Chapter 2

The next day, I invited him over for dinner. He sat on the couch as I told him everything.

By the time I finished, his expression had grown increasingly serious.

“So, your Social Security card and financial records have been at your mother’s house all this time?”

“Yes. Since I left for college.”

“What about your bank accounts?”

“I have my own checking account, but there are two older accounts she helped me open when I was younger. I barely use them, and she still has access.”

Simon leaned back and studied me.

“Mike, I’m going to be blunt. She has your Social Security number, your banking information, and everything else someone would need to apply for credit in your name.

“It would’ve been frighteningly easy for her to open an account without your knowledge.”

I said nothing.

“Are you certain the signature on that 280,000-dollar loan isn’t yours?”

“I remember exactly where I was last September. My company sent me out of state on a month-long assignment. I never came home once.”

“That helps.” Simon nodded.

“If your signature was forged, you had no part in the application, and the money never entered an account you controlled, you have strong grounds to report it as identity theft and dispute the debt.

“But first, you need to find out exactly what else has been done in your name.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your mother claims this was the only loan. Do you believe her?”

I remembered that brief pause the night before.

I did not answer.

Simon gave me a humorless smile.

“Start by pulling your credit reports from all three credit bureaus. We need to identify every account, loan, joint debt, and credit inquiry in your name.”

The following morning, I pulled all the credit reports. The whole process took about forty minutes. By the end, I was holding a thick stack of printouts.

I stood beside the printer and worked through them one page at a time.

The first account listed was the 280,000-dollar loan I already knew about.

I thought that would be the end of it.

I was wrong.

Farther down was another loan, opened the previous November for 400,000 dollars. It had a five-year term and monthly payments of more than 8,000 dollars.

It had been issued by a different bank.

I had never even known it existed.

My hands began to shake as I kept reading.

Then, another account caught my eye.

I was listed as the personal guarantor on a 350,000-dollar business loan.

[Primary borrower: Duncan Atkinson.]

My younger brother’s loan.

The money had been used as working capital for the little store he had opened, the one that went under in less than six months.

280,000 dollars.

400,000 dollars.

350,000 dollars.

I leaned against the wall and added the figures in my head, one by one.

1,030,000 dollars.

That was before I counted anything else.

I closed my eyes for a moment, then went back to the reports.

The final page contained the details of a joint mortgage.

My name was right there, listed as a co-signer.

The mortgage amount was 1,000,000 dollars. The other borrowers were Philip Atkinson and Laura Atkinson.

Philip Atkinson was my father.

It was the mortgage on the two-bedroom condo Duncan had bought the year before.

My parents had taken out the mortgage, Duncan got the condo, and the three of them treated it as theirs.

Meanwhile, they had added me as a co-borrower without my knowledge, making me equally responsible for the debt if they stopped making payments.

I stepped outside with the reports in my hand.

The midday sun was so bright that it made my eyes sting.

I called Simon. My voice sounded distant, as though it belonged to someone else.

“There’s more than one.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“A 280,000-dollar personal loan, another loan for 400,000 dollars, a 350,000-dollar business loan I was supposedly the guarantor for, and a 1,000,000-dollar mortgage with my name on it as a co-borrower.”

Simon was silent for several seconds.

“That’s more than 2,000,000 dollars altogether,” he said.

“2,030,000 dollars,” I said. “Simon, I need to find out whose name is actually on the deed to that condo.”

“Do it.”

That afternoon, I searched the county property records for Duncan’s condo.

Three names appeared on the deed.

Philip Atkinson. Laura Atkinson. Duncan Atkinson.

My father, my mother, and my brother.

The three of them, a family unto themselves.

My name was nowhere to be found.

I stood on the sidewalk and stared at those three names on my phone for what felt like an eternity.

They had used my identity and credit to take out loans, made me the personal guarantor for Duncan’s debt, and slipped my name onto their mortgage so I would be stuck with the payments.

Yet the condo belonged to them.

I had no ownership stake in it whatsoever.

At that moment, all I felt was a deep, numbing cold.

Even under the summer sun, I felt chilled to the bone.