Chapter 6 - The Full Audit
That evening, I didn't wait for another surprise. I decided to conduct a full, forensic audit of every digital footprint connecting my name, my credit, and my finances to Evelyn Thomas and the Sycamore house.
Sloan sat across from me at the dining table with a highlighter and a legal pad. For three hours, we combed through every account statement, auto-renewal portal, and authorized user registry.
What we found wasn't just alarming—it was sickening.
“Look at this,” Sloan said, sliding her laptop toward me. “The home security system on Sycamore? It’s not in her name. It’s registered under your name and social security number. You’ve been paying sixty-five dollars a month for ADT monitoring since 2016.”
“Cancel it,” I said.
“Lawn care contract with GreenThumb Landscaping,” she continued. “One hundred and eighty dollars a month, billed quarterly. Billed directly to your backup credit card.”
“Cancel it.”
“The streaming services. Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime. She’s using your family profiles, but look at the IP logs—there are three different devices logging in from a condo in downtown.”
“Garrett and Presley,” I muttered. “They’re using my logins.”
“Changed the passwords on all four,” Sloan said, her fingers flying across the keys with ruthless efficiency. “Now, look at this one. This is the big one, Craig.”
She opened an email from a local insurance brokerage.
It was the master homeowners insurance policy for the Sycamore property. For twelve years, my father’s name had remained on the title, while Mom lived there as the surviving spouse. Because the mortgage had been paid off when Dad died with life insurance proceeds, there was no escrow account.
Every year in September, a lump-sum premium of two thousand eight hundred dollars was debited from my checking account to keep the property fully insured against fire, storm, and liability.
The renewal date was October 1st. Exactly twelve days away.
“If this bounces,” Sloan said, looking up at me seriously, “the house becomes completely uninsured. If a pipe bursts or a fire starts, the loss is total.”
I looked at the number: $2,840.00.
I remembered the weekend two years ago when the massive oak tree in Mom's front yard had dropped a heavy branch onto the garage roof. Garrett had been off at a music festival in Miami. I had spent thirty-six hours straight in the pouring rain, cutting the branch with a chainsaw, patching the holes with tarps, and eventually paying the five-hundred-dollar deductible out of my own pocket so Mom wouldn't stress.
When Mom showed the repairs to Garrett that Sunday, she had said, *“Look how nice the garage looks! Garrett, honey, when this is yours, you can turn it into an art studio.”*
Not once had she thanked me for standing in the freezing rain with bleeding knuckles.
“Cancel the auto-renew,” I told Sloan.
“Are you sure?” Sloan asked gently. “If the house burns down, she loses everything.”
“The house isn't mine,” I said, feeling the final traces of guilt dissolve into pure clarity. “It’s Garrett’s. He’s a big boy. He has twelve days to figure out how to insure his future asset. Send a certified letter to her address and an email to Garrett notifying them that the policy will not be renewed under my account, effective October first. Document everything.”
“Consider it done,” Sloan said, clicking the final confirmation.
Within forty-eight hours, the digital blackout hit Sycamore and Garrett’s apartment like a seismic shockwave.
The first casualty was their entertainment. On Wednesday night, Marcus texted me a video Garrett had posted on his private Instagram story: Garrett staring into his TV screen, which displayed a bright red *“INCORRECT PASSWORD / ACCOUNT SUSPENDED”* prompt, accompanied by the caption: *“Petty people doing petty things. Smh.”*
The second casualty was the lawn. By Friday, the landscape crew pulled up to the Sycamore house, checked their digital manifest, saw the contract had been terminated for non-payment, and drove away without cutting a single blade of grass.
The third casualty was the home security. The alarm keypad on Mom's front door began beeping with a low battery warning and a disconnected cellular network alert that couldn't be silenced without a service call fee.
And then, on Saturday morning, the real bomb dropped.
Aunt Clara called my cell phone. Her tone wasn't accusatory; it was breathless.
“Craig,” Clara said. “You need to get down to the First Baptist Church parking lot right now.”
May you like
“Why? What’s going on, Aunt Clara?”
“Your mother just walked into the Saturday charity committee meeting with a stack of bank statements,” Clara whispered frantically. “She’s telling Pastor Jenkins that you robbed her life savings and left her destitute. She’s trying to get the church benevolence fund to give her five thousand dollars!”
