Chapter 13 — In My Name

“Your mother opened it four years ago,” Amina said, “when she took you to sign what she called payroll paperwork.

She used your ID and put her own phone number down to catch all the verification codes.”

The charges scrolled on and on and could not be denied — ten thousand at a boutique, eight thousand on equipment for Kiran’s office, nine at a travel agency, and after that a long tail of dinners and jewelry and luxuries I had never bought and never seen.

My mother had not only taken the money I earned.

She had borrowed forty thousand more against my name, in secret, and left me the debt.