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Sloane: Mostly.

Grandma Ruth: THAT’S WHY SHE NEVER KNOWS WHAT’S HAPPENING.

Trevor: neither does grandpa and he’s literally in every chat

Grandpa Alfonse:

His response set off a round of laughing reactions.

I smiled before I could stop myself.

Then Grandma Ruth posted a photograph. It showed a younger woman wearing a black hat. Her face was mostly obscured by sunglasses and an enormous scarf.

Grandma Ruth: WASN’T YOUR HAIR RED?

I touched my sandy-blonde hair reflexively, which was obvious in the grainy profile picture I’d uploaded when I first set up my account for clients.

Sloane: It used to be.

Julie: I remember it being very pretty.

Karen: It was an unnatural shade.

Patty: We get it, Aunt Karen. You fear joy.

A small snort escaped me. Apparently, proof of identity within this family required less rigor than opening a bank account and more improv than community theater.

For the next hour, people remembered things about me that had never happened—at least not to me. Mason recalled that I hated tomatoes. Someone named Ellen said I once slept in her hammock during a thunderstorm. Grandma Ruth remembered me bringing apple pie to a family dinner. A Carpenter cousin insisted I had a tattoo of a pinecone on my ankle.

I answered carefully.

Yes, I still hated tomatoes (True… what were they anyway, a fruit or vegetable? Freaky).

The hammock sounded plausible (Who didn’t like the sound of a good storm when they were sleeping?).

The pie recipe had been lost (just in case someone requested it.).

The tattoo was private (again, in case someone requested a picture of it.).

To my relief, nobody questioned any of it.

The ease of the deception made me feel worse, but it also made me feel included, which was apparently enough to overpower several ethical concerns swirling around in the back of my mind.

I spent the rest of Sunday waiting for someone to realize the mistake. Surely the real Loany would check her phone, discover she’d been left out of the family chat, and reach out to someone to correct it. Perhaps she would arrive with documentation, photographs, and a pinecone tattoo I could not replicate.

But nobody did.

On Monday morning, Trevor posted a photograph of a dented mailbox.

Trevor: hypothetical question: how fast can a wolf hit a mailbox

Several people responded immediately.

Mason: YOU HIT IT?

Trevor: not with a car

Mason: That clarification made it worse.