Winning Isn't Everything by John C. Laird (best novels to read txt) 📕

Amy stared across the frozen lake, squinting in the reflected glare of sunlight off the blue ice. She had walked—maybe ten feet—beyond the end of their dock, trying to clear her head in the frigid temperatures of a late February afternoon. She didn't want to go any farther out; there had already been several ominous cracking, groaning sounds deep in the ice. She was trying to get her emotions under control; she just couldn’t be wrong. She pulled her winter coat tight around her. She just knew her asshole husband, Roger, had ruined everything somehow. She knew she was right; she felt it. He had to be wrong. The smug son-of-a-bitch was always right. Big-shot lawyer.

Amy had barely made it through high school, was working as a waitress when she first met Roger and they’d started dating. He said he loved her, but she felt that he looked down on her, was always somehow condescending. Things seemed to have a way of going wrong for her, but this time it should have been different, it had been her chance to shine, to be a winner...

The ice moaned, a low and painful sound. Amy looked down at her feet. Her expression froze, as if in sympathy with the ice. Her eyes widened. "Oh, my God, it can't be, it can't be," she whispered. She dropped to her knees and frantically began pawing at the ice, her expression now thawed with the flushed excitement of anticipation.

The waters of the lake were pristine and, when frozen, still afforded several inches of clarity before the ice caused a gradual distortion—similar to looking through an ice cube in a glass of water. And what she was peering at—her nose almost touching the lake’s glistening face –was locked in the ice only several inches below the surface. She could see it clearly. Although she had believed with all her heart, she was still in a daze at the enormity of it, the impossible odds of it. Her idiot husband had been wrong; her blind faith had been justified. Wait until she told him...

Amy jumped up causing another, sharper crack; she'd have to be careful. What to do? Roger wasn't going to be home from the office until late, after dark. She should wait for him, but she really wanted to flaunt it in his face. Besides, there was no way she could keep her emotions, her surging euphoria, in check. She'd get the axe and get it out herself. Smiling, she headed back to the house, to the shed in the back yard. "Wait till he sees this; he'll never look down on me again," she muttered.

#

After he arrived home that night and failed to find her, Roger searched the area around the house illuminated by the porch and security lights. Although Amy wasn’t spontaneous by nature, he called everywhere she might have gone. He knew she felt deficient in their relationship, their marriage, and Roger had never been able to assuage her inferiority complex. Still, her obsession this last week had been unsettling, probably because the deadline was fast approaching. She kept insisting that she was right...

Roger finally phoned the local police and reported her missing.

A moonless night and lack of lighting around the rural area prevented the search from commencing until daybreak. The search party, comprised of several officers and a group of volunteers, started out while Roger monitored the phones at home and waited for news. He didn’t have long to wait. They found Amy in the lake, a dozen feet beyond their dock; she had broken through the ice and had either drowned or frozen to death.

Roger stood mute, in shock, as the Sergeant droned on with condolences, information, suggestions, directions. Finally, something broke through the choking fog encasing Roger's mind. “…and we found this clutched in her hand," the Sergeant was saying.

Roger took the soggy scrap of paper, stared at it, read it, remembered it. The color drained from his face. "Oh, my God." His hand went to his mouth; he collapsed onto the couch. "It can't be."

The Sergeant stood waiting, silent.

Roger was literally moaning. “Oh no, oh no, oh no…” He stopped and wiped at the tears in his eyes. “She used to save them up, and I’d occasionally throw out the old ones. She’d get really upset with me; it was her 'thing.' It’s been a year and the deadline was midnight tomorrow. This must have been one of the losers I threw in the lake while I was fishing from the dock." He choked back a sob. "Jesus, I remember the numbers, she kept repeating them like a mantra. I must have made a mistake, read the numbers wrong."

“She was right after all; she really did have the winner to the million-dollar Mega Lottery."

###

Text: John C. Laird
Images: istockphoto.com
Editing: Alexandra Laird
Publication Date: 07-30-2012

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