Chapter 6
Peter was an organized man, but not in a way Bonnie fully grasped. He’d kept his files sorted—somehow—but she couldn’t tell what guided the system. Over the years, whenever she needed any kind of official document, be it passports for a vacation, tax forms for the kids’ schools, or any number of things stored in the imposing file drawers in the den, it was easier to ask him to get it than to sort through on her own.
She knew how to find the most basic things. Immunization and hospital records for the kids, their social security cards, copies of her and Peter’s marriage certificate—those were all stored in a safe place. All the essentials for rebuilding their lives, should the worst happen, were in a fireproof box. Bonnie figured it was as good a place as any to start her search for a life insurance policy.
The box was easy enough to find. It was in its usual spot on the bottom shelf of the bookcase closest to the door in the den. She unlocked it and rifled through the documents, hopeful that the end of her most pressing problems was in sight. Once she’d handled the realities of the situation, she could move on to the emotions churning underneath. She could tease out the hurt and fear Peter had left her with, and try to untangle them from the love they’d shared.
But first, she had to focus on practicalities. The business debts were a crisis, and Bonnie was great in a crisis. Half of being a mom, she thought, was being able to keep your head on straight through difficult times. However, this was a little more serious than James forgetting his lunch on the school bus or Jackie losing her signed permission slip for the overnight field trip to Niagara Falls. But the principle was the same: the only way to close the gap between where you were and where you should be was to move forward one step at a time, starting with what you know.
The life insurance policy wasn’t in the fireproof box. Bonnie tried not to let the disappointment sink in too deeply. She’d been cautiously optimistic but knew it might not be so easy. The rest of her day had proven that what seemed easy on the surface wasn’t necessarily so simple. She just had to keep looking. Somewhere in this den, there would be a packet of papers with the information she needed.
As she rifled through the drawers of Peter’s desk, she kept repeating the same sentiment to herself over and over: Peter wouldn’t have left me here to sink. Not that he’d planned on dying so soon. He’d been unceremoniously yanked out of their lives in the worst way possible. But he was also very practical—he knew the statistics about women outliving their husbands. When he’d insisted Bonnie stay home and let him be the provider, he’d understood that without him, she would need something to fall back on if the worst were to happen. As much as neither of them expected—nor wanted—an untimely end to their marriage, Bonnie believed with her whole heart that he would have prepared for one, just in case.
She sifted through years of documents, none of them helpful. Her frustration bubbled up with every bank statement from their personal account and every receipt for payments they’d made on cars they’d sold decades before. Peter had, it seemed, kept every single piece of paper that passed through the front door—minus the one Bonnie needed most.
When she reached the last drawer with nothing to show for her efforts, she wondered if she’d been going about this all wrong. She’d never been too fond of online record-keeping, but it was impossible to avoid it these days. In all her searching through the files, she hadn’t come across anything from the past ten years. Peter had always been more adept with technology than Bonnie, so it wouldn’t be surprising if all the documents were electronic.
Steeling herself for another difficult search, she sat down at the computer and opened Google. She typed how to find my husband’s life insurance policy into the search engine and held her breath. It had to be associated with his social security number, she reasoned. She couldn’t fathom how else the insurance companies could keep everything straight and prevent fraud.
The search results weren’t promising. There were a dozen sites advertising their own policies and offering tips on how to navigate their online systems to locate a claim, and one lonely site listing all the unclaimed policies in the nation. However, that one warned her of a lengthy waiting period to hear back. Once she found out if one actually existed, she’d still have to go through the company to claim it.
Bonnie’s head spun with all the minute details of the task ahead and how much time it would take. Joseph Crowder had only given her thirty days to cover the debts. She worried the payout—if there even was one—wouldn’t be enough to cover the debts. She didn’t have the faintest idea what she would do then.
One thing was for sure, though. Bonnie didn’t have days to wait around for someone else to find the life insurance policy. She needed to act faster.
Charles would know, but he hadn’t called back yet.
She stared at the computer, hoping the answer would appear in front of her. Except the information on the screen didn’t change at all. She could try to check with individual companies; granted, she didn’t know any of the passwords to log in to any accounts they might have. But she could call and explain what happened.
The more she thought about it, the more daunting the task seemed, and the more bone-weary she felt. No one ever warned her how much of widowhood was paperwork.
The sound of grinding metal and mechanical groans pulled her attention away from the computer. Concerned, she hurried outside to see what was happening. Since she'd been so absorbed in the funeral for the past few days, she worried she might’ve missed a notice for construction or some kind of road closure. But if she needed to move her car out of the way, it didn’t sound like she had much time.
What was waiting for her in the driveway was much worse than unexpected road work. A tow truck had backed into the driveway, and a man in an olive-green jumpsuit was in the middle of lowering a giant hook toward Peter’s car.
“Hey! Stop! What are you doing?” She ran toward the man, waving her arms wildly to catch his attention. “You can’t do that!”
Another man slipped around the back of the truck with a large clipboard tucked under his arm and met Bonnie next to Peter’s car. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I realize it’s difficult, but it has to happen. I’m here to repossess Peter Wilkins’ vehicle.”
She heard the words and knew what they all meant individually, but never in her life had she expected to hear them in that order, with that meaning. It was impossible to reconcile the idea of her husband and a repo man. Repossession wasn’t something that happened to the Wilkins family. This was a terrible nightmare—it had to be.
“I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding.” Bonnie blinked rapidly and waved her hands between them as if it would make everything stop. “If we missed a deadline for renewing the tags or registration, it’s only because the past week has been difficult. Peter, my husband—the man whose car you’re stealing—passed away quite suddenly. You may have seen it in the news. It was a horrible accident. He was hit by a car and—”
“Lady, no offense, but I don’t really have time for the sob story,” he interrupted with a grumbled scoff and sharp shake of his head. “Sorry about your husband and all, but this isn’t because of an overdue registration. They don’t give me the details when they send me out to get the vehicles, but I promise you, no one’s car gets repossessed for something like that. Usually, it’s a bunch of missed payments. All I know is I’ve got orders to take this car from this address. That’s all. The tags match, so it’s a done deal.”
Across the street, Bonnie saw a curtain twitch in the bay window of the Johnsons’ home. Mr. Stanhope next door was out on his porch, not bothering to hide his interest; he’d put down the newspaper he was reading and stared directly at her.
The nightmare was getting worse, and Bonnie wasn’t waking up.
“I don’t understand.” She fought to hold herself together, refusing for this to be the moment her tears decided to fall.
The man, Derrick, whose name was stitched with blue thread inside a white oval patch on his oil-slicked jumpsuit, shrugged. No sympathy. No care. “Here, you can call this number for more information.” He grabbed the clipboard from under his arm, tore a sheet of paper off a notepad attached to the top, and handed it to her.
Bonnie scanned it, but the words blurred in front of her eyes.
“Keep it for your records,” he continued. “It shows what vehicle we repossessed, the time and date, and the number for who to talk to about getting it back.”
“We owned this car,” Bonnie protested. “Paid in full.”
“Sometimes folks put their cars up as collateral for loans. It’s not always a missed payment.” With that, he walked away, motioning for the guy at the controls to start lowering the hook again.
Bonnie watched in horror as it swayed closer to her husband’s car. She was helpless to stop it, the same way she was helpless to stop all the other horrible things that had happened to her this week.
More neighbors passed by—walking their dogs, enjoying the fresh air, gawking at her misfortune. With every passing second, she felt smaller and smaller, with increasingly more hopelessness. By the time the repo man had secured the new BMW sedan to his truck, Bonnie didn’t see how things could get any worse.