The first bill was from the resort in Florida. Not a hospital, not a doctor, not anything medical. It was a maintenance statement for a timeshare purchased almost two years earlier. I stared at the name on the account. It was my husband’s. I asked him why his mother had bought a timeshare in his name. He said he didn’t know anything about it. Then I showed him the maintenance bills she’d been hiding in a folder on our counter. Every one had been paid late, and every payment had come from the account where my $19,000 loan had originally gone. He looked at the statements for a long time before asking me where I’d found them.
I told him the truth. His mother had been using the money I gave her to keep the timeshare current. He said she had told him the money was for surgery. I reminded him that she’d cried at our kitchen table and promised she’d repay every cent. He said he’d talk to her. She laughed when he called and told him I was “keeping score again.” Then she said something that made him stop talking. She told him the timeshare wasn’t really hers anymore. Apparently, she’d transferred it to him because she couldn’t qualify for the purchase herself. My husband asked when she’d done that. She said, “You signed everything at Christmas.” He looked at me and said he had never been in Florida.
The next morning my husband opened the mail himself, something he had suddenly started doing every day. One envelope was from the timeshare company, and it wasn’t addressed to him. It was addressed to me. Inside was a notice saying I had been listed as a secondary responsible party on the account. I had never signed anything. At the bottom was a signature that looked almost exactly like mine. I called the company and asked who had submitted the paperwork. The representative put me on hold for several minutes before coming back. She said the documents had been uploaded from a computer registered to my mother-in-law’s address. Then she read me the date they were submitted. It was the same day I had handed her the $19,000 — and the person who had witnessed my supposed signature was…
