I said: “I initiated a dispute with the lender and filed with the FTC, yes.”
He said: “She said you’re trying to get her arrested.”
I said: “That’s not what a dispute process does, Luke.”
He said: “I know, I know that, but –” Another stop. “She’s scared.”
I said: “She should have thought about that before she took out a loan in my name.”
He said: “Erin.”
I said: “Luke.”
And then there was a silence that held all of it — the years of him in the middle, the years of me being the one who left and who he sometimes seemed, without meaning to, to treat as the one who had left a gap that needed filling. I am not angry at Luke for this. He grew up in the same house I did, absorbing the same architecture of what family is supposed to look like and whose job it is to maintain the surface of it. He was doing what he had always done. It was just that this time, what he had always done was directly in opposition to what I needed.
I said: “She used my name, Luke. She used my Social Security number. On a twenty-eight thousand dollar loan. I didn’t know about it. You understand that?”
He said: “I know. I do know that.”
I said: “And you called me to ask me to stop the process.”
A long pause. Then: “She asked me to call you.”
I said: “I know she did.”
Another pause. Then, quieter: “What happens if you don’t stop it?”