she asked, applying mascara in the hallway mirror.
“I don’t know. Probably nothing much.”
“Oh, come on. Your grandpa was well-off. He had that amazing house downtown. If you get that, we can finally start living a normal life.”
Alex hadn’t said anything then. He didn’t bother explaining that his grandpa was never rich. That he’d built that house with his own two hands after his shifts. That he’d driven company cars his whole life and worked for a modest salary. That there were no millions to be had.
Now, walking through the rain-soaked streets, Alex dreaded going home. But he had no choice. He opened the apartment door around seven, soaked to the bone, exhausted and empty. Tina was on the sofa, flipping through a glossy magazine. She looked up as he came in.
“Well? How did it go?”
Alex silently took off his jacket and hung it on the hook. He kicked off his boots, walked into the living room, and sat on the edge of the sofa.
“Alex, I’m asking you…” Tina’s voice sharpened. “What did you get?”
“A garage,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“A garage. An old storage unit on the edge of town…”
Silence fell. Alex didn’t look at his wife, but he could feel her stare. He could feel the tension in the room thickening, the air growing heavy.
“A garage,” Tina finally repeated, her voice dripping with so much contempt it made Alex flinch. “Your grandfather left you a garage?”
“Yes.”
“And your brother?”
“The house.”
Tina shot up, throwing the magazine to the floor. Her face was twisted with fury.
“Are you kidding me? The house? The one downtown that’s worth a fortune?”
“Tina, listen…”
“No, you listen to me!” she cut him off, her voice rising to a shout. “Eight years… For eight years I’ve been waiting for our life to finally change! To stop living in this dump, to stop pinching pennies, to stop being broke! And for what? A garage? A damn garage on the edge of town? I don’t give a damn about your grandfather or his decision! You’re a loser, Alex. You’ve always been a loser. Even your own grandfather knew it. That’s why he left you that piece of junk and gave the real inheritance to your brother.”
Alex clenched his fists. He was boiling inside, but he fought to keep his composure. He never raised his voice at Tina, not even when she started fights.
“Your brother is a successful businessman. He has a nice condo, a new car, money. And you? What do you have? Greasy hands and dirt under your fingernails. You tinker with other people’s cars for peanuts and you call that a life?”
“I earn an honest living…”
“Honest?” She laughed, a hysterical, sharp sound. “Honest? You can’t even buy a new pair of jeans with your ‘honesty’! Do you have any idea how much my friends’ purses cost? More than you make in six months!”
“Then why did you marry me?” The words escaped him before he could stop them.
Tina fell silent, giving him a long, appraising look.
“I thought you’d change. I thought you had ambition, goals, a plan. But you’re still a nobody. A mechanic for life. And that garage—it’s a symbol. A symbol of who you really are. A failure that not even your own grandfather trusted with anything valuable.”
Every word was a punch to the gut. Alex was silent, with nothing to say. What was there to say? Maybe she was right. Maybe he really was a failure.
“You know what?” Tina marched toward the bedroom. “I’m done. I’m done with all of it. You, this poverty, your complacent attitude. I’m not going to waste my life rotting away next to you.”
She started pulling clothes from the closet, stuffing them into a suitcase. Alex watched, feeling like he was in a dream.
“You’re leaving?”
“Of course I’m leaving. You think I don’t have options? I’ve had someone who actually values me for a while now. Someone who can give me a decent life. I should have left you a month ago, but I decided to wait. I thought maybe you’d get something decent from your grandpa. But no. A garage. A damn garage on the edge of town.”
She zipped the suitcase shut.
“Tina, wait. Let’s talk…”
“Talk about what? About how you’ll promise to change? How many times have I heard that? No, Alex. It’s over. I’m tired of waiting for a miracle. There won’t be one. You’ll stay a mechanic, rotting in this apartment that, by the way, I’ve been paying the rent on for the last six months because your salary only covers groceries.”
She walked past him to the door without a backward glance.
“I’ll leave the keys with the neighbor. I’ve paid the rent through the end of the month. After that, you can live wherever you want. For all I care, you can live in your garage.”
The door slammed shut. Alex remained on the sofa, staring at a fixed point on the wall. He felt a strange emptiness inside. Not pain, not despair—just a void. As if something had been drained out of him, leaving only a shell.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. An hour, maybe more. It was completely dark outside. The rain picked up, drumming against the windowpane. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the pipes.
Alex got up, went to the kitchen, and opened the fridge. It was nearly empty. A carton of milk, a slice of cheese, two eggs. He closed the door without touching anything. He wasn’t hungry. He went back to the living room, lay down on the sofa, and stared at the ceiling.
His thoughts were a jumble, one tumbling over the other, making it impossible to focus. A failure? “Even your grandpa knew who you really were.” “I have someone who values me.” Tina’s words played on a loop in his head.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he was nothing. Thirty-five years old. What had he accomplished? A rented apartment, a meager salary, and a wife who left him the second she realized he wouldn’t live up to her expectations. And a garage. The garage he’d inherited. The garage that had just destroyed his family.
No, not the garage. His family had been falling apart for a long time; he just hadn’t wanted to see it. The garage was just the final straw.
Alex closed his eyes, trying to sleep, but his mind wouldn’t shut off. He tossed and turned, but the day’s events kept replaying. The lawyer’s face, Victor’s smug grin, Tina’s look of contempt. “Live wherever you want. For all I care, you can live in your garage.”
Actually, that was an idea. Since he had a garage, why not spend the night there? Everything in this apartment was a reminder of his failed life. Tina’s clothes in the closet, her makeup in the bathroom, their photos on the wall. No, he had to get out. At least for one night.
Alex stood up without turning on the lights. He found his backpack in the dark, threw in a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and a thermos. He pulled on his jacket, still damp from the rain. He locked the apartment and stepped out into the night.
It was around midnight. The rain had stopped, but the asphalt glistened with puddles. The few people on the street hurried along, paying no mind to the lone man with a backpack.
Alex pulled out his phone and opened the map. He typed in the address. Industrial Road, Eastward Storage Complex. The route showed it was clear across town. He could take a cab, but he decided to save the money.
He had some cash, but not much. After Grandpa Pete’s death, he’d had to cover the funeral and reception costs. Victor, of course, hadn’t offered to help. He claimed he had just made some large investments and his funds were tied up.
Alex waited twenty minutes for a late-night bus. He sat by the window, resting his forehead against the cold glass. The city’s nightscape drifted by: brightly lit 24-hour convenience stores, the occasional car, the dark windows of sleeping houses.
He thought about his grandfather. Pete Miller, a man who had lived 95 years and seen more than his grandsons could ever imagine. Grandpa Pete was born in 1928, during the Great Depression. His childhood was marked by hardship, poverty, and then war.
In 1941, when the war broke out, Grandpa was 13. He told Alex how he’d tried to enlist but was turned away for being too young. So he went to work in a factory, machining tank parts for 12 hours a day. In ‘43, he finally managed to join the army, lying about his age to get in.
He didn’t fight for long. In 1944, he was wounded by shrapnel and sent home with a Purple Heart. He returned an injured veteran, but he didn’t give up. He learned to drive, got a job as a chauffeur for a big manufacturing company, and drove the top executives, CEOs, and visiting bigwigs from out of town.
It was a good job for the time. Steady, with a decent salary and perks. But he never looked down on an honest day’s work. In the evenings, he’d do side jobs—driving people to weddings, to the hospital, wherever they needed to go.
And so he lived. He got married, raised two sons—Alex and Victor’s fathers. He built his house, saw his kids grow up, and became a grandfather. He kept working almost until he was 80, no longer as a driver but as a consultant at a local car service, teaching the young mechanics.
Alex loved visiting his grandpa. Especially in recent years, when Pete was mostly housebound but always happy to have company. They would sit on the porch, drink iced tea, and Grandpa would tell stories from his life.
He rarely spoke about the war. Only sometimes, in quiet moments, his memory would take him back to those terrible days. Digging foxholes under bombardment. Burying his friends on the battlefield. The shrapnel that hit his back, missing his spine by less than an inch.
More often, Grandpa would talk about the post-war years. How the country rebuilt itself. How they built factories, houses, and highways. How they believed in a brighter future, that their children would have a better life.
“We believed, Alex,” Grandpa would say, squinting in the sun. “We believed it wasn’t all for nothing. The war, the hardship—it all had a purpose. We were building a new world, a fair one, where every person could have a job, a home, a decent life.”
“And did you build it, Grandpa?”
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