The line goes quiet.
“Halli?”
“I’ll send you a text with some steps, but Brooke, you’ll need to freeze your credit for at least a year, and that’s once you’re done filing a report at the station and alerting credit companies to file disputes for all the charges so that you don’t have to pay anything on her behalf. It will take time to finalize all that.”
“A year!”
She groans. “Maybe two because you’ll then need to build up your credit to good standing.”
Oh my god.
“Halli, how ... why didn’t you say anything? I could have caught this back then.”
“When it happened, you were signing a lease on your rental house. Dad and I assumed that since everything went through, your credit was fine. So we kept this between us.”
“Okay, then what happened?”
“It sounds like once I froze all my accounts, she went after yours.”
Is this real life?
My mother stole my identity and ruined my credit.
“I have to go,” I say and hang up before she can talk again.
My entire body starts to tingle. Even if I do what I need legally to fix this, it’s going to be a bigger setback than I wanted.
Is this a sign that I shouldn’t do this?
A sign that I'm not cut out to be my own boss.
Fear that I’m not good enough hits me hard, and my mind begins to race down a black hole of panic.
I can’t get a loan.
People will find out.
They won’t trust me.
I’ll lose the rental.
People will stop coming to the bakery.
Rumors will spread.
People will stare.
Another desperate Sloan woman attempting to make something of herself because she thinks she’s better than the rest of this town.
She failed.
Brooke failed.
She was never good enough.
She’s just like her mother.
I suck in a breath as the first tear falls, quickly brushing a hand over my cheek to make it disappear.
