose resting on my bare foot.
Riley made toast because neither of us had eaten since before she left to rescue me.
I took two bites and could not manage a third.
“You should sleep,” she said.
“So should you.”
“I’m unemployed tomorrow.”
“You have work.”
“Emotionally unemployed.”
“You’re terrible.”
“I know.”
She carried the plates to the sink.
I looked at my phone again.
No new calls.
The silence was worse.
For most of my life, my father’s anger had arrived loudly enough that I could organize myself around it.
Doors shut harder.
Words became clipped.
His disappointment filled rooms before he entered them.
Silence meant he was planning.
I slept for perhaps ninety minutes on Riley’s couch.
At some point, Winston climbed onto my legs despite weighing almost forty pounds.
I woke before sunrise with one calf numb and my neck twisted against a throw pillow embroidered with the phrase CHICAGO IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA.
My phone showed three new messages.
One was from Aunt Jennifer.
One from Scott.
One from Dad.
I opened Dad’s first.
Please do not make irreversible decisions based on incomplete information.
I nearly admired the sentence.
He had spent my childhood making irreversible decisions for me with information he never allowed me to see.
Now he wanted patience.
Scott’s message contained a photograph.
It showed part of a spreadsheet on a computer monitor.
There were company names, loan numbers, and a column labeled guarantor.
My name appeared twice.
Below the photograph, he had written:
I found this in a lender package Jason sent me last month.
May you like
I did not notice your name then.
I am sending the full file once my attorney confirms I can.
