The call came at 9:14 from a woman named Carla in the bank’s fraud department. She asked me to confirm I had applied for a $190,000 home equity line of credit against the house in September. I hadn’t. She asked whether I had signed the paperwork in person at a branch two hours away. I had never been to that branch in my life.

Diane Foster met me there that afternoon. The bank manager slid a copy of the application across his desk. My name. My Social Security number. My signature, almost perfect. Then he turned his monitor toward us and played the security footage from the day it was signed. Diane leaned in first. I heard her breath catch. The person sitting at that desk, signing my name, was not my son.

It was Monica’s older brother, Greg, wearing my reading glasses and holding a driver’s license with my name and his photograph. Greg had been fired from a car dealership for forging finance documents two years earlier. Monica sat beside him, smiling at the loan officer the same way she had smiled over her wineglass at Christmas. Over three months, they had drawn nearly every dollar of the credit line into an account in Monica’s name alone.

That was the real reason for the rent demand. The credit line was secured against the house, which was still titled in my name, and the first large payments were coming due in January. Monica needed me gone, or paying, before I opened a statement. She had pushed Kevin into that speech for weeks, telling him I was taking advantage of them. Kevin had believed her. He had no idea the money existed.

Diane filed a police report that evening. When detectives came to the house, Kevin read the bank records at the kitchen table, the same table where he had pointed his finger at me. He called me at midnight. He didn’t ask for money. He asked if he could come see me. When he arrived, he stood in my doorway and apologized like a little boy, and I let him in.

Monica and Greg were charged with identity theft and bank fraud, and the court froze the account holding what was left. The bank wrote off the forged credit line. Kevin filed for divorce in March, sold the SUV, and took a second job to keep the children in their school. I sold the house in the spring and paid off the mortgage I had guaranteed. I pay the tuition directly to the school now, and nothing else. Every Sunday, Kevin and the kids come to my apartment for dinner. He sets my place at the head of the table.