PART 2
The first account on Finn’s report was a $9,000 personal loan.
The second was a credit card with a $4,500 limit. Maxed. The third was a cell phone plan.
The fourth was a utility account at an apartment in Dayton.
I didn’t recognize that address.
I called the utility company. The account holder’s name was “Finn Wessel.” The service address belonged to a man named Corey Lutz.
Brianna’s boyfriend.
My sister had used my six-year-old’s Social Security number to turn on the electricity for her boyfriend’s apartment.
I sat on my kitchen floor until 3 a.m.
Then I did everything right.
I froze my credit and Finn’s with all three bureaus. I filed an identity theft report with the FTC. I filed a police report the next morning, with both credit reports and the text from my mother: “If you report this, don’t bother bringing that baby to this house.”
The detective, a tired man named Sergeant Holloway, read it twice.
“Ma’am, your mother admitted in writing that she knew.”
“She admitted it out loud too.”
“Did anyone else hear?”
“No,” I said. “But I recorded it.”
Ohio is a one-party consent state. When I walked into my parents’ living room that day, my phone had been recording in my back pocket. I hadn’t planned it. I’d been recording a voice memo for my doctor in the car, and I never stopped it.
Every word was there.
“I helped her fill out the applications.”
Brianna was arrested two weeks later for identity theft and receiving stolen property. My mother was charged as an accomplice.
The detective told me the charges involving a minor’s identity made the case much more serious.
My father called me for the first time in a year.
I thought he was going to yell.
He didn’t.
“I didn’t know about Finn,” he said quietly. “I swear to God, Amber. I didn’t know.”
“I believe you, Dad.”
He moved out of that house a month later.
It took eight months to clear my credit. Finn’s took four.
Every creditor removed the accounts once they saw the police report. The car loan company dropped the debt completely.
My credit score went from 488 to 742.
We bought a house in the spring.
Not the little brick one. That was gone.
A better one. Yellow siding. A swing on the porch.
My daughter was born in May. We named her Willa.
My father comes to dinner every Sunday. He fixed the porch swing himself.
Last week, Finn asked me what a credit report was.
I told him it’s a list of promises with your name on them.
He thought about that.
“Then nobody should make promises with my name except me,” he said.
He’s six.
He’s right.
THE END.
