“You do know. Give it time. It will happen when you least expect it.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. And we know I’m always right.”
He laughed. She’d told the boys when their father was moving out that it’d be just fine and she was right. It was fine. Better than fine. Life calmed down and wasn’t as stressful. At least for him. Adam still wanted their father’s affection, but Seth had moved on. He’d always thought he was good at moving on.
Until he wasn’t.
3
Hanging Over Their Heads
“What do you mean my loan was denied?” Ava asked a month later. She’d been looking at some houses online having decided to not reach out to Drew yet. It still hadn’t been announced that she’d be transferring to the island so she was holding off on that front.
She had told her parents and brothers. They wouldn’t say anything to anyone else, but they were thrilled to know she’d be here permanently.
Or so she hoped because right now it sounded like her dream to move here might not come true and there was no way she wanted to stay in her condo and take the ferry over daily.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Mills,” the bank president was telling her. Seth, he said his name was, and she was shocked when she got the call from him and not the loan officer to come into the bank and talk about her application. For the life of her she didn’t know what the problem could be but didn’t expect this. “Your credit score is lower than I’ve seen in a long time.”
“Not possible,” she said, practically getting out of the chair she sat in facing the broad desk. “I bought a new car about ten months ago. It was over eight hundred then.” Her mind was spinning. “There has to be some kind of mistake. The only debt I have is that car.”
She rented her condo. Her parents paid for her first six years of college, just like they did for her brothers, and since they were all doctors that was a huge ask. But the three of them got good scholarships too. The rest of the education came out of the trust funds so that none of them had that debt hanging over their heads.
She could have used her trust fund for the purchase of a house on Amore Island, but that would be depleting it almost down to nothing at this point with what it cost to buy property on the island. Since she had a darn good job and no debt, getting a mortgage with the low interest rates seemed like the smart choice.
And she always made smart choices.
“Right now I see over forty thousand dollars in credit card debt on multiple cards and no payments made,” he said.
“No,” she said. She opened her purse and pulled her only two credit cards out and slapped them on his desk. “Can you find these on your report? Those are the only two I’ve got. They have no balance on them. I pay them in full each month.”
He clicked around on a few screens and pulled the cards close. “Hmm. This isn’t good.”
“What?” she asked. “It’s a mistake, right?”
“No, it’s not. But it looks like your credit was great a year ago and in the past six months this has been happening. These two cards are exactly as you say. But there are five more cards outstanding. All started four to six months ago.”
“They aren’t mine,” she argued.
“They are in your name and social security number. I’m afraid it looks as if your identity was stolen.”
“Oh my God. Things like this don’t happen to someone I know,” she all but wailed. “They don’t happen to me.”
“I’m sorry. I’d suggest you get a lawyer right away. You’ve got more than enough in your savings to pay this off, but you might want to put a hold on your funds so that creditors don’t come after this.”
“If you do that then I can’t pay anything? I’ll have no money.” Her mind was racing. “I’ll contact my employers to stop my direct deposit and get a live check, but even then I can’t cash it, can I, without an account?”
“You can cash it on the bank the payroll account comes from,” he said.
“I don’t even know what bank that is, nor do I want to walk around with that much cash on me.”
“Hang on.” He was typing away at his computer. “It’s actually our bank so you are lucky there are so many branches in Massachusetts and you are a satellite office out of Boston where our main headquarters are. You can come here to cash your check.”
“That’s something, I guess. I don’t suppose I can open another account up, can I?”
“I wouldn’t advise it right now. Pretty soon creditors are going to come looking for this and take legal action to get the money. The best option is to put a hold on everything so no one can access it.”
“Not even me? Why can’t I empty it out?”
“It will look bad if you do. You should retain a lawyer and get everything started and appeal these cards and then try to prove they aren’t yours. Also, you don’t want whoever stole your identity to access your account.”
She let out a big breath. “‘Try’ is the keyword, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he said. “You’ll need to make sure no more are set up in your name too even if these are shut down.”
“But if I’ve got bad credit, no more can be, right?” she asked, wondering how she’d get her name cleared from this. If she paid it off, which she didn’t want to do, it wouldn’t wipe away the damage done.
“That doesn’t mean whoever did this doesn’t have more waiting to use while these are cut off. Which it looks
