5 minute free write//Prompt: Break Down
The policeman said it was most likely a breakdown. Twenty-five miles outside of the city on a night cold enough to freeze eyelids shut. "The cold would have finished him off quickly enough," the officer chimed in with the cold metronome voice - like he presented news like this and worse all too often.
I didn't believe it. My grandfather was not a man who broke down. He was a man of precautions. Of weather checks and engine tweaks. Of checking the batteries and setting reminders. He forgot all of that when Bernadette went missing. She died like him. In the car. Only she was in the trunk.
We will never know why she made it so hard but she had told each of us, in her own way, that it was coming. We accepted every part of her but she didn't. She had enough of that. It was a cruel way to do it. My grandfather drove all night until he found her still gasping out of instinct, if not hope, for what was left of the air under pain pill sleepy eyes. She was dead before the ambulance arrived.
After that he just drove. Up and down the motorway where he found her. Even though there's nothing left to find. Maybe, around the next bend, he will see her wrestling on the hard-shoulder with a tire jack and he can softly chuckle and show her how it's done. Then they'll drive home and tell us the story over beers.
He was in the front seat and she was in the trunk but they both left us the same way.