I asked the credit bureau to pull the original applications, and every single one had been submitted in person. The woman had used her own identification, my grandson’s Social Security number, and an address in town that I recognized immediately. It was the house where his mother had lived before she died. I called the woman because her number was still on one of the applications. She answered and said she knew exactly who I was. She said she’d been helping my grandson because his mother had asked her to before she died. I told her his mother had never mentioned her. She said, “She wouldn’t have wanted you to know.”
I asked what the accounts had been used for. The car loan was for a vehicle I had never seen, and the credit card had been used mostly for groceries, gas, and hotel rooms. The medical bill was real, but the hospital said the patient had been a child who was brought in by the same woman. I asked what name the child was admitted under. The clerk read me my grandson’s name. Then she gave me the date. He had been admitted on a Tuesday when he was staying with me, and I had taken him to school that morning. I pulled out the school attendance records, and he had been marked present that entire week. Something wasn’t adding up.
I called the woman again and told her I knew the accounts weren’t my grandson’s. She started crying and said she’d never meant to hurt him, but his mother had left her instructions to keep paying for “the other boy.” I asked who the other boy was. She wouldn’t tell me over the phone. Instead, she gave me an address and said I would understand when I saw him. I drove there that afternoon. A boy about my grandson’s age opened the door, and the woman stood behind him. He had my grandson’s exact birthday, the same middle name, and a birthmark in the same place. Then she handed me a folder containing the original hospital record.
The patient listed on it wasn’t my grandson.
It was his twin brother.
