jackpot’s up to forty million,” Stella said as she helped Gwen set the kitchen table. Usually they ate in the dining room, but since there would only be three of them tonight, there was no sense being formal. Irene was meeting with her book club, which was hosted by Regina Larson, the mayor’s wife.
“Mmm, forty million,” Gwen said dreamily. “Split twelve ways, but still. The first thing I’d do is buy a new stove.”
“If I became an instant millionaire, I’d get the heck out of Jester,” Stella said with a laugh, her tight blond curls vibrating. “We’ll never find husbands here, honey.”
“I don’t want a husband,” Gwen declared. “I’m happy with things just the way they are.” She’d had to remind herself of that a lot lately. Oh, sure, she’d like a husband, children, a real family. But she didn’t go out much, never went on a date. Heck, she’d grown up with most of the guys in Jester, and she had a hard time thinking of any of them in a romantic way. Some of them weren’t all that bad-looking. Sheriff Luke McNeil was a hunk, and Dev Devlin, who owned the Heartbreaker Saloon, was pretty easy on the eyes. But even if Gwen was interested, she was shy and rather plain, so none of those guys gave her a second look.
“Oh, pshaw,” Stella said. “I’ve had a man, and I’ve been alone, and let me tell you, having a man is better.”
Stella, who was somewhere in her fifties, had never married, but she’d once been engaged. Her fiancé had died, and it was something she didn’t talk about much. But sometimes Gwen sensed a deep sadness behind Stella’s twinkly blue eyes.
Oggie Lewis, one of Gwen’s other boarders, had a crush on Stella. Everyone but Stella knew it. Gwen was often tempted to mention it, but then she would hear her grandmother’s voice: “Stay out of other people’s business, and you’ll never make enemies.”
“Oh, here comes the draw,” Gwen said, glad to have an excuse to change the subject. She turned up the volume on the TV.
The announcer drew out a Ping-Pong ball from the hopper. “Tonight’s first number is…ten. Ten.”
“Hey, that’s one of your numbers,” Stella said, checking the list Gwen kept on the fridge.
“The second number is…twelve. That’s twelve.”
“All right, another one!” Stella squealed.
Gwen felt an irrational bloom of excitement growing. One more number, and they could win five dollars. That was, what, forty cents apiece? That thought brought her back to earth.
“The third number is…twenty. Twenty.”
“That’s three!” Now Gwen really was getting a little excited. The first three numbers were matches. That had never happened before.
In what seemed like slow motion, the announcer called another number, then another. Each one was a match for Gwen’s numbers. She reached out and grabbed Stella’s hand. “This can’t be real,” she murmured.
Then the announcer reached into the hopper for the sixth and final number.
“Three,” Gwen and Stella murmured together. “Three, three, three.”
“The sixth and final number is…three.”
Both women screamed. All six numbers were displayed on the screen for a few seconds. Gwen quickly compared them against her list, just to be sure.
She’d won the lottery. She and her friends.
Moments later, she heard screaming and whooping out in the street. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who’d been watching the draw.
Gwen turned to Stella and hugged her. “I’m rich!”
“You’re rich!” Stella agreed.
“What should I do now?”
“Let’s go out in the street and celebrate! Sounds like everyone else is.”
“Okay!”
As they ran through the house, grabbing coats and scarves, whooping and hollering like children, Oggie Lewis rushed downstairs to see what the commotion was about. Oggie, also in his fifties, was the vice principal at Jester High School. He was always dignified and nattily dressed. But when Stella shouted out the good news, he gave a little whoop of his own and ran out the front door without even a jacket—and it was snowing!
The Tanner Boardinghouse was on the corner of Main and Ashland Avenue. On Main Street, dozens of people were running around shouting, hugging each other, dancing, throwing things in the air. It seemed the whole town had gone crazy! But it was a nice crazy, Gwen mused giddily.
Jester had had little to celebrate in recent years. Some businesses, like the car repair shop around the corner from Gwen, had shut down, and others were hanging on by a spiderweb. Forty million dollars injected into the Jester economy would help not just the lottery winners themselves, but the whole town.
“Gwen, Gwen!” Gwen’s best friend, Sylvia Rutledge, was running toward her, slipping and sliding on the snowy street. “We won!”
“I know,” Gwen said, laughing as she hugged her friend.
“And it was your numbers. You’re our lucky charm!”
“I know!”
Moments later, everybody was hugging Gwen. She was not used to so much attention, and she could feel her face heating from embarrassment and excitement.
“I can pay off my mortgage!” shouted Shelly Dupree, who owned The Brimming Cup, the only coffee shop in town. Gwen had heard that the petite brunette was in danger of losing her little café, left to her by her parents.
Only one person in the street wasn’t celebrating. Wyla Thorne, who normally was one of the regulars in the lottery group, had decided not to buy a ticket last week. She’d said she was tired of throwing her money down a hole, and Jack Hartman, the town’s veterinarian, had been recruited in her place. Now the pencil-thin redhead leaned against the old horse trough in front of the Heartbreaker Saloon, arms folded, a sour expression on her already pinched face.
“Oh, poor Wyla,” said Stella, who was the only person in town Wyla could truly claim as a friend. “What a terrible week for her to quit the lottery.”
“I should say something to her,” Gwen said. “But what?”
“Oh, leave her alone,” said Sylvia. “She’ll get over it, eventually. After we’ve all heard how unfair it is, about a million times.”
Gwen was afraid Sylvia was right. Wyla did tend to feel sorry for herself a lot, though her last divorce had netted her a very profitable pig farm. She was about the only person in town who really didn’t need the lottery proceeds.
“C’mon,” Sylvia said, dragging Gwen by the arm. “We’re gonna celebrate. It’s not every day we become millionaires.”
“Celebrate?” The idea was a bit foreign to Gwen. “How?”
“The Wild Mustang has Wet T-Shirt Night on Tuesdays.”
“Oh, right.” Gwen decided Sylvia’s good fortune had caused a few screws to come loose in her head.
“I’m not suggesting we participate,” Sylvia said. “But the place will be full of cowboys. And you know how I like cowboys.”
Boy, did she. Sylvia was probably the most stylish person in Jester. She owned The Crowning Glory Hair Salon, and she was always attending hairstyling conventions in exotic places like Denver and Seattle, returning with the latest cuts—and the latest story of her exploits with the opposite sex. If she could hook up with a cowboy, that much better.
“Oh, come on,” Sylvia urged. “I’ll drive.”
“It’s forty miles to Roan.” Roan, North Dakota, was where The Wild Mustang was located.
“Exactly.