…”…hartwellmotors.com.” This dealership. He turned his screen toward me. The second email belonged to one of their own salesmen. Kevin Marsh. My ex’s younger brother. The service guy’s face changed completely. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
He came back with the general manager. They pulled the account history together. Kevin had accessed my car’s GPS records eleven times in the last month. He’d forwarded each log to my ex. He’d also flagged my account for “possible repossession” so that the cosigner could legally disable it.
The general manager was furious. He fired Kevin before lunch. Then he did something I didn’t expect. He sat down across from me and said, “Let’s get your name off his.” He refinanced my loan right there, in my name only, with my three years of perfect payments as credit. The starter device came out that afternoon. The service guy removed it himself and handed it to me in a plastic bag. “Evidence,” he said. “Keep this.”
I took it to the police with the GPS logs. They took it seriously, because it was in writing. My ex had driven past my new apartment twice. He’d parked outside my gym. He’d shown up at a restaurant where I’d had dinner with a friend, and I’d thought it was a coincidence.
I got a protective order the next week. The judge didn’t need much convincing. She held up the bag with the starter device and said, “Disabling someone’s car isn’t co-signing. It’s control.”
My Honda runs perfectly now. It’s officially, completely mine. On the day the new title arrived, I drove it to the beach for the first time, alone, with nobody knowing where I was. It was the best drive of my life.
