A week later, the hospital administration asked me to review some insurance information. The person in charge suggested I check my credit bureau in case there was a problem with my records. I laughed. I didn’t have credit cards. I didn’t have loans. The house was mine, mortgage-free. What could possibly show up?
That night, sitting in my car outside the hospital, I opened the report.
My score was destroyed.
There were 3 credit cards in my name. One for 210,000 pesos, another for 145,000, and another for 98,000. All opened in the last 3 years. All with minimum payments at first. All overdue afterward.
I felt the air leave the car.
I called the bank. They sent me copies of the applications. The signature wasn’t mine. But I knew that handwriting. The elongated G, the slanted P, the heavy stroke of someone who pressed the pen too hard.
It was my father’s signature.
I stared at the screen until my phone almost died. 453,000 pesos of debt. In my name.
That night I called Lucía, a college friend who had become a lawyer.
“Don’t confront him yet,” she told me. “Gather evidence. And Valeria, check Sofía’s credit too.”
I felt cold.
“She’s 7.”
“Exactly.”
When Sofía fell asleep, I searched for her documents in the metal box in my closet. Her birth certificate was still there, but the papers were out of order. My original birth certificate was missing. My old CURP was missing too.
Hours later, the response from a bank inquiry arrived: there was a department store credit card opened in Sofía’s name. Balance: 18,400 pesos.
My daughter barely knew how to multiply.
Someone had used her name to put her in debt before she could even understand what debt was.
And then I remembered an envelope I had seen days earlier on the kitchen table. It came from the civil court. It was addressed to Gerardo Ramírez, my father.
I still didn’t know what it said.
But when I found out, I understood that the cards were only the beginning.
PART 2
Lucía received me in her office the next day. It wasn’t an elegant law firm, but on her desk there was something more powerful than marble: order. I handed her the Facebook screenshots, the credit bureau reports, the bank applications, proof of the card opened in Sofía’s name, and a photo of the court envelope. She read everything without interrupting me. Then she opened the Judiciary website, searched my name, and froze.w
“Valeria, your dad filed a petition to have you declared legally incompetent.”
I felt the floor move.
