Here’s what I found:

Capital One Platinum Visa — opened March 2019 — balance: $8,400
Macy’s Store Card — opened June 2019 — balance: $22,000
Discover Personal Loan — opened January 2020 — balance: $14,500
Visa Signature through First National — opened August 2021 — balance: $11,300
Dillard’s Store Card — opened April 2022 — balance: $16,200
Ashley Furniture HomeStore Credit Line — opened November 2023 — balance: $14,600

Total: $87,000.

Every account listed my name. My Social Security number. My date of birth. And my mother’s address.

My credit score — the number I’d been building since I was twenty-two, the number that made the mortgage company smile when they pre-approved us, the number I checked every three months because I was proud of it — had dropped from 780 to 419.

I sat in the library parking lot for twenty minutes. I didn’t cry. I did math. $87,000 divided by five years. That’s $17,400 a year. $1,450 a month. My mother had been spending $1,450 a month on my stolen credit for five years.

I drove to her house on Saturday morning. 1847 East 38th Street. The house I grew up in. Yellow brick, chain-link fence, the same mailbox my father put up in 1986.

I noticed the couch first. Through the screen door. A new sectional. Dove gray. L-shaped. The kind you see in a showroom. I’d never seen it before.

She let me in. She was in her bathrobe. Coffee in a mug that said “World’s Best Grandma” that Kevin had given her three Christmases ago.

The living room had changed. New curtains — linen, cream-colored, with tiebacks. A sixty-five-inch Samsung mounted on the wall. A glass coffee table with a magazine fanned out on it. A decorative throw that matched the curtains.

“Your place looks nice, Mama.”

“Oh, thank you, baby. I’ve been doing some updating.”

“How’d you pay for all this?”

She smiled. Easy. Natural. The smile of a woman who was not expecting to get caught.