Unlocking the Mystery of the Vanishing Van
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“We need to talk,” he said, and I knew that if he meant anything else, it was something I wasn’t going to like. “It’s about the van.” He looked at me with a look that would have scared a less stubborn woman into doing what she should. But as always when he did it, my heart sank. It was only one more disappointment in an endless string of them.
The van had been mine since we were married – or so I thought. We’d never discussed it but after three years and two kids together, we assumed it was ours. Then a year ago on Christmas Day, he bought himself his new ride for a hundred thousand dollars. A brand-new van with all the bells and whistles and leather seats – the kind of thing you see driving around in luxury circles and not on the streets where people actually live. And then he told me it was now our car. As if I ever drove anyway!
So here I was, trying to figure out how I could convince him to return the van while at the same time wondering how long it had been missing from our driveway. When I went outside, I saw immediately why this must have happened. The garage door opened automatically, and there inside stood the bright red Dodge Ram, gleaming in the morning sun. There were no keys in its ignition but there were plenty of others in its glovebox. All kinds of fancy things, all the latest gadgets, all the newest technology that would make my life easier and save me money and time. He hadn’t even bothered to change the plates to ours, and they read ‘MILLER’S VAN’. That was the last straw.
He sat down across from me and put his face in his hands, and I watched as the tears rolled down his cheeks. “I just can’t do it any longer, Liz,” he sobbed. “Every day is harder than the one before, every night more difficult, and I don’t know how much more I can take.” He turned towards me and put his hand on my knee. “You’ve done everything you’re supposed to do to keep us healthy and happy. You’ve worked so hard and sacrificed your whole life to raise these two babies into successful adults. Don’t think I’m not aware of that – because I am. So I want to leave you something, something that will give you some security until we meet again, and it isn’t fair for me to ask you for that.”
His hand slid up to my thigh, and my breath caught in my throat. His eyes pleaded with me. “Please understand, I love you. I loved you enough to marry you and to work and struggle to pay off our debts when we first got married. Now I just feel that I’m running away from all the responsibility of marriage, and I don’t mean leaving you for someone else. I just need the freedom to be free of all the pressures and expectations I feel as the head of the family. I want you to be able to live the way you want to without being tied down by our financial obligations and commitments.”
A single tear rolled down his cheek and hit my lips as his mouth closed over mine and his tongue pushed its way between my teeth. Our lips parted as we both tried desperately to catch our breaths, and he stared at me like he wanted to kiss the tears right out of my eyes. “This is goodbye,” he whispered as he kissed my brow and ran his thumb under my chin. “Goodbye.”
My mind raced. I was still reeling from the shock of hearing he wasn’t coming home again and that he’d left me with all the bills and everything else to run and manage alone. I needed him, but I couldn’t help thinking that if I didn’t have him, maybe it wouldn’t hurt quite as bad. If he gave me the van, I could drive my kids wherever they needed to go and buy groceries with the savings. It was the answer to a prayer.
As if reading my mind, he said, “Don’t worry. You can use the van until it gets too cold for me to come back and check on you. Then I’ll sell it, and we’ll get the money out of it to pay the mortgage. But then you can sell this house. The sooner we do that, the better. Then there won’t be any reminders of me. No furniture, nothing, and the only thing we have to tie us down will be our memories.”
When he stood and pulled my hands gently out of mine, the tears fell harder. My voice trembled with emotion, and he smiled sadly as he wiped away the wetness. “I love you, Liz, and I always will. You deserve everything good, and I know you’re going to find something great out there to fill the hole that I’ve left behind.”
That was all he said as he leaned down and kissed me tenderly on my forehead. Then he walked out of the kitchen, turned and waved, and shut the door behind him.
“I love you, honey,” I whispered as I let myself collapse onto the floor where he’d dropped his briefcase, and the tears flowed freely. “Oh, God. Oh, God!”
***
It took me two days to gather up most of the stuff he had left around the house, throw out anything we weren’t keeping, and clean up the worst messes. By the end of that second day, I felt like I knew what to do next. I made an appointment with the real estate agent the following morning. She showed me three houses that were within our price range, and I chose one and signed papers before the week ended. As soon as she drove me back to the house, I packed up the car with our remaining stuff – including my husband’s briefcase – and we moved out of the house I’d raised my children in. I rented a small apartment in the same complex as my sister and her family, and we moved in together. We sold the house, and although we never got any money out of the sale, I told myself that it was worth selling the place as long as it meant getting rid of the reminder that I’d lost someone who should have been part of the future, but wasn’t going to be.
For three months I kept telling myself it was only temporary, that he would return and things would be normal again – until I found myself looking out at the ocean and thinking about all the ways in which I’d wasted my time with him. When he hadn’t come home for five weeks, I finally called my lawyer and hired him to handle the divorce paperwork. It took six months to settle everything, but at least now he had no more rights to anything or anyone except the money and the debt we’d accumulated during those years of marriage. And as far as I was concerned, that was enough to say goodbye to everything.
He did show up at one point, though. A month after moving in with my sister, my father died and left me with all his assets because it was stipulated in his will that my mother, brother, and I each received one third of his estate. After paying off the mortgage on the old farmhouse where I grew up, I bought the first house I looked at – a little two-story cottage on the water. The kids came over when they could, especially my daughter. It was almost as if she sensed how lonely I was; every night she called to talk or text, and we spent hours chatting online just to make sure we could stay connected. My son was too busy with school, and even though the new semester was just starting, he wasn’t about to give up his weekend plans with friends. The only reason he came to see us was to pick up my daughter, and they disappeared into the living room for hours while I sat alone in the dining area working on homework that I didn’t have time to finish in class.
The year passed quickly. Christmas was a disaster because I was so tired from being up with the baby that I could hardly muster the energy to put up stockings and decorations. There wasn’t much for me to cook anyway because she’d started eating solid food by then and wanted whatever she saw me eating. The only good thing I remembered about Christmas is the way the whole family sat around talking in between bites of ham and eggnog. I missed my mother, but I missed my family more.
After New Year’s, I made the decision to quit school. I’d already completed my degree and was working toward a teaching certificate. Now the thought of taking classes seemed overwhelming because they were full of people who had careers and families. They talked about going home during holiday breaks, and I couldn’t stop imagining them sitting around my kitchen table having coffee and catching up on their lives. It was hard not to compare. I’d given up my career as a teacher when I married, and there were a million stories I’d never get to tell. I loved the students, but I was still a wife and a mother, and I couldn’t help feeling bitter that I’d sacrificed everything for a man who’d abandoned me and our child.
As Christmas approached, my sister asked me why I wasn’t doing anything about decorating the house. “You’re spending all this money on a new house,” she told me, “you might as well use it.” With no better idea than to follow the example set by everyone else, I went out to buy stockings for the kids and some cheap ornaments that I could stick on the fake tree we got for the living room. On the Saturday before Christmas, I decided to go to the mall and shop because the stores wouldn’t be as crowded. I needed a break from the house and the memories it held of everything I’d lost. But when I drove away from the complex and turned onto a main road, I realized that something was wrong. All these big houses with their gated driveways and hedges had always felt like luxury to me, but now it hit me that maybe the real estate market was in trouble again. Maybe the economy was really bad since all those homes had been foreclosed on. In all my driving around the area, I’d never noticed this street before.
I parked and walked through a neighborhood of large estates, many of which were boarded up and overgrown. I’d lived near here as a kid. Back then, this place must have belonged to a wealthy family, but now half the homes were falling down and the other half looked deserted. Some of them were empty; others appeared to be occupied by squatters, and there was even a homeless guy sleeping behind a bush along a driveway. It wasn’t safe in any stretch of the imagination, and I was glad I’d come armed with pepper spray. I walked past a hedge, looking for a mailbox I knew to be on the other side, when someone called out from inside an open window. “Excuse me?”
I turned back to see a woman wearing a shawl-style jacket, a white cotton shirt and jeans. She was carrying two bags from the same department store I’d just been at. “Is this your house?” she asked me, leaning her head out the window.
“My house?” I looked around, but I couldn’t imagine this as my home. I had no connection to this block, except for the fact that all these places used to belong to someone who could afford a house like this. This wasn’t the kind of community where people took care of their own properties. And it certainly wasn’t where I planned to raise a baby.
But as I tried to figure out how to explain this strange encounter, the woman spoke again. “Yes,” she said, gesturing down the street. “That’s your house – that one.”
She pointed ahead to a three-story brick building, the same height as the rest. It was huge and old and looked like nothing I’d ever seen before. It also didn’t match the surrounding mansions, though they all shared similar lines and architectural features. It was a little smaller than the average mansion, but it stood alone. “It’s a hotel,” she explained. “There’s another one on the other side of town. That one belongs to your husband.”
I don’t know what came over me, but I found myself standing in front of this stranger. I stared into her eyes, trying to decipher the meaning of the words coming out of my mouth. “Are you saying my husband owns this property?”
“Yeah,” she told me. “He owns both of them.”
When I reached into my pocket to grab the pepper spray, she stepped outside the car. The next thing I knew, she grabbed my arm. My heart jumped when she pulled it upward until I almost fell backwards against her chest. She was strong as a bear, and I struggled to keep my balance. Then she pushed down hard on my wrist as she twisted my arm behind my back so she could handcuff me. As she shoved me forward, I saw a young boy step out of the house next door with his arms full of presents. He looked scared, confused as he watched me being led away by a woman he’d never seen before.
The End