My perfect neighbor fixed my car, won over my son, and made me believe in men again. But our first date ended with my ex at the gate and a secret I wish I’d never heard.
After the divorce, I was left with three things: a small house on the outskirts of town, my three-year-old son Kevin, and silence.
My husband had stripped me of everything else: our car, our accounts, even the coffee machine I had bought for myself.
“You’re lucky, really,” the lawyer said. “You got the house because of the child.”
Lucky.
What a joke. He just didn’t want to pay child support.
For the first month after the divorce, I breathed.
I sat in the kitchen and waited for the day I’d want to do something again. Sometimes, turned on the stove just to hear a sound.
Eventually, I started coming back to life. I found comfort in takeaway coffee cups, a blush palette I dug out from the bottom of a forgotten makeup bag, and weekly conversations with my friend Sofie.
“You alive in there?” Sofie asked one day when I finally agreed to grab coffee with her.
She held out two cups without lids, so the steam rises, for dramatic effect.
“I’m trying,” I said, sinking into the cheap plastic café chair. “Maybe I’ll become a person again.”
“Or maybe a woman,” she winked.
We laughed that day, though we both knew it wasn’t a victory. But it was something.
A start.
The very next morning, I stood next to my car in a robe thrown over my jeans, hair a tangled mess.
“Come on. Come on, sweetheart… We had a deal just two days ago. Don’t do this.
Not today…”
The car wheezed, teased me twice with a false start, and then went dead. Kevin, sitting in the backseat in his hoodie, crushed his toy dinosaur between tiny fists. I just wanted to get to work.
Just once without chaos.
“Car trouble?” came a voice from behind.
I turned quickly. A stranger was standing behind the fence. He was tall, fit, and fresh-faced.
He was too clean for someone standing near my busted Toyota at 7 a.m.
“I’m late and she’s rebelling.”
“I’m Alex. New neighbor, I can give you a lift, if you don’t mind. My van’s parked just over there.”
I looked around.
No other options. Just that man, or tears over my hood.
“If your van runs,” I said with a shaky laugh, “you’re mine forever.”
Alex gave us a ride to daycare. He didn’t talk too much.
Just offered to drop me off at the office, too. I nodded in quiet disbelief.
That evening, as I returned home, ready to melt into the sofa, I spotted a familiar-looking back hunched under my car’s open hood.
Alex!
“Saving your Toyota,” he said, still bent over. “Spark plugs.
Old as my uncle. Swapping them out. She’ll start up smoothly now.”
“You’re joking.
What, you just happened to have tools lying around?”
“Almost. I just hate seeing good girls stranded.”
I stared at him silently as he wiped his hands on a rag. I wanted to ask why he was being so kind.
But instead…
“How much do I owe you?”
“Just a thank-you. Or maybe coffee in the morning. I like it milky, with double sugar.”
And the next morning, he was standing by my porch, with that exact coffee.
I smiled at him and took the cup.
Could miracles really start like this?
Back then, I had no idea. But some miracles… come with a reason. And not all of them bring the ending you hoped for.
***
