She grew up poor.
Her father left.
Her mother worked two jobs.
Once, she told me that as a girl, she used to stand outside the big houses on the north side at Christmas and stare through their windows.
She promised herself she would live in one someday.
I made decent money at the dealership.
Not wealthy.
But stable.
Our bills were paid.
We took vacations.
The boys had what they needed.
Laura wanted more.
“You could’ve become a manager by now,” she would say.
“You could open your own shop. Do something bigger. You’re incredibly good with cars, Craig, and you just keep fixing them for somebody else.”
“I like fixing cars.”
“That’s not the point.”
I never completely understood what the point was.
Then Brent Harlow came back into my life.
Brent and I had gone to high school together.
At sixteen, he drove a brand-new black BMW because his father owned several dealerships in the county.
He played lacrosse.
Wore sunglasses indoors.
Called everyone “bro.”
He was never especially cruel to me.
I simply wasn’t important enough for him to notice.
Years later, I ended up working at one of his father’s dealerships.
Brent went to college, returned home, and eventually took over the family operation.
Six dealerships.
Lakefront mansion.
Private dock.
More expensive cars than anyone needed.
Laura met him at the dealership Christmas party.
I introduced them.
“Brent and I went to school together.”
He shook my hand.
“Craig! You’re still working here? That’s awesome. Somebody has to keep the place running, right?”
Laura laughed at his joke.
Eight months later, she stood in our kitchen with a suitcase beside the door.
“I’m in love with Brent.”
I remember holding a dish towel.
The boys were asleep upstairs.
I couldn’t move.
“Laura, we have two children.”
“I know.”
Then she said Brent could give them things I never could.
A house on the lake.
Private schools.
Real vacations.
Not some inexpensive cabin without air conditioning.
“They like the cabin.”
“They’re children, Craig. They don’t know any better.”
Then she looked at me with something worse than anger.
Pity.
“You’re going nowhere in life.”
She told me I would spend the next twenty years repairing other people’s cars for ordinary wages.
That I would never make real money.
Never become anyone important.
Then she picked up her suitcase.
“I deserve more.”
She left.
I sat on the kitchen floor until sunrise.
The divorce took almost a year.
Laura had Brent’s lawyers.
I had an inexpensive attorney who occasionally forgot my sons’ names.
Laura got primary custody.
I got every other weekend and Wednesday dinners.
Then I lost my job.
Brent’s father owned the dealership.
Six weeks after Laura moved into the lake house, my manager called me into the office and announced a “restructuring.”
They suddenly didn’t need me anymore.
Eleven years of work.
Never late.
No complaints.
Gone.
I knew why.
I ended up in a tiny apartment above a pizza place thinking about what Laura had said.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe I really was going nowhere.
Then I thought about Rick and Noah.
And I decided they would never watch me prove her right.
I took everything I had left.
My share from the sale of our house.
Retirement savings.
A little inheritance from my uncle.
And I rented an old two-bay garage on Linden Avenue.
It sat between a laundromat and an abandoned video store.
The roof leaked.
The hydraulic lift barely worked.
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