Broken Down: A Novel
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Copyright © 2021 by Hazel Taylor
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Broken Down
A Novel
Hazel Taylor
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Also By Hazel Taylor
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1
The day I bought my first car was the same day my husband walked out on me.
It was a Wednesday, early in the morning. I’d woken up to the sound of Ethan getting in the shower. I rolled over and checked the time. It was after 8, which meant I’d slept through my alarm. I wasn’t much of a morning person, so this happened often, and luckily I didn’t have to be to the bookstore until 10. I tossed the blankets off and went downstairs to make some coffee.
In the kitchen of our two-bedroom house in the suburbs of Phoenix, I sat down with the novel I’d been reading and sipped from my mug. Not ten minutes later did my phone buzz on the table next to me. I checked the message, and it didn’t make sense.
It was a message from Kira, Ethan’s co-worker. It said, “Bought an extra donut at the coffee shop tomorrow, if you’re interested,” followed by a smiley face. It took me two read-throughs, my brain was still a little foggy from sleep, before I realized that I had accidentally grabbed Ethan’s phone off the bedside table and not my own. We had the same case, and the same home-screen background—a picture of the two of us on our honeymoon to Hawaii—so it was an honest mistake. I felt guilty, however, like I’d been snooping, even though I wasn’t. I quickly got up to put the phone on the counter and returned to my seat ten feet away.
When Ethan came downstairs a short while later, his hair still a little damp, dressed in a nice suit, he asked me immediately if I’d seen his phone.
“Yes,” I said. “I grabbed it by accident. It’s right there on the counter.”
He checked it, then frowned. “I, uh, I’m going to go into the office a little early this morning.”
I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not there was a connection between the text he’d received from Kira and his decision to go in earlier. “Do you have a meeting?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “A really important one.”
“Is Kira going to that meeting as well?”
He looked at me. “She’ll be there, yes, why?”
“Just curious.” I shrugged as nonchalantly as possible. “You two have just been putting in a lot of late nights recently.”
“Yeah, well I told you, we’re working on that really big project together.”
“I remember,” I said. “But you never gave me any details about it.”
He shrugged. “My job is boring. I didn’t think you enjoyed hearing about it.”
“I guess I’m just being a little paranoid, that’s all. Thought maybe I had something to worry about with you and Kira. But that’s crazy. I know. You don’t have to tell me.” I laughed. “Look at me, I’ve become that wife. The one who checks up on you and gets suspicious for no reason. Forget I said anything.”
He sighed heavily.
“No really,” I doubled down. “I don’t actually think you’re—”
“Raina, I can’t do this anymore.”
I shook my head. “Can’t do what? I wasn’t accusing you of anything. I’m sorry, it was just a little joke, but clearly it wasn’t funny. I should know better than to try a joke before I’ve finished my morning coffee.”
“My heart isn’t in it.”
I started to understand, from his consistent use of such a serious tone of voice, that whatever it was Ethan was talking about in that moment, was no joking matter.
“Your heart isn’t it what anymore?”
“This.” He motioned to the two of us.
“You mean our marriage?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Your heart isn’t in our marriage anymore, is that what you’re saying?”
“Is yours?”
The question was thrown at me like a brick. I didn’t have time to catch it, so instead it struck me dead-on in the chest. I felt my breath get caught in my lungs. “Why would you ask me something like that? Where is this even coming from? Are you having an affair with Kira?” The questions all came out in one long statement, and in an order that didn’t necessarily convey how I felt they ranked in importance.
“I’m not having an affair,” he said. “I swear, nothing has happened between Kira and me. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Then what the hell prompted all this?”
“There was no one catalyst,” he said. He walked over to the table and sat across from me. “I’ve been feeling this way for a while now, and I guess when you made the suggestion that there was something you should be worried about, I couldn’t in good faith tell you there wasn’t.”
“Gee thanks, I really appreciate you being so upfront,” I said. “I only wish you would’ve said something sooner so I wouldn’t have been walking around all this time under the impression that my husband actually cared about me!”
“I do care about you! I always have and I always will, but you can’t actually tell me that you think our marriage is working. We barely ever see each other, and when we do, we have nothing to say to one another. We talk about the weather, sometimes we watch a lousy sitcom together, and that’s the extent of our quality time.”
“That’s how we’ve always been! I thought that’s what we both wanted out of a marriage. We wanted to have our own separate lives, but also have someone to come home to at the end of the day. This has been the arrangement since the beginning.”
He nodded. “You’re right. Nothing has changed. We have always been married more on paper than in real life.”
“You’ve never expressed wanting anything else. We’ve been married for four years, we’ve been together for almost six, and I always assumed we were on the same page about this. We are both very independent, right?”
“I didn’t want more before, but now I think I do.” He rested his palms on the table like he was getting ready to say something he’d been holding back from saying for a long time. “I want to be in love with someone, I want that person to be in love with me. I
want to get excited every time they walk into the room, and I want to make everyone jealous of our love when they show up at our wedding and see just how deeply connected we are. I want to have children with this person and multiply our love by making a big family together.”
This was so sappy, I couldn’t even muster a response. Ethan never talked this way. He’d always been extremely practical, cut and dry, and emotions rarely played a role in any of his decision makings. I was similar, although I’d always considered myself to be the more emotionally available one out of the two of us. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“I do love you,” I said after a short silence. “I know we don’t say it to each other very often, and if you need to hear it more, I’ll make an effort. But, Ethan, I do love you.”
“I know you do.” He reached out and put his hand over mine. “I love you too. Just not in the way I want to love someone. Not in the way I want to be loved by someone. Raina, we both deserve to be in a relationship that’s more fulfilling than this, don’t you think?”
I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Sure, maybe I used to think that, when I was young and naïve. But I’d learned early on that life was no picnic, and that looking for love only made it all the more difficult. It never seemed worth it to me, to search for a fairytale romance, when a practical, business-like relationship was not only easier to find but also easier to manage.
“If you’re waiting for me to tell you that I want this too,” I said, “to let you off the hook for ending things, then you’re going to be waiting for a long time.”
He looked at me for a moment longer, then took his hand away.
“I’m sorry. I wish it hadn’t gone down this way. I’ll uh, I’ll go stay with a friend for a week or two, give you time to pack up your things and find a new place to live.”
I guess Ethan was assuming he would get to keep the house, which made some sense, considering his parents bought it for us as a wedding present.
“Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”
He stood up. “It is.”
And those were the last words he said to me before walking out of the kitchen, and then out of the house. When I heard the engine rev in the driveway, my only thought was, He’s taking the car.
So that decided it. What I was doing that day, the day my husband walked out on me, was going to buy myself a car.
I’d had a car, just a week before, but it had been totaled by some idiot driving down the street during a rainstorm like a maniac. I wasn’t in the car, it was parked, when he crashed into it. There was no salvaging it, and I had spent the better part of the past few days on the phone with the insurance company arguing that the damage was covered. I couldn’t bring myself to call them again, not that day, so instead I just decided to forget about my old car, forget about the insurance company, and go buy myself a new one. Something I’d never done before, seeing as the car I was driving previously belonged to my dad, who’d gifted it to me right before I married Ethan.
Like most things in our marriage, Ethan and I kept our finances separate. He made more money than me, by quite a bit, so most of our bills were set up to automatically come out of his account. I paid for anything I needed or wanted out of my own bank account, and since I wasn’t much of a shopper, over the years I’d been able to save quite a bit of money. I wasn’t interested in buying a nice car, however; I just wanted one that would get me where I wanted to go.
Denver, that’s where I was headed. It was where I grew up, and my parents still lived there. I didn’t have a very close relationship with them, but being an only child with very few friends that lasted into adulthood, there weren’t that many options available to me at the moment. All I knew was that I wanted to be out of the house I shared with Ethan as soon as possible, and I would figure the rest out later.
I finished packing up all my things, said a silent thank you to myself for never being one of those people who accumulated many personal items, and left it all in the front room, ready to load up whenever I got back with my new car. I ordered an Uber and went to the nearest used car dealership. The man who gave me the ride warned me, before I got out, that a buddy of his owned the place and would try to overcharge me and an arm and a leg.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll make sure not to let him get away with that.” I spoke like I knew anything at all about cars, which I didn’t. But I was confident that I could be a good negotiator when the time came.
“Hello!” A bright-eyed woman greeted me when I walked into the dealership. She was dressed in a smart pencil skirt and matching blazer. “My name is Josie. Are you looking to buy a car today?”
“In fact I am,” I said.
“Great!” She smiled. “Any idea what kind of car you want?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Just something that’s cheap, and that’ll get me from A to B.”
She nodded. “I understand completely. Why don’t you follow me over here, and I’ll show you some of our more affordable models.”
She led me toward the back of the display room, and I saw a man poke his head out of his office off to the side and watch us for a moment. I figured it was the owner, and this woman’s boss, and I felt a pang of sympathy for her. It must be so difficult to make a sale when your boss is constantly breathing down your neck.
“Listen,” I said. “I have some money saved up, and I just need a car as soon as possible. If you can get me a good deal on something reliable, I will pay in full. Today.”
She perked up at the mention of ‘pay in full.’ She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the office where the man was no longer peering out from the doorway, then motioned me to step closer to her. “I’m supposed to give you the whole spiel,” she whispered. “Try to sell you one of our newer models which come with a hefty price tag, but you’d be fine with taking one of the older models. Maybe one of the 2015s.”
“2015?” I gawked. “That’s an old model? By whose standards? Up until last week, I was driving my dad’s old car which was already 12 years old when I got it four years ago! And it still had plenty of life left in it, let me tell you. It could’ve gone a while longer, if that teenager hadn’t decided to go on some suicidal joy-ride.” Josie’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no, he’s fine,” I assured her. “A few broken bones, some bruises, but otherwise he’s fine. But that’s why I’m here. I need new wheels. Do you have anything cheaper and older? What about the '05s?”
“'05?” She laughed. “You have to be joking.”
“You don’t have anything?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well. My car is an '05.”
“Is it reliable?”
She shrugged. “It drives.”
“How much?”
“1,000.”
“500.”
“750.”
“Deal.”
I put my hand out, and she shook it. She shimmied her shoulders a little, like she’d just gotten a chill, and then told me to meet her in the parking lot out back in twenty minutes with the cash. I said I’d run to the bank and be back as fast as I could. Thankfully, my bank had a location just down the block. I withdrew $752 in cash. I wanted the extra two dollars to get something out of the vending machine outside of the dealership.
Fifteen minutes later, munching on some chips, I handed Josie the money and told her it was lovely doing business with her.
“Here’s the title,” she said, handing it over. “I’ve signed it over to you, so you’ll just have to get new plates and get it registered in your name as soon as possible.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I’m going out of state for a while, but I’ll do it when I come back.”
“Out of state?” She furrowed her brow. “You’re taking the car on a road trip? How far are you going?”
“Why does it matter?”
“No reason!” She waved it off. “Everything is fine. Have a nice trip. Now I just have to figure out what to tell my boss when he asks why I let you walk out of there without buying a new car.”
“I’ve got it!” I said. “Tell him I said that I was made uncomfortable by the fact that he kept leering at us from his office. Maybe then he’ll stop spying while you’re trying to make a sale.”
She grinned. “That’s actually not a bad idea. Not bad at all.”
“Good luck,” I said, and got into the driver’s seat of my new car. It smelled a little bit like vanilla, but it wasn’t strong enough to make me nauseous. The car was small, but I always liked small cars, and it had automatic windows and a radio, so what else did I really need? I waved goodbye to Josie and pulled out of the lot, trying my best to ignore the sound the engine made when I pushed the car above 30 miles an hour.
I was on the road less than an hour later, having picked up my stuff and said one last, bitter goodbye to the house I’d shared with Ethan for the last four years. Not much to my surprise, as I left the Phoenix area and headed toward Colorado, I felt relieved. It still hurt, Ethan’s decision to break up so suddenly, but at least I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of knowing that I was moping around the house, desperately waiting for someone to take me in. If he wanted to move on, so be it. I could move on too. Move out and move on, that was the motto for the day, and it kept me going for hours and hours. I drove well into the night, and only pulled into a motel after nearly falling asleep at the wheel. I threw a blanket over my duffle bags in the backseat to deter thieves, shuffled into my designated room, and was asleep almost the second my head hit the pillow.