Rolling in the Deep

by Rebecca Rogers Maher

  Apparently fights among coworkers who share lottery tickets are pretty common. Some people write up an agreement before the drawing. You can even download templates for it online. Maybe I should have done that, for Holly’s sake. So she wouldn’t worry. But who the hell thought we would actually win?

  I wish I could talk to her about the press conference today. No one else could possibly understand how seriously weird that shit was.

  I know some people get the money and go off the deep end. Like, drown in a pool full of coke or something. I read a story once about a guy who kept his winnings secret from his wife, had a daughter from a previous marriage claim the money, and then left the wife penniless. I can’t imagine the depravity this kind of windfall could lead a person to.

  And then there’s the people asking for money. It’s only a matter of time before that starts happening, and I have no idea what I’m going to say. Why am I the one that money fell out of the sky and landed on? It was only dumb luck that I won. It’s not like I worked for it—not like I earned it.

  Truly, there are people in every location on the planet who need this more than I do. Sure, it’s not easy hustling two jobs, living paycheck to paycheck. But I had a roof over my head, enough cash for food.

  People all over the world are starving. They live in cardboard boxes. Their children don’t have any shoes, and can’t go to school. And they didn’t win the damn lottery. Why me, and not them?

  I wonder if Holly is thinking thoughts like this, alone in her car on the thruway, heading home. I wish we were driving together. I wish I could call her.

  But she doesn’t know me yet, not really. There’s no reason for her to trust that I won’t try to manipulate this money away from her. Her lawyer is right. That’s the way the world works. Both of us have to be careful. This money—miracle that it is—also makes us targets. Over the next few months it’s likely we’ll be inundated by demands for cash—legitimate requests and scams alike. Like Holly, I’ll have to be vigilant.

  I just don’t want to be vigilant where she’s concerned.

  What I want—if I’m honest—is to crawl into bed with her and not come out until all of this drama blows over.

  Chapter 9

  Holly

  “I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t let me come with you to the press conference.”

  Beth kneels beside me, in the dirt, wearing a canvas hat, transferring seedlings from plastic containers into a newly built garden bed.

  “I just…I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.” I grab a seedling and start a new row. “I wanted to get it over with.”

  “Not make a big deal? Are you serious? Honey, this is about as huge a deal as it gets.” She sits back on her heels and eyes me carefully. “Are you okay? You look like you’re about to be sick.”

  My eyes fill, and I wipe them on my sleeve.

  “Holly.” Beth reaches across the soil and puts her hand on my knee.

  “Brett called.”

  “Oh shit. Let me guess. He wasn’t happy for you.”

  I laugh a little at that. “How’d you know?”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, you know. Who is this Ray guy and all that. And obviously I’m sleeping with him but I might want to think about Drew for once in my life and make sure Ray doesn’t run off with the money. Did I even think to get myself a lawyer? And my fifteen minutes of fame are probably keeping me too busy to take care of my kid, so maybe Drew should just stay with him.”

  Beth takes off her hat. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “Holly, he can’t threaten to keep Drew from you.”

  I sigh, and dig a new hole in the soil.

  Beth is a good friend and I know she loves me. But right now, if I have to listen to another lecture about not letting Brett bully me, I’m going to lose my mind. She doesn’t understand what he’s capable of.

  When I first met Brett, it was only a few months after my mother died. Every day for weeks, he came into the café where I worked and completely ignored me, which I was grateful for. All the girls who worked behind the counter were talking about him—how athletic he was, how he looked like he belonged on a beach in California. I never would have even thought to try talking to him.

  And then he chose me. That’s how it felt, that I was picked by him, like a berry from a bush. One day he came in and stared at me from his table for a very long time. The next day he asked me to a Broadway show. It didn’t occur to me to say no.

  From that first date, he did all the talking. It wasn’t long before he plucked me out of the café and brought me in to work at the bookstore where he was a manager.

  At first, I enjoyed being around all those books. The relative quiet and the fresh smell of pages were soothing, ordinary. I brought piles of novels home to read every week—classics and thrillers, romance and crime fiction—I loved all of it. But Brett was unexpectedly hard on me at the store, singling me out and criticizing my work in front of the other employees. Then he’d drive me home and act like nothing had happened. “It’s just so no one suspects we’re together,” he said. “I could get fired for dating a subordinate.”

  In retrospect I think he just enjoyed the power he could wield over me in public, but I was too checked-out to see that. I was still reeling from Mom’s funeral, trying to pack up her stuff and figure out how to live in our apartment all alone. He told me he’d had a tough life, a hyper-critical father, and sent flowers to apologize when he’d been particularly severe. I tried to be understanding.

  I was adrift then. I didn’t have any direction. Mom was gone, I’d never had a dad to speak of, and I was all alone. I had a few friends from school, but since all I ever had time for was work or studying, those friendships were tenuous.

  My world was upside down when Brett walked into it. He set everything to rights in the way that suited him best. He was in charge, and I followed.

  By the time I woke up to the full extent of his control over me, I was pregnant with Drew, and once he was born it was all about him. There wasn’t time for classes anymore. I worked nights at a gas station in town, when Brett could be home with the baby. I slept whenever I could, which wasn’t often.

  Brett found every possible reason to criticize me as a mother. I breast-fed Drew, and that made Brett furious. He didn’t like sharing my body, and he didn’t like that it made Drew prefer me. Drew would cry, and Brett couldn’t soothe him, even with the bottles of milk I pumped in advance. I’d come home at dawn to find them both awake, the house a mess I’d spend the rest of the day trying to clean.

  Brett accused me of excluding him on purpose. He told me I was spoiling Drew, and that’s why he would cry until he got what he wanted. He complained every day about the disorganization of our home, the poor quality of the dinners I cooked.

  I knew that I’d made a mistake. That I had to get away. But I was afraid of Brett. He had this incredible power over people, to make them believe whatever he said. Beside him I always sounded like a blithering idiot, like someone far less intelligent. If it came down to a custody battle, I feared he would find a way to persuade a judge that I was an unfit mother, and I wouldn’t be articulate enough, together enough, to defend myself. He would take Drew away from me.

  And I was only twenty-two years old. I had no family. My few friends had trickled away, irritated by Brett’s arrogance and mean sense of humor.

  Only Beth remained. We’d known each other casually in school, and went out for lunch every few months, maybe. She was wild, which I envied and feared in equal measure, and she was the last one I expected to help out with a newborn. But when I had Drew she started showing up more. I think she realized the abject state I was in. She had no idea how to handle a baby, but she gave me moral support. She confirmed that I wasn’t crazy—that things were as bad as I thought they were and not, as Brett insisted, all my fault.

  Without her, I don’t think I would have found the strength to leave Brett. It took me a f
ull year, but with Beth’s help I found an apartment of my own. I spent the last of my mother’s meager life insurance policy on legal fees for the divorce.

  And Brett has been punishing me ever since. It made him crazy that anyone would leave him. I think he believed it could go on like that forever. That he could keep treating me the way he did. That he could go on sneaking around with other women, and I’d look the other way.

  I thought it would make things better when he found a new partner, although I feared for that woman, whoever she was going to be. Thank God it was Emma, who at least has something to hold over Brett. Her money offers him a certain lifestyle he doesn’t want to lose. With her, he was able to quit his job at the bookstore and go to law school. Which has only made his threats more pointed. Now, on top of his arrogance and newfound money, he has what he believes is the legal expertise to open the custody case again and contest the arrangement. Even more so now that Emma is in the picture, a replacement mother—far more stable, he says, than I am.

  I try to tell that to Beth now, but she shakes her head, wiping her brow with a dirt-covered arm.

  “He’s not going to do that, Holly.”

  “But he’s worried about Drew being in the spotlight, which is real, don’t you think?”

  She makes a face. “It’s also real that you have a shitload of money now, and could buy your privacy if you wanted to. Build a gated mansion—whatever. You have the means to protect him.”

  “But what if the kids at school find out? How are they going to treat him now? What if he—Oh, God.”

  Beth draws back. “What?”

  “What if someone…if someone, like, kidnapped him. For money.”

  “Holly. This isn’t a crime novel. No one’s going to kidnap Drew.”

  I point my trowel at her. “You don’t have to be so dismissive.”

  Beth softens. “You’re right. I’m sorry. This must be impossible to wrap your head around. It must be scary as hell, and I totally see the parts of it that are overwhelming or upsetting and all that. But I guess I just don’t…I mean, aren’t you happy? You’re not, like, excited or anything, that you won? Just a little bit?”

  I look out past the perimeter of our community garden, at the housing projects across the street. A teenage volunteer from one of those apartments pushes a wheelbarrow filled with a bag of fertilizer toward the shed. She’s here on a school day, on a project we arranged with her teachers. At three o’clock, she’ll pick up all four of her siblings and take care of them herself until her grandmother gets home after bedtime.

  “I’m an asshole,” I tell Beth. “I know that. A normal person would be through the roof right now.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but you don’t need to. I know it.” I shake my head. “I keep waiting for it to start feeling good. To be, you know, exciting, like you said. I keep thinking tomorrow I’ll wake up and it’ll sink in, and I’ll celebrate.”

  “Think of all the things you never have to worry about. Ever again. Like how to pay for Drew’s college.”

  I nod, and bite my lip because it’s starting to tremble. “I’ll be able to take care of him now.”

  “You can retire! You can maybe have a little fun for once.”

  “Fun?” I laugh. “What is that?”

  Beth stands and stretches. “You can find out! You can take a trip to Paris. You can hire a private dance teacher and learn the merengue.”

  “Is that what you’d do?” I gather up the supplies and rise, too, dislodging a cascade of dirt from my lap.

  Beth smiles, considering. “I don’t know. If the instructor were really, really hot, maybe.”

  “I can help out the garden. That will feel good.” I look around at our small plot of land. “We could make this space bigger, maybe expand into the empty lot. We won’t have any trouble getting supplies anymore. Maybe we could hire a part-time person to keep it up and organize the volunteers.”

  “Exactly.” Beth nods. “That’s how you need to be thinking. About the possibilities, about all you can do. You have to stop being afraid.”

  “It’s just that, you know…think of all the millions of people who paid for a Powerball ticket.” I walk toward the shed to set down our empty seedling containers. “And they lost, and I won. Why? It’s not…it’s not fair. I feel like I don’t deserve it, no more than anyone else did. So why me?”

  Beth hangs up her apron on a nail on the shed wall. “It’s just luck, Holly. It’s not about fairness or whether you deserve it. It just happened. It’s random.”

  “It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Well.” Beth punches me lightly on the shoulder. “Sorry. But you’re gonna need to suck it up. You won the money. You feeling guilty about it isn’t going to magically make the world a fair place where everyone gets what they need or deserve.”

  It’s dark inside the shed, and cool. It smells like worms and spring.

  Beth stares me down, and then continues. “You worrying, about Brett or Drew or whatever, isn’t going to make anything better either. All you can do is live the best life you possibly can. Be kind and share what you’re able to share. And enjoy it. For God’s sake, you’re rich, sister. This is what people spend their whole lives dreaming about.”

  I set my tools down on a table with three legs, which stands upright only because we’ve wedged it against the wall. It slips occasionally, though, and everything we store on it lists into the corner.

  I can fix it now. I can buy a whole new damn table. A new shed. A new everything. A little sob of energy rays through me, like a spark through my stupid tears.

  It feels the same way kissing Ray felt—too wild to be trusted. Too out of control. And random. Totally random.

  “I wish I could talk to Ray about it,” I tell Beth.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “You know why. The lawyer—”

  Beth rolls her eyes. “Fuck the lawyer. And fuck Brett, too. If you want to talk to Ray, talk to him. He’s probably freaking out as much as you are. And who else understands what’s happening to you right now better than he does?”

  “He understands a little too much,” I say carefully.

  Beth narrows her eyes and leans in. “What does that mean?”

  I don’t know what to say. I just look at her. The quiet and stillness of the shed is like a confessional.

  “I was going to tell you. I just…there was so much going on, and—”

  “Oh my God, Holly.” Beth’s eyes light up like it’s Christmas. “Did you sleep with him?”

  I bite my lip. “No, but I…I kissed him. He kissed me. We—”

  “You kissed each other. I get it.” Beth shakes her head, grinning widely. “You have to tell me absolutely everything. When?”

  “The night we found out about the ticket.”

  “Holly, that was like three days ago.” Beth pulls up a rusty folding chair.

  “I…” I shut my eyes tight and sit down on the dirt floor. “I just…Beth.”

  She stills. “Was it bad?”

  I shake my head, silent.

  Beth watches me steadily. “You’re turning bright red.” When I cover my face with my hands, she lets out a little huff of surprised breath. “So it was good. By the looks of you, I’m guessing it was very good.”

  I nod into my hands.

  “No wonder you’re freaked out. With that happening on top of everything else.”

  I press my fists against my mouth and look into Beth’s eyes. They are warm and concerned, and I try to imagine what it would be like to be sitting here in this shed by myself, without her. Trying to process all this alone.

  “He’s just so…he’s so…”

  “Hot?”

  I laugh and shut my eyes again.

  “Yes.”

  Beth smiles. “Damn, girl. Win the lottery and kiss a smoking guy on the same day? I don’t know. Some people might be feeling kinda psyched right now.”

  “I know! I’m a jerk.”


  Beth touches my shoulder. “No. You’re just scared, is all.”

  “I’m scared of screwing it up somehow.”

  “You’re not going to screw it up.” She laughs. “And even if you do, you have enough money to pay someone to fix it.”

  I snort. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “Sure it is. Don’t you know anything? All rich people are very, very happy. Nothing bad ever happens to them, ever again.”

  I lean forward and rest against her knees, and she wraps an arm around me.

  “I get the money next week, Beth. You know what the first thing I’m going to do is?”

  She pulls back to look at me. “What’s that?”

  “Buy you a goddamn house.”

  Chapter 10

  Ray

  The thing that sucks about moving upstate and not knowing anybody is that when you win the lottery, there’s no one to talk to about it.

  Cry me a river, right?

  I’ve been pacing the linoleum on my kitchen floor for days, going over the press conference and wondering if I should have just left, like Holly did. Talking to the newspeople fed the fire, and now my phone won’t stop ringing. I don’t know how they got my number. It’s a human-interest story, they say, a rags-to-riches story. And everyone wants a piece of it.

  I chop probably my seventeenth onion on a cutting board my mother gave me two Christmases ago. In the last several days I’ve cooked three separate pots of soup, a batch of gorditas I brought down to Patty at the store, and two trays of penne for the freezer. I think I’ve washed every dish in the house twice. But no matter how I try to keep busy, my brain won’t stop spinning.

  It’s not just the news media. All these organizations I’ve never heard of are calling, too, and sending emails. Requesting meetings. Requesting money. This is only the beginning, I know that. My lawyer and the lottery commission guy both warned me to expect it, but it’s one thing to consider having to say no, theoretically. It’s another to be the jerk who has to do it in reality.