Chapter 10 - THE PROBLEM HIS LAWYER FOUND
Andrew left the house without explaining the message.
Rachel called me thirty minutes later.
“I think I know what their problem is.”
“What happened?”
“The lender completed an internal fraud review.”
I sat down.
“And?”
“They preserved the digital signature logs, device information, and submission records.”
The application had been initiated using Andrew’s email.
My authorization had been uploaded from the cottage network.
The income documents attached to the application included a pay statement from my clinic.
The statement had been altered.
My annual salary was inflated by almost thirty thousand dollars.
I felt sick.
“Andrew changed my pay information?”
“That is what it appears to show.”
“Why?”
“To qualify for more borrowing would be the obvious possibility.”
My hands tightened around the phone.
This was no longer only adultery.
It was not even only an attempted property grab.
Andrew had used my professional identity to strengthen a financial application I had never approved.
Rachel’s voice softened.
“Claire, I need you to understand something.”
“I’m listening.”
“You do not need to solve every part of this tonight.”
“I know.”
But I also knew something else.
For seven years, Andrew had depended on my exhaustion.
He knew I worked long shifts.
He knew I signed routine household documents quickly.
He knew I trusted him.
Trust had become his access code.
After the call, I searched old emails.
Tax documents.
Insurance files.
Bank alerts.
Anything involving signatures.
At 11:18 p.m., I found another application.
Not a mortgage.
A home-improvement credit line from fourteen months earlier.
Rejected.
The reason listed was insufficient authorization.
Andrew had never mentioned it.
I kept searching.
Then I found an email from a contractor I barely remembered.
Subject:
Revised Cottage Invoice.
The attached invoice claimed $18,600 in plumbing and foundation work at Canandaigua Lake.
I had reimbursed Andrew from my inheritance account.
But the photographs Michael brought showed Andrew using that cottage repeatedly during the exact weeks the contractor supposedly had it closed for major repairs.
I called the contractor the next morning.
He remembered the property.
“We never did foundation work there.”
My stomach dropped.
“What did you do?”
“Replaced a leaking valve.”
“How much?”
“About eight hundred dollars.”
I looked at the $18,600 invoice.
It was fake.
Andrew had not only tried to borrow against my home.
May you like
He had already been stealing money from me.
And he had been doing it for more than a year.
