Chapter 1: The Two-Dollar Secret
For thirty-four years, I believed that the hardest thing a woman could survive was loving a man who had slowly stopped loving her back.
I was wrong.
The hardest thing was discovering that the man who had slept beside me for thirty-four years was willing to steal the one good thing life had finally offered us, then walk away believing I was too foolish to stop him.
My name is Patricia Dunn, though everyone in our small Ohio town called me Patty. I was sixty-one years old, with silver beginning to show in my brown hair, arthritis in my fingers, and a marriage that had become so quiet I sometimes wondered whether I was the only person still living in it.
My husband, Gary, was sixty-three. He had worked as a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing plant for most of his adult life. He liked fishing, watching football, and reminding people how hard he had worked for everything he owned.
What he liked most, though, was being right.
Even when he was wrong, he could make you feel foolish for questioning him.
We had three children. Michael was thirty-two and lived outside Columbus with his wife and two little boys. Rebecca was twenty-nine, a nurse who worked long shifts and called me whenever she could find ten quiet minutes. Our youngest, Daniel, was twenty-six and still trying to decide what he wanted to do with his life.
I had spent years keeping the family together. I packed school lunches, balanced the checkbook, remembered birthdays, nursed fevers, and sat through more school concerts than I could count.
When Gary's mother developed dementia, I was the one who drove her to appointments. When his father died, I organized the funeral while Gary sat in the garage drinking beer with his brothers.
I never kept score.
At least, I hadn't until the last few years, when I began noticing that Gary remembered every dollar he spent on me but somehow forgot every dollar I spent keeping our household running.
And every Friday, without fail, I bought a lottery ticket.
Two dollars.
That was all.
I bought it at Miller's Gas and Go, a little station on the main highway about ten minutes from our house. The owner, Frank Miller, had known our family for years. He'd sold Michael his first candy bar, watched Rebecca grow from a shy little girl into a confident woman, and once let Daniel sweep the store floor for twenty dollars after he broke our neighbor's window with a baseball.
Every Friday morning, after buying milk or bread, I would ask Frank for one ticket.
I always played the same numbers.
Michael's birthday. Rebecca's birthday. Daniel's birthday.
The date Gary and I were married. And the date my mother died.
Five numbers that carried nearly my entire life inside them.
Gary thought the whole thing was ridiculous.
"Throwing money in the toilet again, Patty?""
That was his favorite line.
Sometimes he said it in front of the children. Sometimes he said it while I was putting groceries away, as if my two dollars had personally insulted his financial intelligence.
I'd laugh because that was easier than arguing.
"One day, Gary, I'm going to win.""
"And one day, I'm going to grow wings and fly to work.""
He'd chuckle at his own joke, and I would place the ticket beneath a cheap pineapple-shaped magnet on the refrigerator.
For nineteen years, I checked the numbers every Saturday morning over coffee.
For nineteen years, I won absolutely nothing.
Not even enough to buy another ticket.
Still, the ritual comforted me. My mother had loved little traditions. She used to say that a person needed something small to look forward to, especially when the world seemed determined to take everything else away.
So I kept buying my ticket.
Then came the week everything changed.
My older sister, Marilyn, had been admitted to the regional hospital after suffering complications from a heart condition. She was the only sibling I had left, and the thought of losing her made me feel as though the floor beneath my life had begun to crack.
I drove to the city nearly every day that week. I sat beside her hospital bed, brought her clean nightgowns, argued with nurses about whether she had eaten enough, and held her hand when she grew frightened.
By Saturday morning, I was so exhausted I forgot to check the lottery numbers.
Sunday passed.
Monday came and went.
On Wednesday afternoon, I finally returned home early enough to make myself a proper lunch.
I was reaching for the milk when I noticed the pineapple magnet on the refrigerator.
It was holding nothing.
I stared at the empty space beneath it.
My ticket was gone.
I checked the counter, the drawer beside the stove, the stack of coupons in the kitchen basket, and the pockets of the cardigan I'd worn on Friday.
Nothing.
When Gary came into the kitchen, I was crouched beside the refrigerator, peering into the narrow gap between the appliance and the wall.
"Have you seen my lottery ticket?"" I asked.
He didn't look away from the television.
"Probably fell behind the fridge.""
"I already checked.""
"Then you lost it.""
"It was right here.""
"It's two dollars, Patty.""
He said it so casually that I should have let the matter go.
But something in his voice made me straighten.
Gary was usually irritated by my lottery habit. He complained about it every week. Yet that afternoon, when I mentioned the missing ticket, he seemed less annoyed than eager to end the conversation.
I watched him for a moment.
"Did you move it?""
His eyes finally met mine.
"No.""
One word. No hesitation.
Then he turned back to the television.
That evening, something even stranger happened.
Gary brought me a cup of tea.
He hadn't brought me tea in years.
He placed it beside my chair and asked how Marilyn was doing.
I nearly dropped the book in my lap.
"What?""
"Your sister," he said.
"How's she feeling?""
"You mean Marilyn?""
He gave me an irritated glance.
"How many sisters do you have, Patty?""
"One. And you haven't asked about her health in ten years.""
His expression tightened.
"I'm trying to be nice to you.""
I accepted the tea without answering.
He sat beside me for almost twenty minutes, asking questions about the hospital and whether I needed help driving back to the city.
Then he kissed the top of my head.
For one foolish moment, I wondered whether something had finally changed between us.
Maybe Marilyn's illness had reminded him that life was short. Maybe he had realized how lonely our marriage had become.
I wanted to believe that.
I wanted it so badly that I ignored the cold little feeling growing in my stomach.
On Thursday afternoon, I found the winning numbers in the local newspaper.
I had picked it up to check the weather before driving to the hospital. The lottery results were printed near the bottom of the page, beneath an advertisement for a used-car dealership.
I glanced at the numbers.
Then I looked again.
My fingers began to tremble.
I went to the refrigerator and retrieved the little scrap of paper where I had written my numbers years ago, just in case I ever needed to remember them.
One by one, I compared them.
Michael's birthday.
Rebecca's birthday.
Daniel's birthday.
Our anniversary.
My mother's death date.
Every single number matched.
I sat down hard on the kitchen floor.
The newspaper slipped from my hands.
The jackpot was $2.4 million.
One winning ticket had been sold at Miller's Gas and Go on the main highway. The prize remained unclaimed.
I couldn't breathe properly.
For several minutes, I simply stared at the refrigerator, at the pineapple magnet, at the empty space where my ticket had been.
Then I heard Gary moving around upstairs.
I looked toward the ceiling.
He had been too nice on Wednesday.
He had asked too many questions.
And my ticket had disappeared from the one place I always left it.
I did not call out to him.
I did not ask him whether he had checked the numbers.
Instead, I folded the newspaper, placed it on the kitchen table, and waited.
Thirty-four years of marriage had taught me something I wished I had learned much sooner.
When a person shows you a sudden, unexplained change in behavior, pay attention to what they stand to gain.
That night, I barely slept.
Gary lay beside me, breathing heavily, while I stared into the darkness.
At some point after midnight, he rolled over and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Patty?""
"Yes?""
"Whatever happens, you know we've had a good life, don't you?""
My entire body went still.
"What makes you say that?""
He withdrew his hand.
"Nothing. Just thinking.""
A few seconds later, he turned away.
I lay there until dawn, listening to the man I had loved for thirty-four years breathe in the dark.
And for the first time in our marriage, I was afraid of what he might do next.
May you like
Not because he had stopped loving me.
Because I was beginning to suspect that he had never understood what loving someone was supposed to mean.
