The name was my mother’s maiden name. I hadn’t heard it used in decades, except on old documents. I told the woman that couldn’t be right because my mother had no relatives with that name, and I was the only person who handled her care. She said the name appeared on every Tuesday and Thursday note, always under “family present.” I asked whether the person ever signed anything. She said yes, and the signature had been there hundreds of times. I requested the complete aide records, and when they arrived, I found something even stranger: every extra visit began at 6 p.m. and ended at midnight, but nobody had ever billed my mother’s account for those hours.
I called the agency and asked where the private-pay account was coming from. The woman said she couldn’t give me the payer’s information without a subpoena, but she could tell me the account had never missed a payment. I asked when it started. She said four years ago, shortly after my mother went into the care facility for three weeks following a fall. I knew that date because I had been there every day. I asked whether the extra caregiver had ever spoken to my mother. She said yes, and that the notes repeatedly mentioned my mother asking the same question: “Did she come back?” I asked who “she” was. The aide’s notes didn’t say. But one entry from the first month did. It said my mother had looked toward the hallway and called someone by a name I recognized from an old photograph.
I went through my mother’s things that night and found the photograph in a box I’d never opened. It was my mother at seventeen, standing beside another young woman who looked almost exactly like her. On the back was a date and one sentence in my grandmother’s handwriting: “Don’t let her know where we put her.” I called the agency the next morning and asked one more question: whether the person listed as family had ever provided identification. The woman hesitated and said yes. The ID was issued in my mother’s name, but the photograph wasn’t my mother. Then she read me the birth date. It matched my mother’s exactly.
The woman had been visiting my mother every Tuesday and Thursday — claiming to be her.
