Winning Amelia

by Ingrid Weaver

  “Sorry, I’d like to tell you, but that’s privileged information. You wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you?”

  The man leaned down to shine his flashlight through the interior of the car. The light paused on Amelia’s face. “Who’s that?”

  “My assistant,” Hank replied.

  “You need to move along.”

  “No problem. We’ll be gone by breakfast.” He returned his card to his wallet. “Say, is there a Tim Hortons around here?”

  The man snickered at the mention of the donut shop chain. “You’re in the wrong neighborhood for that, buddy.” He clicked off his flashlight and returned to his car, apparently deciding Hank posed no threat to the local residents if he was dumb enough to expect to find a Tim’s nearby. His retreat also might have been helped along by the raindrops that had begun to spatter the pavement.

  Hank raised his window as the security men drove away. “I was hoping this would hold off another few hours.”

  “What?” Amelia asked. “The rain or getting hassled by the rent-a-cops?”

  “Those guys won’t be a problem, they’re only doing their jobs. I meant the rain. It could get bad.”

  “It’ll be a relief if it washes away this humidity. I’ve felt as if a storm’s been building for days.”

  As if to reinforce her words, a rumble of what could have been thunder, or could have been a plane, vibrated through the car. Hank grimaced. “Digging through garbage is bad enough when it’s dry.”

  “We’ll manage.” She patted the storage nook beneath her door handle. “I see you still have your umbrella.”

  “I brought some work gloves, too. They’re in the bag in the backseat. You can stay in the car if you want, since trash hunting was my bright idea. It could get icky.”

  She leaned forward, bringing her face close to the windshield, which was becoming blurred with water as the spatters thickened. “I’m the one who thought it was a brilliant idea to put a lottery ticket in that painting. If anyone should get icky, it’s me.” She crossed her arms on the dashboard. “Assuming, of course, that we get something to dig through.”

  Hank returned his gaze to the wrought-iron gates at the end of Wolf Hennerfind’s driveway. So far, the space was empty. He’d once heard that in certain Toronto neighborhoods, the residents weren’t expected to bring their trash to the curb—the garbage men walked up to the back door of the house to fetch it. He didn’t know if that was still the case in some areas, but he’d made sure to verify that was no longer the practice on this particular street.

  A thick yew hedge blocked the view of Hennerfind’s house from here. Only the peak of the roof was visible. From what Hank had been able to see as he’d driven past, the place was a large, Tudor-style two-story set well back from the road and covered with ivy. It was stately and imposing, and the grounds encompassed at least two acres. The land alone would be worth a fortune in this section of the city.

  “We’re just early,” he said. “They haven’t put it out yet.”

  “He might not throw out the painting today, anyway. He might not decide to get rid of it for weeks.”

  “Then we can come back every Monday until he does.”

  “How long would you keep it up?”

  He would keep it up as long as Amelia was willing to accompany him. He couldn’t tell her that, though. She was already skittish enough about the relationship thing. And he sure wasn’t going to tell her that whether or not they ever found her lottery ticket, he planned to keep finding excuses to be around her, no matter what she claimed about how ill-suited they were. He had the patience to wait her out. She was still talking to him, which was encouraging. He had to believe she’d come around eventually.

  It might help his cause if the next excuse he found to be with her didn’t involve picking her up before dawn to hunt through a rich man’s garbage. “I’m not sure,” he said. “By the way, do you remember Ian Taylor? He was a few years behind us at school.”

  “I think so.”

  “I heard he’s expanding his uncle’s real estate company. My dad said he’s a real go-getter, which in Basil-speak means he’s dealing with big money. He could make a good prospective client for your new business.”

  “Thanks. I might give him a call.”

  “Great.”

  “Provided Wolf doesn’t toss the painting today.” She wiped some condensation from the windshield. “On the other hand, I might call Ian even if we do find the ticket. It felt good to draw up that financial plan for Mae and Ronnie. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy helping people realize their potential.”

  “You were good at it.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Mae and Ronnie don’t blame you for Spencer’s crimes, do they?”

  “They said they don’t. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have become my clients.”

  “Then maybe it’s time you stopped blaming yourself. You weren’t responsible for your ex-husband’s actions. You didn’t steal anything. In fact, because of his crimes you lost more than any of your clients did.”

  “Why are you bringing this up now?”

  He gestured across the road to Hennerfind’s house. “You told me that you wanted to use the lottery winnings to replace the funds that Spencer stole.”

  “Among other things.”

  “But what he did wasn’t your fault. The guilt isn’t your burden to bear. You’re not obligated to pay anyone back.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  Hank thought of the tentative peace he’d made with his father. It was a good first step, yet there was still a long way to go. “Changing your attitude is never easy, Amelia. Just promise me you’ll think about it, okay?”

  He’d expected her to argue. Instead she nodded. “I’ve got no shortage of things to think about, Hank, but I’ll be sure to add it to the list.”

  Light flashed through the car. He glanced at the rearview mirror, wondering if the security people had decided to return, but the street was dark. Thunder rumbled a few moments later. Within minutes the rain intensified. It slashed past the branches of the oak tree overhead to drum on the roof. The noise reminded Hank of the last time he and Amelia had sat through a storm in his car, when they’d been waiting at Kemp Forsythe’s place. Then he remembered the first time, when they’d parked by the lakeshore. He settled his back against his door so he could look at her.

  Even in the shadows, he could discern the stiff set of her shoulders. Was she remembering the same thing that he was? Or was she impatient to search for her ticket?

  And it was her ticket. If they did manage to find it, he had no intention of taking the twenty percent he’d demanded. He wasn’t sure when he’d decided that. Sometime during the past few days, anyway. For one thing, Amelia had more use for the money than he did. For another, all he’d ever really wanted to do was to make her happy. And to love her. Which he did. Still.

  He wasn’t sure when he’d decided that, either. That was one of the problems with love. It couldn’t be analyzed or reasoned out logically. It was one of those things you simply had to feel, to trust, to take a leap of faith on without worrying about where you’d land. Amelia had had it right even when they’d been teenagers.

  Yet what he felt for her now wasn’t the same as before. Sure, he’d loved the girl she used to be, but he loved the woman she’d become much more. He loved her stubbornness and her courage and her wit and her warmth and her fierce devotion to her family. He loved her melted cinnamon freckles. And her syrup voice, her oil-rainbow-on-water eyes, her grass-in-the-spring scent and it’s-auburn-not-red hair. He loved how doing something as ordinary as sitting in a car, in the dark, listening to the rain, seemed right because they were together.

  She reached out suddenly and grasped his knee. “Hank, something’s happening.”

  He returned his gaze to the driveway. The wind had come up. It was difficult to see past the rain that now pelted the side window, but he did glimpse movement across the road. One side of the wrought-
iron gates swung inward. A figure in a bright yellow hooded raincoat pushed a large, wheeled plastic garbage can to the curb, then turned back up the driveway.

  Amelia reached for her door handle.

  Hank extended his arm in front of her. “Wait. The gate’s still open. There could be more.”

  She took her hand away from the door and thumped her head back against the headrest.

  A minute later, the yellow-coated figure returned with a second large can, wheeled it beside the first and went back through the open gate. The third time the figure appeared, he was dragging something behind him. He propped it against one of the cans. A flash of lightning lit the scene momentarily, revealing a large, flat, rectangular shape.

  Amelia gasped. “Hank, it’s a packing crate! You were right!”

  Even though he’d guessed this might happen, he hadn’t entirely believed it. “How about that.”

  The figure in the yellow raincoat disappeared up the driveway again. This time, he swung the gate closed behind him.

  Hank twisted to get the gloves from the backseat. “Okay, we might as well—” His words were drowned out by a roll of thunder. And by the slam of the passenger door. He turned to see Amelia already dashing across the street. He followed at a jog.

  She was leaning over the packing crate when he reached her. She hadn’t bothered to take the umbrella. The rain was darkening her blouse and glistening from her hair. “It’s empty!” she shouted.

  He angled his back to the wind to help keep the rain off the crate while he regarded it himself. It was made of wood, just like the ones he’d seen in the Whitcombe Gallery storeroom. And just as he’d surmised, the lid opened to reveal two separate compartments, each one large enough to hold a painting. If he’d had more time, he might have enjoyed having this guess confirmed, too, but the rain was getting worse, and the crate was indeed empty.

  He tossed Amelia a pair of gloves and pulled on his own, then turned to the garbage cans. They were larger than they’d appeared from the other side of the road, but they weren’t big enough to hold a three-foot by two-foot painting. Not unless it had been taken apart.

  Amelia must have been struck by the same thought. She opened the lid of the can closest to her and tipped it on its side. Plastic garbage bags tumbled onto the sidewalk and rolled to the base of the yew hedge. Hank upended the can and gave it a shake to dislodge the rest of the bags. They both recoiled. The pounding rain couldn’t mask the smell. This was kitchen garbage. He motioned her back, intending to go through it on his own, but she grabbed the nearest bag and opened it. Once they’d searched through every bag in the pile, he tipped over the second can and shook it out.

  Lightning flashed again, brighter and closer than before. Thunder followed within seconds. He dropped the can and caught Amelia’s arm. “The storm’s getting too close.” He had to shout to be heard over the wind. “We should go back to the car for a while. This won’t last long.”

  “Not yet!” She spun from his grasp and fell to her knees on the pile of bags. “Look!”

  A gust rolled one of the discarded cans into his legs. He pushed it aside and saw what Amelia had spotted. A jagged piece of wood had pierced the plastic of one of the larger bags and protruded from the side.

  “It’s the frame!” she cried, clawing the other bags aside. “See the carving?”

  “Amelia...”

  “The ticket must be in here.” She tugged the bag with the wooden fragment loose from the heap. She shrieked as the bag suddenly split open. Pieces of carved wood tumbled to the sidewalk. Remnants of painted canvas still clung to some of them. Amelia crawled after one that trailed a strip of painted meadow. “Hank!”

  He scooped it up before the wind could catch it.

  She peeled off her gloves and took the fragment from him, her fingers shaking, then sat back on her heels and curled her body to shelter it as she peered at the wood.

  He squatted beside her for a closer look at what she held. Something small, pale and square, like the corner of a folded piece of paper, was wedged between the carved frame and what was left of the narrow wood slat that the painting would have been stretched on.

  Amelia grasped the edge of the paper and plucked it out. Lightning flared as she unfolded it, enabling Hank a glimpse of the triangular OLG logo and Lotto 6/49 in bold print, plus a series of numbers that were instantly seared across his brain: 1, 3, 4, 17, 23, 29. This was it. There was no doubt. They’d actually found it. They’d beaten the odds.

  Thunder crashed, leaving his ears ringing. In spite of the wind that whipped Amelia’s hair and the rain that streamed down her face, she smiled. Then grinned. Then whooped. She refolded the ticket, secured it between her palms and curled her hands protectively to her chest. “We did it, Hank!”

  The look on her face was worth at least ten million. He discarded his own gloves, grasped her shoulders and kissed her. It was quick and sloppy and tinged by the garbage they knelt on, but she didn’t seem to mind any more than he did. He helped her to her feet and turned toward the car.

  And the world exploded in a blast of blinding white....

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AMELIA FOUND HERSELF on her back, rain filling her mouth and needles from Hennerfind’s yew bushes poking her face. She coughed, gasping for breath, and rolled away from the hedge. Plastic slid beneath her hands. The stink of garbage was overpowered by the smells of ozone and charred wood. “Hank!”

  She could hear nothing over the ringing in her ears, other than the continued drumming of the rain and a strange hissing. She got to her knees, blinking hard to clear the spots from her vision. Flames danced up the trunk of the oak tree across the street. Chunks of bark and splinters of wood smoldered on the roof of Hank’s car and littered the pavement where he was sprawled facedown and motionless....

  “No!” Amelia screamed, scrambling to her feet. She ran to his side. A broken tree limb at least two feet thick lay near his head. She flung it aside. “Hank!”

  He moaned.

  Yes, oh yes. If he could moan, he wasn’t...She fell to her knees, not wanting to complete the thought. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  He braced his palms against the road and pushed himself up. He glanced around dazedly. “What the...”

  “It was lightning,” Amelia said. “It struck the oak tree.” She touched her fingers to his forehead. Blood oozed from a scrape near his hairline. “I think you got hit by a branch.”

  His gaze steadied on her. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She grasped his arms. “You need to see a doctor. You could have a concussion.”

  “No problem. My head’s harder than oak, or so I’ve been told.”

  She suppressed the urge to shake him. How could he joke? She took another look around. Steam hissed from the tree as the rain began to douse the flames. The smell of smoke stung the back of her throat. “Your forehead’s scraped raw. It needs to be cleaned.”

  “The rain’s doing that.” He caught her wrists and drew her hands in front of her. “Amelia, where’s your ticket?”

  For a moment, his words didn’t make sense. Nothing mattered except making sure Hank was really okay, because she didn’t want to lose him, she couldn’t conceive of life without him, and this wasn’t the time to think about any of that because they were sitting in the middle of the road with a burning tree on one side and a heap of garbage on the other and her hands were empty....

  Her hands. Empty.

  She heaved herself to her feet. “Oh, no.”

  Hank braced his knuckles on the pavement and shoved himself to stand. He staggered sideways a few steps until she grabbed his arm to hook it over her shoulder. She slipped her arm around his waist as they both surveyed the debris.

  “We’ll walk a grid pattern,” he said. “Do this methodically. Back and forth, so we don’t miss anything. It’s got to be here someplace.”

  She didn’t need to search. She spotted a pale speck against a blackened piece of bark less than three fee
t away. She pointed, then went to pick it up.

  The paper was wet now, but it must have been dry enough to ignite when it had blown against the burning bark. Fire had consumed most of it. All that remained of Amelia’s fifty-two million, four hundred and eighty-five thousand, seven hundred and twenty dollar ticket was a sodden smudge of ash and one small corner of paper with the Lottery Commission logo.

  It was gone. Truly, irrevocably gone.

  She let go of the scrap. She watched it drift into the puddle at the edge of the road and from there to the gutter. She didn’t look away until it disappeared through the grill of a storm drain.

  The rain thinned. Thunder still rumbled but it was farther away. The sky beyond the smoldering oak seemed lighter than just a few minutes ago. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. A car honked. A siren blared. Life went on. A new day was dawning. She shivered, suddenly aware of her dripping hair and wet clothes.

  Hank moved behind her and crossed his arms over her midriff. He rested his chin on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Amelia.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything.”

  “I hate to see you sad.”

  Out of the jumble of emotions that roiled through her as she stood in the shelter of his embrace, sadness wasn’t the strongest. She hiccupped. “Do you know the odds of winning the lottery?”

  “Not exactly, but they’re pretty slim.”

  “That’s right. It’s more likely for a person to get hit by lightning.” She waved her hand toward the tree. “Do you think Fate’s trying to tell me something?”

  “Like what?”

  “When I first lost that ticket, I thought I could fight what Fate had dished out.”

  “I remember that’s what you said.”

  “I was looking at it all wrong. I only saw what I’d lost. Now I see what I’ve already won.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It was never about the money, it was about the search. It was about trying. It was learning what really mattered.” She turned to look at him. “It was about finding you again. That’s what the ticket brought me.”