They married in a small ceremony I helped pay for. They continued to live in my house in Roland’s old study, which they repainted without asking me, a color called harvest fog that looked to me like the inside of a mistake. I am not a bitter woman. I want to be clear about that. I made room for Cynthia because she was Dererick’s wife.
And I made room for Derek because he was my son and because the house was large enough and because I was at my core someone who believed that family was worth the inconvenience. But there were things I noticed. The way you notice a small crack in a wall and tell yourself it has always been there. I noticed that Cynthia had taken to referring to the living room as our living room with an emphasis on the hour that subtly excluded me.
I noticed that Derek had stopped asking whether I needed anything at the grocery store and had started coming home with bags full of things neither he nor Cynthia would share. I noticed that they whispered in the kitchen in a way that stopped when I entered. small things, the kind of things a reasonable person tells herself she is imagining.
And then there was the lottery ticket. Every week for the past 11 years, I had played the same numbers in the Ohio Lottery, Roland’s birthday, my birthday, the year we got married. It was a ritual more than a strategy. I held no real belief that I would win, but it connected me to something, to him, to the life we had built together.
I bought my ticket every Thursday at Garfield’s pharmacy on the corner of Fifth and Maple. Mrs. Garfield knew my order. Two scratchoffs and one multi-draw ticket. Same numbers, same day, same smile across the counter. The Thursday in question was the 6th of March. I remember the date because it was the anniversary of the day Roland proposed to me, which is why I had chosen to use his birthday in the first sequence.
I bought my ticket at Garfields as always, came home, set it on the kitchen counter next to my reading glasses, made myself a cup of chamomile tea, and sat down to watch the evening news. I fell asleep in the chair before the lottery numbers were announced. That happened sometimes. When I woke, it was past 10.