By six o’clock, I was back at Gloria’s house, sitting on her green velvet sofa. The radiator in the corner gave a loud clank, then fell silent.
Gloria came in from the kitchen, holding a folded copy of the Oakridge Herald. She sat down close to me, her spectacles resting on her forehead.
“Look at the local page,” she whispered.
She pointed a crooked finger at a small column near the bottom of the page. The newsprint was cheap, and the dark ink smudged against her thumb as she pressed it down.
The headline was only three lines long, tucked between a high school football score and a grocery advertisement. It announced that a single winning ticket for the ten million dollar jackpot had been sold on Elm Street on Tuesday afternoon.
I held the newspaper clipping, staring at the numbers that matched my memory.
By Saturday morning, the numbers were still burned into my mind, but the newspaper lay on Gloria’s kitchen table under a plate of cold toast.
The kitchen smelled of burnt crumbs and old tea.
