I said: ‘Thank you for saying that.’
She said: ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me right away. I just wanted you to know that I heard you.’
I said: ‘I heard you too.’
We talked for a few more minutes about mundane things and then we hung up, and I sat for a while with the call and what it was and wasn’t.
What it wasn’t was enough. What it was, was something. A turn in a process that I had been afraid was not going to turn at all.
I texted Tessa: ‘She called. It was different this time.’ Tessa wrote back: ‘Different how?’ I wrote back: ‘She said it without a but.’ Tessa took a minute and then she wrote: ‘That’s actually something.’ I wrote: ‘I know.’
## The Professional I Should Have Seen Sooner
I mentioned the lawyer briefly earlier in this account, but I want to give her more than a brief mention because the conversation I had with her was one of the more useful things I did in the first month of the dispute.
I found her the same way I found the lender’s correct phone number: not through any form of advertising or referral, but by searching specifically for attorneys who handled identity theft cases and filtering for ones in my area who offered initial consultations. She was not dramatic. She was precise. She asked me specific questions and listened carefully to the answers and told me specific things in return.
She told me that the situation I was describing was not uncommon, which I had not expected to hear and which was, in some strange way, a comfort. Not because misery loves company, but because understanding that there is a category of thing you are dealing with, and that the category has known pathways, makes the thing feel more manageable. I was not in uncharted territory. There were maps.