I had expected Jordan to deny the applications.<\/p>\n
Instead, he seemed more concerned that I had managed to obtain copies.<\/p>\n
He kept staring at the folder.<\/p>\n
Then he asked how I'd gotten access to what he called his private business.<\/p>\n
I reminded him that the accounts carried my name.<\/p>\n
He didn't like that answer.<\/p>\n
"That doesn't mean you can go digging through everything."<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
"If somebody uses my identity, I have every reason to find out what happened."<\/p>\n
Pam was still sitting beside him.<\/p>\n
She looked as though she wanted somebody to tell her the whole thing had been a mistake.<\/p>\n
I wished I could.<\/p>\n
But I had already studied enough records to know the truth wasn't going to be simple.<\/p>\n
I turned to the transaction sheet.<\/p>\n
The payments from Pam were listed down one side.<\/p>\n
The charges and withdrawals appeared beside them.<\/p>\n
The balances had not fallen the way I would have expected.<\/p>\n
At first, I wondered whether the interest alone explained it.<\/p>\n
The rates were certainly high.<\/p>\n
But once I compared the statements, the pattern became obvious.<\/p>\n
Money was still leaving the accounts.<\/p>\n
There were hotel expenses.<\/p>\n
Restaurant bills.<\/p>\n
Electronics purchases.<\/p>\n
Cash advances.<\/p>\n
And transactions connected to gambling.<\/p>\n
I pushed the page toward Jordan.<\/p>\n
"Explain these."<\/p>\n
He glanced at it.<\/p>\n
Then he looked away.<\/p>\n
"That doesn't show everything."<\/p>\n
"Then tell me what's missing."<\/p>\n
He said he'd been having a difficult time.<\/p>\n
He said he was trying to recover money he'd already lost.<\/p>\n
He said he thought one good run would let him pay off the debt.<\/p>\n
I knew what that meant.<\/p>\n
He had been gambling.<\/p>\n
And when he lost, he'd gambled more.<\/p>\n
The charges included activity at casinos.<\/p>\n
Not the imaginary casino trips he had described to Pam.<\/p>\n
His own gambling.<\/p>\n
I looked at my wife.<\/p>\n
She had gone very still.<\/p>\n
"Jordan," she said, "was any of that story about Gary true?"<\/p>\n
He didn't answer.<\/p>\n
She asked again.<\/p>\n
This time, his shoulders dropped.<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
That one word seemed to take the strength out of her.<\/p>\n
She covered her mouth.<\/p>\n
I watched her eyes fill.<\/p>\n
Then I looked back at Jordan.<\/p>\n
"How much did you lose?"<\/p>\n
He grew defensive.<\/p>\n
He said it was his problem.<\/p>\n
And I agreed with him on one point.<\/p>\n
His gambling would have remained his problem if he had used only his own money and accepted the consequences.<\/p>\n
But he'd brought my name into it.<\/p>\n
He'd obtained credit under my identity.<\/p>\n
And he had taken money from his mother's retirement while making her believe she was protecting her husband.<\/p>\n
That made it our problem.<\/p>\n
I turned to another page.<\/p>\n
One application used a familiar email address.<\/p>\n
Jordan's.<\/p>\n
Another carried a phone number I had seen him use for years.<\/p>\n
And the mailing address was his apartment on Sayles Boulevard.<\/p>\n
I pointed out the information.<\/p>\n
He stared at the table.<\/p>\n
Then I showed him one of the signatures.<\/p>\n
It wasn't mine.<\/p>\n
I knew that much immediately.<\/p>\n
The writing looked familiar, though.<\/p>\n
It resembled the signature I'd seen on paperwork for his apartment.<\/p>\n
I asked him to look.<\/p>\n
He glanced at the page.<\/p>\n
"I don't know what you want me to say."<\/p>\n
"I want you to explain why your information appears on an account opened with mine."<\/p>\n
He struck the table with his hand.<\/p>\n
Pam jumped.<\/p>\n
"All right. I opened them."<\/p>\n
There it was.<\/p>\n
An admission I had spent the afternoon trying to establish.<\/p>\n
I didn't feel victorious.<\/p>\n
I felt tired.<\/p>\n
Jordan leaned back and began talking quickly.<\/p>\n
He said he had meant to pay everything off.<\/p>\n
He said he'd planned to find more work.<\/p>\n
He said there was no reason to keep going over his mistakes.<\/p>\n
Then he offered an apology.<\/p>\n
It came out like something he wanted to finish as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n
I asked who he intended to repay.<\/p>\n
"You," he said.<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
The problem was larger than one person owing another person money.<\/p>\n
The credit had been obtained under my name.<\/p>\n
The applications contained information he had no permission to use.<\/p>\n
The transactions needed to be reviewed.<\/p>\n
And the credit-card companies would have to investigate.<\/p>\n
He could not make that disappear by promising to get another job.<\/p>\n
Jordan stared at me.<\/p>\n
"You keep talking like I've committed some terrible crime."<\/p>\n
I touched the application.<\/p>\n
"I didn't submit this."<\/p>\n
He looked away.<\/p>\n
Then his anger changed direction.<\/p>\n
He started talking about me.<\/p>\n
About how I always worked.<\/p>\n
How I never seemed to worry.<\/p>\n
How I drove an old truck instead of buying something better.<\/p>\n
How I spent my days at what he called a small storage operation.<\/p>\n
He spoke as though the business was something embarrassing.<\/p>\n
Something a man did because he lacked other choices.<\/p>\n
I let him talk.<\/p>\n
There was no point interrupting.<\/p>\n
For eight years, I'd heard little comments from him.<\/p>\n
Nothing I considered important enough to start a fight over.<\/p>\n
He had complained that I was old-fashioned.<\/p>\n
He had joked about the truck.<\/p>\n
He had questioned why I kept working so many hours.<\/p>\n
Sometimes he acted as though my business was barely worth mentioning.<\/p>\n
I never corrected him.<\/p>\n
I didn't need Jordan's approval.<\/p>\n
I knew what the business had required of me.<\/p>\n
I remembered the first storage lot.<\/p>\n
Seventy units.<\/p>\n
An office roof that let water in.<\/p>\n
A gate that could stop working whenever the weather turned cold.<\/p>\n
I remembered walking through the place after my first marriage ended, wondering whether I'd made a mistake putting so much of my savings into it.<\/p>\n
I had been thirty-seven.<\/p>\n
Starting over was frightening.<\/p>\n
But that property gave me something to work toward.<\/p>\n
When a tenant paid late, I had to figure out how to cover my own bills.<\/p>\n
When equipment failed, I had to find the money to repair it.<\/p>\n
When the second property became available, I had to decide whether the risk was worth taking.<\/p>\n
I made mistakes.<\/p>\n
I worked through them.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I bought a third lot.<\/p>\n
And I kept working.<\/p>\n
I didn't replace my truck because it still ran.<\/p>\n
I didn't buy an expensive house because I didn't need one.<\/p>\n
I didn't spend money to convince strangers I was successful.<\/p>\n
Apparently, Jordan had mistaken those choices for poverty.<\/p>\n
He continued complaining.<\/p>\n
Then he said something that made me look up.<\/p>\n
"If you had told us how much money you had, maybe I wouldn't have needed to do any of this."<\/p>\n
Pam stopped wiping her eyes.<\/p>\n
I looked straight at him.<\/p>\n
"What does my money have to do with your decisions?"<\/p>\n
He seemed to realize he'd said too much.<\/p>\n
He tried to explain that I could have helped more.<\/p>\n
That I had been keeping things from the family.<\/p>\n
That I acted as though money didn't matter.<\/p>\n
Pam stood.<\/p>\n
"Are you blaming Gary for what you did?"<\/p>\n
Jordan shook his head.<\/p>\n
But that was exactly what he was doing.<\/p>\n
He believed his circumstances justified taking what belonged to somebody else.<\/p>\n
And he believed my failure to volunteer more financial help made me partly responsible.<\/p>\n
I had helped him before.<\/p>\n
When his car needed repairs after he lost a job, I contributed money.<\/p>\n
When he changed apartments, I helped him move.<\/p>\n
Twice.<\/p>\n
At Christmas, I bought gifts for his children.<\/p>\n
I did those things because I cared about the family Pam had brought into my life.<\/p>\n
I never expected a medal.<\/p>\n
I didn't even expect Jordan to thank me every time.<\/p>\n
But I had hoped he understood the difference between kindness and obligation.<\/p>\n
Listening to him that night, I realized he didn't.<\/p>\n
He saw my help as something he deserved.<\/p>\n
And when it wasn't enough, he found another way to get what he wanted.<\/p>\n
I closed the folder.<\/p>\n
"Pam, I need to speak with you privately."<\/p>\n
Jordan laughed.<\/p>\n
He accused me of trying to turn his mother against him.<\/p>\n
I didn't argue.<\/p>\n
He had already done enough damage without my help.<\/p>\n
I took the documents into the living room.<\/p>\n
Pam followed.<\/p>\n
We sat at opposite ends of the sofa.<\/p>\n
Neither of us spoke for a while.<\/p>\n
I could still hear Jordan moving around in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Then Pam said she didn't know how things had gotten so bad.<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
I knew she loved her son.<\/p>\n
I knew she had spent most of his life trying to protect him.<\/p>\n
But I was beginning to understand that her protection had allowed him to avoid responsibility.<\/p>\n
And now both of us were paying for it.<\/p>\n
"Pam," I said, "there's something I need you to tell me."<\/p>\n
She looked up.<\/p>\n
I asked whether she had ever used my personal information to open an account.<\/p>\n
Her answer came immediately.<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
I believed she was telling the truth.<\/p>\n
But I still had questions.<\/p>\n
Because Jordan could not have maintained his deception for nearly three years without somebody continuing to believe him.<\/p>\n
And the person who had believed him was my wife.<\/p>\n
Source: psndaily.xyz<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n I had expected Jordan to deny the applications. Instead, he seemed more concerned that I had managed to obtain copies. He kept staring at the folder. Then he asked how … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-readmore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6345,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330\/revisions\/6345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nClick here to continue reading: PART 3: My Wife Had Spent Nearly Three Years Protecting a Lie About Me, And I Had to Decide Whether Our Marriage Could Survive<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"