Gary came in at nine-fifteen. In his robe. For coffee.
He saw me on the floor.
He saw the newspaper.
He stopped.
“Patty?” he said. “You okay? What are you doing on the floor?”
I looked up at him.
I looked at his face. At his eyes. At the way he was holding his coffee cup. Very still. Very careful.
“My back,” I said. “I dropped a fork. I bent down to get it and my back went out.”
Gary looked at me for a long moment.
“You want me to help you up?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll just sit here a minute.”
He poured his coffee.
He looked at the newspaper in my lap.
He didn’t say anything.
He went back to the living room.
I didn’t say anything either.
I wanted to see exactly what kind of man I’d given thirty-four years of my life to.
I found out on Friday.
I was eating breakfast. At the kitchen table. Scrambled eggs and toast. Same as every morning.
Gary came in.
He was dressed. Jeans. A clean flannel shirt. His good boots.
He was holding a manila envelope.
He set it on the table next to my plate.
“What’s this?” I said.
“Open it,” Gary said.
I opened it.
IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF WHITFIELD COUNTY, STATE OF GEORGIA
PETITION FOR DIVORCE
GARY WAYNE DUNN, Petitioner, v. PATRICIA ANN DUNN, Respondent.
Divorce papers.
Filed Tuesday.
The day after June’s surgery.
The day after the ticket disappeared from the fridge.
I looked at the date.
Then I looked at Gary.
He sat down across from me.
He picked up a piece of my toast. Off my plate.
He started spreading butter on it.
“I’ve been unhappy a long time,” he said. “I think you know that.”
“Is that right,” I said.
“Thirty-four years, Patty,” he said. He took a bite of my toast. “We grew apart. It happens. The kids are grown. There’s no reason to keep pretending.”
He chewed.
“I’m moving out,” he said. “Today.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Now,” Gary said. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I want you to understand something. So you don’t get your hopes up.”
He leaned back.
“The house is mortgaged to the roof,” he said. “I took out a second in 2019. For the boat and the truck. We owe more than it’s worth.”
I didn’t know about the second mortgage.
“The truck’s in my name,” Gary said. “The boat’s in my name. The retirement account from Shaw is in my name.”
He smiled at me.
“So I wouldn’t expect much, Patty,” he said.
He took another bite of my toast.
“Half of nothing,” he said, “is nothing.”
I looked at him.
At the man I married in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen with a ring from Kmart.
The man I’d made breakfast for twelve thousand times. Whose shirts I’d ironed. Whose children I’d raised. Whose mother I’d sat with in the hospital when she died in 2011. Because Gary said hospitals made him uncomfortable.
“Okay,” I said.
He blinked.
He’d expected something else. Crying. Begging. Yelling.
“Okay?”
“Okay, Gary,” I said.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he shrugged.
He finished my toast.
He packed two suitcases.
And all of his fishing gear.
It took him two hours. Rods. Reels. Tackle boxes. Waders. A cooler. A cast net. Three hats.
He loaded it all into the back of his truck. The silver F-150. In his name.
At the front door, he stopped.
He turned around.
He looked at me. Standing in the hallway. In my robe.
Without thinking, he reached back.
He patted his back pocket.
His wallet.
He didn’t even realize he was doing it.
I saw it.
“Take care of yourself, Patty,” he said.
He walked out.
He got in the truck.
He backed out of the driveway.
He turned left on Murray Avenue.
Toward Interstate 75.
Toward Atlanta.
Ninety minutes south.
To the Georgia Lottery Claims Center on Centennial Olympic Park Drive.
I washed his breakfast plate in the sink.
My plate. That he’d eaten my toast off of.
I dried it. I put it in the cabinet.
I went out back. I watered my tomato plants. The Cherokee Purples. The Better Boys. The little Sungolds by the fence.
I came back inside.
I went to my bedroom closet.
I moved my winter boots.
I took out the shoebox.
It was heavy.
Nine hundred and eighty-seven tickets. Rubber-banded in stacks of fifty.
The nine hundred and eighty-eighth was missing.
I took the shoebox out to the porch.
I made a glass of iced tea.
I sat down in my mother’s white wicker rocker.
And I waited.
At 2:47 that afternoon, my phone rang.
“Is this Patricia Dunn?”
“It is.”
“Mrs. Dunn, my name is Linda Holloway. I’m with the Georgia Lottery Claims Center. Your husband is here trying to claim a winning ticket.”
“I thought he might be.”
“Ma’am, we have a problem with the back of this ticket. It’s already been signed. And the signature doesn’t match his ID.”
In the background, Gary was shouting.
“No, Linda,” I said. “I don’t imagine it would.”
There was a long pause.
