I walked in.
The girl behind the counter was young. Maybe twenty. With bright blue hair and a nose ring.
“Hi there. Can I help you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to buy a ticket.”
She looked at me for a second.
Then she smiled.
“Same numbers?”
I stared at her.
“You know who I am?”
“Everybody knows who you are, ma’am. You’re famous around here.” She grinned. “Mr. Hadley, the owner? He put up a plaque. In the back. By the cooler.”
I went to look.
There it was. A little brass plate screwed onto the wall right next to the beer cooler. Under a framed black-and-white photograph of that same Shell station in 1978.
WINNING TICKET SOLD HERE. $2.4 MILLION. CONGRATULATIONS, PATTY.
I stood there for a long time.
Then I walked back to the counter. I bought one ticket. Two dollars. Same numbers.
And I handed that blue-haired girl a twenty-dollar tip.
She almost dropped her pen.
Gary’s lawyer called in the second week.
He was a smooth, nervous man named Whitcomb with an office in Tulsa and a voice like a used car salesman.
He suggested, in a very roundabout way, that Gary had “perhaps acted impulsively.” That a long legal process would “serve no one’s interests.” And he proposed a settlement.
“Mr. Whitcomb,” I said. “What exactly does Gary want?”
“My client would like to resolve the matter amicably, Mrs. Dunn. He’s prepared to withdraw the divorce petition entirely.”
“I don’t want him to withdraw it.”
A pause.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’d like the divorce,” I said.
I was standing at my kitchen sink. Drying a plate.
“He filed it. I’d like it granted.”
“But, Mrs. Dunn, I assumed, given the circumstances—”
“Mr. Whitcomb. I’ve been married to Gary Dunn for thirty-four years. He’s not a bad man. But he sat at my kitchen table and told me I’d get half of nothing.”
I set the plate down on the counter.
“So I’d like to see what half of something looks like.”
He didn’t say anything.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.