Louis: He won’t. He still thinks I love him.
I read that sentence three times.
He still thinks I love him.
I did not cry when Lucy died.
Not at the hospital.
Not at the funeral.
Not when I came home and found her reading glasses beside the bed.
But sitting at my desk on my seventieth birthday, with dog food still scattered on the dining room floor downstairs, I finally cried.
Quietly.
Not for the money.
Not even for the house.
I cried for the son I had believed still existed.
At 2:17 a.m., I stopped.
I washed my face.
Then I began making calls.
First, I called the bank’s twenty-four-hour fraud department.
I froze the home equity line, every card, every transfer, and every authorized user. I reported identity theft and uploaded the forged documents.
Then I changed every password.
I removed Louis from my phone plan.
I canceled the insurance on the luxury SUV registered under my name.
I locked my credit with all three bureaus.
At 3:05 a.m., I emailed the evidence to Samuel Reed, the attorney who had handled Lucy’s estate and my retirement planning.
At 3:19, he called me.
“Ernest,” he said, “are they in the house now?”
“Yes.”
“Do not confront them alone.”
“I’m not alone.”
“Who is with you?”
“Forty years of records.”
He was silent for a second.
Then he said, “Good. Keep the door locked. I’m calling a financial crimes detective I know. We’ll be there after sunrise.”
My next call was to Marlene.
“Uncle Ernest? Are you all right?”
“Are you still downstairs?”
“No. I left after what Louis did, but I’m still outside.”
That nearly broke me again.
“Come to the side door,” I said. “Quietly.”
When she entered my bedroom, I showed her the documents.
Her face changed from confusion to disbelief, then rage.
“I donated four thousand dollars to that fundraiser,” she whispered. “Louis told me you were forgetting your own name.”
“I remember my name.”
“I know.”
