“The bank?”
“Someone tried to withdraw $45,000 from our savings account today. A man who looked exactly like me, accompanied by my wife. But here’s the thing, Jolene. I was at work all day, and you told me you were with your mother.”
She sat down heavily in the chair across from me, right on top of the gray sweater I’d found. She didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she did, and was trying to hide it. Her hands were shaking now, and she clasped them together on the table.
“This is all a misunderstanding,” she said, but the words came out rushed, desperate. “There must be some kind of identity theft. Someone’s been using our information.”
I reached across the table and gently moved her hands aside, revealing the gray sweater beneath them.
“Is this yours?” I asked.
Jolene’s breath caught in her throat. She stared at the sweater like it was a snake that might bite her.
“I… I’ve never seen that before.”
“It was in my closet, Jolene. In the back behind my winter coats, along with a pair of jeans that aren’t mine but would fit me perfectly. Someone’s been keeping clothes in our house that are meant to make them look like me.”
The fight went out of her all at once. Her shoulders sagged, and she put her face in her hands.
For a moment, I thought she was going to cry. And despite everything, I felt a surge of sympathy. This was still my wife, the woman I’d loved for 5 years. And seeing her break down hurt more than I’d expected.
But when she looked up at me, there were no tears. Just a kind of calculating resignation, like she was deciding how much truth to tell me.
“Edwin, you have to understand. I never meant for it to go this far.”
“How far? How far was it supposed to go?”
She took a shaky breath.
“My brother needed help.”
“Your brother?”
I stared at her.
“Jolene, you told me you were an only child. 5 years ago, when we were dating, you said your parents died when you were young and you had no other family except your mother.”
“I lied.”
The words came out flat. Matter of fact.
“I have a twin brother, Marcus. We… we look very similar to our respective spouses. It’s something that runs in our family. Strong genetic resemblance patterns.”
My mind was reeling.
A twin brother. That explained the man at the bank. The man who looked like me but wasn’t quite right.
“Where is he?”
“He’s been staying with my mother for the past 2 years. He lost his job, got into some financial trouble. He needed help getting back on his feet.”
“And the medical expenses, the $3,000 a month?”
Jolene’s voice got even smaller.
“That was for him. To help him pay his debts, get a fresh start. I knew you wouldn’t understand. You’re so careful with money. So I told you it was for Mom’s medical bills.”
I felt like I was falling down a dark hole with no bottom.
“Your mother isn’t sick.”
“She is sick, just not the way I told you. She’s sick with worry about Marcus, about what he might do if we don’t help him.”
“What he might do? Jolene, what are you talking about?”
She was quiet for a long moment, staring at her hands. When she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Marcus has done this before with other people. He studies them, learns their habits, their routines. He becomes them temporarily, just long enough to access their money.”
The coffee cup in my hands felt ice cold.
“Are you telling me your brother is a professional con artist?”
“He’s family, Edwin. He’s my twin brother. You don’t understand what that bond is like, how connected we are. When he hurts, I hurt. When he’s in trouble, I have to help him.”
I set the cup down carefully, afraid I might throw it if I held it any longer.
“How long have you been helping him rob me, Jolene?”
“It’s not robbery,” she said quickly. “It’s borrowing. He always planned to pay it back once he got established somewhere new.”
“$45,000 plus $3,000 a month for two years. That’s $117,000. Jolene, how exactly was your unemployed brother planning to pay that back?”
She didn’t answer.
And in her silence, I heard the truth she couldn’t say out loud. He’d never planned to pay it back. This had always been a long-term theft, and I had been the mark.
“How does he look so much like me?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Jolene glanced up at me, then away.
“He’s very good at what he does. He studies photos, practices mannerisms, even had some minor cosmetic work done to adjust a few facial features. And he had help.”
“What kind of help?”
“I gave him information about you, your habits, your schedule, your personal details, things a wife would naturally know about her husband.”
The betrayal cut deeper than any physical pain I’d ever experienced. I had trusted this woman with every detail of my life, my hopes, my fears, my daily routines, and she had cataloged it all and passed it on to a criminal who used it to steal from me.
“The bank employee said there had been other attempts over the past 18 months. How many times has he done this?”
“Small amounts at first. Five hundred here, a thousand there. Always when you were working late or traveling for business. I made sure he knew your schedule.”
I stood up abruptly, the chair scraping against the kitchen floor.
“How could you do this to me, Jolene? How could you sit across from me every morning, kiss me goodbye every day, lie in bed next to me every night, knowing what you were doing?”
For the first time, she looked genuinely remorseful.
“I love you, Edwin. I really do. This thing with Marcus, it’s complicated. It’s family obligation. It’s not about my feelings for you.”
“Your family obligation was to steal my life savings.”
“No, it was supposed to stop after he got enough to relocate, but he kept needing more. And Mom kept saying he was almost ready to go legitimate. And I kept thinking just one more time, just a little bit more, and then it would be over.”
I walked to the kitchen window and stared out at our backyard, the small garden we’d planted together last spring, the patio furniture we’d picked out for summer barbecues.
Everything looked normal, but nothing was real anymore.
“Where is he now?” I asked without turning around.
“I don’t know. After the bank thing didn’t work today, he was supposed to call me, but he hasn’t.”
“And your mother? Is she even involved, or is she just another victim?”