I did not sleep. At midnight, I locked myself in the study with the envelopes spread across the desk and called the lender’s emergency line, but a recorded voice said the approval office would not open until eight. Brandon had taken his phone and left the house, and Monica had vanished with the children. Then I found the loan application in the pile. Under authorized contact, he had listed my number with one digit changed, which meant the bank’s verification call would ring a stranger.
At 6:40 that morning, my phone rang from an unknown number. A woman whispered, “Is this Natalie? Please do not hang up. I am supposed to pretend to be you for the bank today, and I need to tell you who hired me.” Behind her, I heard Brandon’s voice, getting closer.
Her name was Gwen Aldous, and she spoke in a rush. Monica had paid her six hundred dollars to pose as me on the lender’s verification call, reading a script Brandon wrote. The bank would call the number on the application, and Brandon had changed one digit so it would ring Gwen. She had thought it was a family favor, but when she saw my name and heard Brandon rehearse what to say if anyone got suspicious, she panicked. She was hiding in a coffee shop parking lot, and Brandon had just walked out to find her.
I told her to keep the line open and record everything while I called my lawyer, Ms. Okafor, who had my fraud alert since midnight. She contacted the lender’s fraud team at once, then stayed on speaker as I drove to the coffee shop. Brandon had Gwen cornered beside his car. I stepped between them and held up my phone. Ms. Okafor’s voice said calmly that two officers were two minutes away.
The truth came out in pieces. Hargrove Family Holdings had been set up a year earlier by Monica and Brandon, who forged my signature on the title transfer using my late grandmother’s old papers. The one hundred eighty-five thousand dollar loan was meant to cover Brandon’s hidden gambling debts. Monica had also used my replacement corporate credit card for weeks, and the intercepted bank notices were meant to hide it. Gwen handed her recording to the officers, and the lender froze the file before ten o’clock. The land titles office reversed the transfer within a week.
That night, after the police left, I told Eli he had been very brave, and he asked if the secret game was over. I told him it was. Brandon later pleaded guilty to fraud and forgery, and Monica accepted probation and a repayment order. I filed for divorce, changed every lock, and put a lock on the mailbox.
