Thursday morning, I bought a newspaper.
I did it because I needed a few things from the store, and the paper was displayed beside the register.
I almost left it there.
Then I remembered that I hadn't checked the lottery results.
It had been days since the drawing.
I carried the newspaper home and put it on the kitchen table beside my coffee.
The house was quiet.
Gary had gone out earlier, and I had a little time to myself.
I opened the paper and found the lottery results.
At first, I read them without much interest.
Then I stopped.
I went back to the beginning of the list.
I checked the first number.
Then the second.
I read the entire combination again, moving my finger along the printed line to make sure I hadn't skipped anything.
My numbers.
Every single one.
I felt a strange pressure in my chest.
I reached for the newspaper and pulled it closer.
The numbers didn't change.
I checked them a third time.
They were the numbers I had written down week after week for nineteen years.
The birthdays.
The anniversary.
The date connected to my mother.
I knew those numbers better than I knew most telephone numbers.
My hands began to shake.
I set my coffee down before I spilled it.
The article said the winning ticket had been purchased at a gas station on the highway.
The prize was $2.4 million.
One winning ticket.
Still unclaimed.
I read those words until they stopped looking like words.
Two point four million dollars.
I had spent years imagining what I might do if I ever won something.
Pay off the house.
Help the children.
Put some money aside so an unexpected bill wouldn't make me panic.
I had never seriously believed any of it would happen.
Now I couldn't even stand comfortably beside the table.
I lowered myself to the kitchen floor.
My back rested against the cabinet, and the newspaper lay open beside my leg.
I remember the refrigerator humming.
I remember a car passing outside.
I remember thinking that I should call somebody.
But who?
If I called my sister, I would have to explain why I was crying.
If I called one of the children, I would have to tell them I might have won millions of dollars.
And I didn't even have the ticket.
The ticket was missing.
That fact brought me back to myself.
I got up slowly and searched the kitchen again.
I checked the drawers.
I checked the papers beside the telephone.
I searched the counter where I kept my purse.
I opened the refrigerator door and looked at the shelves, although I knew a lottery ticket wouldn't be there.
Then I stood in front of the pineapple magnet.
It seemed ridiculous that something so small could be connected to so much money.
I took the magnet off the refrigerator.
The back was dusty.
I wiped it with my thumb and put it back.
There was still no ticket.
I sat at the table and read the article again.
The winning ticket had not yet been claimed.
That meant whoever possessed it might not know what they had.
Or perhaps they knew very well.
My thoughts returned to Gary.
His reaction when I asked about the missing ticket.
The way he had dismissed the matter.
The tea he had brought me.
His sudden interest in my sister.
I didn't have proof of anything.
I couldn't honestly say he had taken the ticket.
But I couldn't stop wondering.
I pictured him standing in the kitchen while I was away at the hospital.
Perhaps he had noticed the ticket.
Perhaps he had checked the numbers.
Perhaps he had realized what it meant before I did.
I pressed my palms against the table.
If he had found the winning ticket, why hadn't he told me?
We were married.
Thirty-four years.
We had raised three children together.
We had shared bills, illnesses, holidays, and more ordinary dinners than I could ever count.
Surely a prize like this was something a husband would tell his wife about.
I wanted to believe he would.
I wanted to believe that if he had the ticket, he was simply waiting for the right moment to show me.
But another thought kept coming back.
What if he intended to claim it without me?
I looked toward the living room.
The television was off.
Gary hadn't come home yet.
I folded the newspaper and placed it beneath the fruit bowl.
I decided not to say anything.
Not yet.
I needed to know what he was planning before I let him know what I knew.
It was not a decision I made proudly.
I had spent most of my adult life believing that honesty was the foundation of a marriage.
Now I was hiding a newspaper from my own husband.
I felt ashamed of that.
Then I remembered how quickly he had dismissed my missing ticket.
I remembered the tea.
The questions about my sister.
The strange care he had taken with me that evening.
I told myself to wait.
If Gary knew about the prize, he would have to do something eventually.
Money like that would not stay a secret forever.
I went outside and watered my tomato plants.
The soil was dry, and I stood there longer than necessary, holding the hose over the same patch of ground.
I could hear a lawn mower somewhere down the street.
An ordinary Thursday.
That was what made the whole thing feel so unreal.
The world hadn't changed.
My garden was still full of weeds.
The kitchen sink still needed scrubbing.
The mortgage was still waiting to be paid.
Yet somewhere inside that ordinary day was a truth that might change everything.
I went back inside and put the newspaper away.
When Gary returned, I greeted him as I always did.
I asked whether he wanted dinner.
He said yes.
We ate together.
He talked about something he had seen on television, and I listened without hearing much of it.
I watched his hands.
I watched his face.
I wondered whether the missing ticket was in his wallet.
He looked completely comfortable.
That frightened me more than if he had appeared nervous.
After dinner, he leaned back in his chair and asked whether my sister's condition had changed.
I told him there was nothing new.
He nodded.
Then he reached for his glass.
I looked at the man sitting across from me and tried to remember the young husband I had married thirty-four years earlier.
I wondered when I had stopped asking myself what he was capable of.
By bedtime, I had made up my mind.
I would not confront him about the lottery.
I would wait and see what he chose to do.
If he had taken that ticket, his next move would tell me more than any explanation I could force out of him.
And I had a feeling I would not have to wait long.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: He Put the Divorce Papers Beside My Breakfast, Then Smiled as Though Thirty-Four Years Together Had Meant Almost Nothing
The Two-Dollar Habit My Husband Mocked for Nineteen Years Was About to Become the Most Important Thing in Our Marriage
Part 3 of 20
