“Mom, Starting Next Month, We’ll Transfer All Your Money To My Account.” My Son Said That, And I Just Smiled. That Night, As Always, He Came With His Wife For A Free Dinner.

I saw it and felt the floor move beneath my feet. There was a withdrawal that I hadn’t made. A withdrawal of $1,200 from three months ago.

$1,200 that had left my account and that I didn’t remember taking out. I asked the teller if I could see more details. She checked on her computer and she told me something that took my breath away.

She told me that the withdrawal had been made at a branch on the other side of town with my debit card, but I had never been to that branch and my card was in my purse. It had always been in my purse except for one time. I remembered then.

I remembered that 3 months ago Lawrence had come to visit me. I was in the shower when he arrived. I yelled for him to come in, that the door was open.

When I came out, he was in the living room waiting for me. We sat down and talked, and at some point I went to the kitchen to make coffee. My purse was in my handbag.

My handbag was in the living room with Lawrence. I felt nauseious. I felt like the whole world was tilting in a strange way because this could only mean one thing.

It meant that my son had taken my card. He had memorized or photographed the numbers and he had taken money from my account without my permission. I asked the bank teller if there was any way to know exactly what had happened with that withdrawal.

She told me I needed to file a formal claim, that the bank would investigate, that it could take several weeks. I told her I would think about it and I left the bank feeling like I no longer knew my own son. But I didn’t file the claim.

Not yet. Because I needed to be sure. I needed to know if this had been just one time or if there were more.

The next few days I spent checking everything, every paper I had in my house, every document, every old bank statement that I had saved in a box in my closet. And I found more things. I found that two years ago when I was in the hospital for pneumonia, someone had used my health insurance for consultations that I hadn’t made.

Consultations at clinics I didn’t know about. Consultations that had exhausted my annual coverage, which was why I had had to pay out of my own pocket for some medications that year. I also found that there was a credit card in my name that I didn’t remember applying for.

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