The fraudulent accounts were discharged from my name over the course of four months, requiring more documentation than I had imagined possible: letters, affidavits, certified mail to seven institutions, a form that had to be notarized and submitted to two separate agencies. Barrett managed the follow-up process with the same organized patience he brought to everything.
When it was complete, my credit score was eleven points higher than it had been before any of this started.
I find that fact absurd in the specific way that only true things can be.
My parents still live in the same neighborhood on the same street. I speak to them occasionally. Not often, not at length, not with the ease that I think I once believed would eventually develop between us if I kept showing up reliably and giving them enough time to see me properly. That ease did not develop. I have stopped waiting for it.
What we have instead is a relationship honest about its own limits, which is smaller than what I wanted and more sustainable than what we had, and which I find, when I examine it carefully, that I prefer to the alternative.
Kayla and I have not spoken. I do not know if we will. I carry that open question the way you carry something that belongs to a future version of yourself, not refusing to look at it, just understanding that the answer is not yet available and that demanding it prematurely would only produce a false one.
Diane takes me to brunch on the first Saturday of every month at a place in Fountain Square that has good eggs and a server who knows our order. Diane argues every time about the tip calculation, not because she is unwilling to tip well, but because she believes the suggested amount on the receipt is mathematically inaccurate, and she intends to make that point regardless of audience. She is exactly who she has always been. I am aware of what a particular kind of gift that is.
Someone asked me, not long ago, whether I was angry.
They knew the general shape of what had happened, not every detail, and they were trying to understand how a person gets through something like this without it leaving a mark. I thought about the question before I answered, which is what it deserved.
