…”St. Catherine’s in Phoenix. Twice. Under your name and your insurance.”
I had never been to Phoenix in my life. I had never given birth. We had no children. My husband, Greg, traveled to Arizona for work every month.
The mistress, whose name was Tiffany, went silent on the phone. Then she said, “Oh my God. He has a family there, doesn’t he? That’s why he got a vasectomy. He already had kids.”
She was right. When I called my insurance company and asked for a full claims history, they listed two births at St. Catherine’s: a boy born six years earlier and a girl born four years earlier, both under my name, my date of birth and my policy number. Greg had used my identity so another woman could give birth with our insurance.
I hired a lawyer and a private investigator. Within two weeks we knew everything. Greg had been in a relationship with a woman named Rachel in Phoenix for eight years. He’d told her he was divorced and that his ex-wife’s insurance still covered “the family” through his job. Rachel had no idea her medical records said she was me.
And Tiffany? Greg had told her I was infertile and bitter, and that he’d leave me soon. The baby she was carrying belonged to her ex-boyfriend, as a paternity test later confirmed. She’d sent me the photo because she thought it would make Greg finally choose her.
I reported Greg for identity theft and insurance fraud. The investigation took a year. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to repay the insurance company.
The strangest moment came when I met Rachel. She flew out to apologize, though she had done nothing wrong. She brought photos of her children. Greg’s children. “They don’t deserve to grow up thinking their father is a monster,” she said. “But I don’t know what to tell them.”
I told her the truth is easier to carry when you’re not carrying it alone. We still talk sometimes.
My divorce was finalized last spring. I moved into a smaller house with a large garden. I changed my passwords, froze my credit and kept one document framed in my kitchen: my clean medical record, showing no births, no fertility treatments and nobody using my name but me.
