It turned out Doug hadn’t abandoned her. He sent her a text. At ten o’clock Saturday night. “I’m very sorry. Something came up. Can’t do tomorrow.” He didn’t offer to reschedule.
Sunday was quiet, even for Hopewell. Scarlett was unavailable, according to her mother, when Jackie called to see if she wanted to hang out. She ran into Andie Ronald’s grandfather working in his flower garden when she went for a walk. The white-haired man invited her in for a glass of water after he told her Andie was hanging out with her reunion buddies.
Sensing Mr. Ronald needed an excuse to take a break from the sun, Jackie agreed. He led her to the kitchen, a tribute to the seventies lacking only the avocado-green fridge and stove set.
“Do you know what’s going on with my granddaughter?” he asked.
“Can you be more specific?”
“She dropped in last night to make sure I had dinner, and aside from that, I haven’t seen her since Friday afternoon.”
“I don’t know. She seemed fine at the reunion. Although now that you mention it, I haven’t seen any of them since then.” She should have run into Jason at the diner for his usual Sunday morning coffee, and now Andie was dodging her own family. Jackie refused to think about what Doug had been up to. “Do you need me to call her?” No matter what Andie was doing, if her grandfather needed her, she’d come running.
“No, I’m fine. I just want to know what she’s up to. It’s the first sign of life I’ve seen in her since that useless excuse of a trainer dumped her this past spring, and she came home with her tail between her legs.” Mr. Ronald patted her hand. “If you see her, tell her that I have enough leftovers to last me another meal, so she doesn’t have to check in on me tonight.”
“I will.”
But Jackie didn’t see her. Or Jason, or Evelyn, or Jonathan.
The break in the nice weather ended with sunset, and a new system rolled in, bringing more rain. It was great for the surrounding farms’ crops, but nobody else enjoyed it.
Monday arrived, and Doug was still among the missing. He couldn’t hide much longer; Jackie knew he had appointments scheduled the next day, and he was on call over the upcoming holiday weekend. The afternoon began on a strange note, with Louise turning off the television in the waiting room, and the radio at the nurse’s station going silent.
Not that Jackie had time to notice. Whatever temporary patch the maintenance crew had done on the roof hadn’t held. It had only redirected the drip from inside the radiology department to the corridor outside. She spent all afternoon swapping out buckets full of rainwater for empty ones and mopping up puddles when they overflowed. She was exhausted.
The parts of her that weren’t already wet got soaked when she ran to her car. She was cutting down the alley behind Ruth’s Diner to get to the parking lot behind the grocery store when two figures burst out of the back of the restaurant.
One was a strawberry blonde. The other had a limp.
Jackie didn’t hesitate. She slammed on the brakes and leaned across the passenger seat to open the door. “Get in,” she shouted.
Andie dove across the backseat. Scarlett slammed the door behind her and jumped in beside Jackie. “Drive!”
She didn’t say a word when Scarlett crouched on the floorboard, invisible to anyone looking through the windshield. A quick glance in her rear-view mirror showed Andie, prone on the seat, also out of sight.
Jackie bypassed the store and headed to her apartment block instead. She pulled into her parking space and let the car idle for a moment. “Did you rob the joint?”
“Funny.” Andie poked her head over the back of the seat. “Did they follow us?”
“What? I was kidding! Did you really rob the diner?”
Scarlett looked up. “Of course not. But we are on the run. Can you drive us home?”
“Who am I on the lookout for?” Mob hitmen or alien bodysnatchers would really make her day. The more likely answer was one of the town gossips. Either way, this was the most excitement she’d had in months.
“News vans.”
“There are news vans in Hopewell?” This was startling…news, for lack of a better word. “Why?”
Both women stared at her. “How could you not have heard? What have you been doing all afternoon?”
“Bailing out the radiology department. Why, what happened?”
Scarlett swivelled her head. “Can you drive while we talk?”
“Sure.”
It was easier said than done. A white van with a red news logo was parked outside the St. James home. As was a RCMP cruiser. Jackie relayed everything she saw as Scarlett hid on the floorboards again. Another news van, a blue one, was down the street from the Ronalds’. Jackie assumed the distance had something to do with Andie’s grandfather sitting on the front steps with a shotgun leaning on the chair beside him.
“You can take the farmer off the land, but he’ll always recognize a varmint. Where are we going to go?” Andie asked.
“My place?” Jackie offered.
“If you don’t mind.”
It only took a minute to backtrack to her apartment. Fortunately, her parking spot was next to the back door. The three of them bolted from the car to the entrance, up the stairs, and into her apartment. Jackie heard televisions while they were in the hall, but the sound cut off as soon as she closed the door. “Patricia, are you home?” she called.
Scarlett and Andie didn’t wait for an answer. They stumbled to her sofa and flopped on it, looking as exhausted as she felt.
Jackie locked the door behind her. “Okay, what is going on? Why are there news crews? Who did what to whom?” She peeled off her windbreaker and hung it from the hook on the back of the door, letting it drip on the tile floor.
“Do you truly not know?” Andie asked.
“Maybe we should just turn on the news,” Scarlett suggested.
“No, that’s mean. We should tell her.”
At first, she’d been amused. Now she was starting to worry. “I haven’t seen Doug since the reunion. Or Jason or Jonathan. Or Evelyn. Was there an accident?” If they’d all been in a car crash on the way to someplace, it had to be closer to the city or they would have been brought to the Hopewell Hospital.
“No!” The redhead’s vehement denial eased Jackie’s worries a little. “No,” Scarlett repeated, “nothing bad happened at all. It’s good news. A lot of good news.”
“Fifty million dollars’ worth of good news,” Andie muttered.
“What?”
Scarlett pushed back her bangs. “The Maxx Money jackpot was fifty million last Friday. Did you get a ticket?”
“No, I don’t play the lottery.” She couldn’t afford the five dollars for the chance to win a million. Irony sucked.
“We did,” Scarlett said. “All of us at the dinner.”
A pregnant pause filled the room. It took a second for Jackie’s brain to catch up with her ears. “You bought a Maxx money ticket. You won the Maxx Money jackpot?”
Scarlett nodded.
“How much was it?”
“Fifty million dollars,” Andie said slowly.
“Oh my God. You’re rich! Congratulations!” This called for champagne, which she obviously didn’t have on hand. She did have a bottle of merlot left over from Christmas which she’d won at a holiday party. “I have wine. Let me get glasses.”
Her hands shook as she poured. “You must be thrilled. And terrified.” She would be. If she won ten thousand dollars she’d be over the moon. That would pay off her student loans. The thought of a hundred thousand would give her a panic attack; she wouldn’t know what to do with the freedom. But a million? Fifty million? “How many of you won?”
Andie counted the winners off on her fingers. “Twelve of us. Me. Scarlett. Jonathan and Kirby. Freddie, Jason, Tyler, and Noah. Evelyn. Doug and Cameron. Cordelia, although we haven’t been able to reach her yet. She’s been travelling.” She tugged on her ponytail again. “I still can’t believe it’s real. What am I going to do with four million dollars and change?”
Scarlett laughed. “Whatever you want.” She laughed again, and that time Jackie heard an edge of hysteria to it.
“Maybe you need something stronger than wine.” Jackie wanted all the details. This was the single most exciting thing she’d ever heard in her life, including Doug asking her out less than a week ago. Fifty million dollars! No wonder news crews were swarming all over town. The win would make headlines across the country.
But Andie and Scarlett didn’t look thrilled. She studied them for a second. Definitely not excited. More like tense and exhausted. Jackie didn’t get it. Why weren’t they ecstatic? She let them have a sip of wine before she inadvertently put her foot in her mouth.
“Why were you running from the television crews? Did you not want to give them an interview?”
“We already told them the whole story when we were at the lottery headquarters this morning. They know everything about the reunion and everyone who won. These crews followed us home. My mom called and said they wanted to do an interview with my family in our home to show my ‘very humble origin story.’ She kicked them out and warned me to stay away.” Scarlett snorted. “We already told them we’d do another set of interviews later in the week.”
Andie looked up from her phone, which she’d pulled out while Jackie was in the kitchen. “They told my Pops the same thing. Which is when he went for his shotgun. I warned Jason we should wait and come up with a better plan. Now we’ll be dodging them ’til a better news story comes along. I don’t want them digging into every little facet about my life. I get that winning the lottery is news. Why I broke up with my last boyfriend is not.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I’ll bet they’re going to call my ex. I have no idea what he is going to tell them, but it won’t be pretty.”
Yes, they’d had enough questions. Hers would keep. “Are we moving on to the ‘men are scum’ conversation?”
Andie nodded vigorously. “Did I tell you what happened in Alberta?”
“Only a little bit.” They’d had a girls’ night out when Andie returned to Hopewell in the spring. The official story was that she’d come home in the off season to look after her grandfather, who had been having health issues. The real reason was that the injury she’d suffered at the end of her last hockey game was more than enough to keep her from playing in the playoffs. It was severe enough to end her career. Andie had hoped to find a surgeon who could repair the damage, but all her appointments with specialists in Winnipeg had not yielded any good news. “It was bad enough when Richard dumped me as a client when he found out I’d never play competitive hockey again. He said he thought it would reflect on him as a physical therapist. I just heard from a former teammate that he moved in with the left winger they brought in to replace me. I thought I was going to marry that jerk!”
“Okay, you win,” Jackie agreed. ‘Jerk’ was too kind of a word for a person who would do that. She noted they’d relaxed slightly when they realized she wasn’t going to press them for more information about the lottery. “I only come in as runner-up.”
Her comment eased tension even more.
Scarlett frowned. “I thought Doug asked you out. Not that I was spying, but I overheard you on Friday night. He was really excited when he came back to the gym.”
That was flattering, but it didn’t change anything. “We were supposed to go to Oak Lake Beach on Sunday. I got a text from him on Saturday saying something came up. I guess it was…” Jackie gestured at the two of them. “He hasn’t texted again. I’m still in the social life Sahara.”
Scarlett growled, making Jackie and Andie laugh. “I can’t believe he did that,” the redhead said.
“I think he had a few million things on his mind. Don’t mention I said anything, okay? If he calls, he calls, but if he doesn’t, I don’t want to make things weird between us. I have to work with him,” Jackie begged. That was all she needed; having a co-worker thinking she was mooning over him. She’d be perfectly fine if Doug changed his mind.
Andie coughed into her hand.
“I’m serious,” Jackie insisted. “Not a word.”
“Fine,” Andie agreed. “Not one single word.”
It was unusual for Andie to give in so easily, but she believed her. Now that she’d mentioned Doug being a winner, Jackie wanted to shift the conversation back to less stressful topics.
And there was Scarlett, just sitting there innocently. She was the perfect target.
“What about you, Miss St. James. How’s your love life going?” she asked.
Scarlett sputtered, Andie roared with laughter, and Jackie refilled their wine glasses.