Fickle Fortune

Tom waited in the car for his son to come out of the house. It was his weekend with the boy and, like most five-year-olds, it took the kid forever to get ready. Once upon a time, Tom would have helped to dress him, and find the socks that were tossed chaotically over the bedroom, plus the backpack that would have gotten hidden behind a chair or in the closet, but the house belonged to his ex-wife's new husband, so Tom waited outside. Tom's ex, Randi, was probably chasing after Liam as she tried at the same time to get herself ready to go out. That thought made Tom smile. She was always stressed under pressure. And when she was stressed, she lost her temper.

"Be on time, please!" Randi had commanded.

"This dinner is important to Hank. He has clients coming in from Asia. This meeting is critical to his business."

Tom had kept quiet during the telephone lecture. He did not, for example, say anything about how he was always on time or how it was Randi, Hank, and Liam who were always late. He also said nothing about how he did not give a shit whether the dinner was important to Hank or not. Hank had, after all, talked Randi into his bed while Randi was still married to Tom. Tom did not say how Hank only wanted Randi to be his arm-candy because her rack looked nice in a low-cut dress when he had client dinners.

Most importantly, Tom said nothing to Randi about how, if anyone had asked Tom what he wanted, the answer would have been just a couple of minutes to disembowel Hank with a rusty knife and then garrote him with his own intestines. Tom had even looked online and found a pair of waterproof work gloves with no-slip grip that would have kept the gory offal from escaping his grasp as he really pulled the guts around the fuck-head's throat.

He said none of that though and just kept quiet as he listened to the squawking on the other end of the phone.

He had something better in his pocket, awaiting deployment.

Neither Tom nor Randi had come from money. Neither one had lived in poverty either, but Randi dreamed of being rich. Tom, on the other hand, was happy with a comfortable wage and decent house. They had met at a work networking function, dated for a while, and gotten married.

When they had met, Randi was in one of her dieting phases. She had bad eating habits and, when stressed, she ate to excess. Then, after loading on the pounds, she dieted with every miracle cure drug she could find and exercised like a maniac, sacrificing sleep to do so. She'd be thin for a while, but then would balloon up again. Her family tended to be fat, which was an extra problem because they all had severe hypertension.

Randi went through the weight-loss/weight-gain cycle three time while she and Tom were together. Hank seduced her when she was in one of her thin phases, and she seemed to have kept the weight off for the past one and a half years. Tom realized that the weight loss should have been his clue to the affair. He missed it though.

He only learned about it when Randi told him she was trading up. Tom did everything he could to put the brakes on the divorce. He was not trying to preserved the marriage. He was trying to be a dick. It was the only weapon he had. He had a good attorney though, a guy who was a friend of a friend. He fought everything. He even demanded counseling. That offended Tom. He didn't want to talk to her. But the lawyer calmed him down, explaining that Randi wanted to talk to him even less than he wanted to talk to her and that they could always withdraw the request. After all, Randi wanted to get married to Hank, so she had an incentive for things to move fast.

Tom's lawyer filed motions challenging everything, got hearings scheduled, then re-scheduled, and then filed other motions. When it came time to argue the motion for counseling, Tom's attorney withdrew the motion in court, as promised, after Randi and Hank had gone through all the time and expense of preparing. Finally, after months of arguing over everything, Randi gave Tom a check to go away and signed all common property over to him. She even paid for Tom's lawyer. Since she had no money of her own, it was obviously coming from Hank. Tom called that a win.

The divorce had just been finalized a month before. Randi and Hank had gotten married shortly afterwards. Tom had kept Liam while the happy couple went on their honeymoon.

Now, it was time. The final piece of payback. And this one did not involve anyone's intestines.

The door opened and Liam came bounding down the steps and ran along the walkway. He did not understand why he had to live in two houses but had adapted. Tom got him belted into his car seat and gave him a tablet with a movie on it. He walked up to the house.

He knocked on the door.

After a moment, Randi opened it, looking unhappy.

"What?"

She was trying to put on her earrings, make sure her hair was perfect, send out a text message to her new husband about her status, and get out the door in her little black dress and stiletto-heeled shoes, all at once.

"Had to share a story with you," Tom announced with a smile.

Randi had always complained that his stories were long and boring. She was about to say something like that now, but Tom held up his hand.

"It's about the lottery."

That stopped her. Despite herself, she was interested. Randi's fantasy was to win the lottery, especially the Gigantoball. The prize amount had recently been over $2 billion, one of the largest ever, and the winning ticket had been sold in their neighborhood. The story had been all over the news. But no one had come forward to claim the prize. An intrepid reporter had even pored over security video footage from the store that sold the ticket, but it was not possible to tell who bought it. Now, unfortunately, it was past the time to claim the prize, so the money just rolled back into the prize fund. Some guy won $2.2 billion a few weeks later.

Randi was waiting for Tom to tell the story but, instead of speaking, he held up the ticket.

Randi squinted to look at it. She was too vain to admit that she needed glasses.

"It's the winning ticket," Tom said. "For the $2 billion drawing they were talking about back when we split up."

He handed it to her.

Surprise hit Randi's face.

"Or, it was. Now it's expired."

Randi then looked shocked and desperately worked her thumbs over her phone, apparently looking up the number on the lottery site. She looked back and forth between her phone and the ticket and finally up into Tom's face.

Her expression went from shock to anger to fear and then to misery before starting the cycle again. Tom pulled the ticket back. The blood vessels in her temples throbbed visibly.

"See, I bought it just before you hit me with the divorce papers, which was actually the day before they announced the winner. It would have been part of the divorce settlement. Sure, my part would have been several hundred million dollars after they deducted for paying a lump sum and then took out taxes but--and this is the important part--so would your part. And there was no fucking way that I was going to let that happen. That's right. I walked away from a lot of money and did it for spite so you would get nothing. That's how much I hate you. You and Hank have a nice night now."

Randi had not said a word, but her jaw was working up and down, her neck muscles were tight, and she grabbed the door jamb.

Tom turned and walked back to the car. He half expected Randi to follow him screaming, but nothing happened. He and Liam drove away.

Randi's father called Tom on Sunday afternoon when he would normally be getting Liam ready to go back home. One of the unwritten conditions of the divorce was that Hank would under no circumstances ever communicate with or get close to Tom.

The call was to tell Tom that Randi had suffered a severe stroke on Friday night as she was getting ready to go out. Hank had only discovered her condition when he returned from the dinner that Randi failed to attend. By the time she got medical help, she was in bad shape, paralyzed on one side, blind, and unable to speak. Randi's father asked Tom to keep Liam for the time being, until she got the therapy she needed and got back to normal, whenever that might be. Hank was going to have to spend considerable time taking care of Randi now.

Tom agreed to keep Liam for the time being and, on Monday, would ask his lawyer to file papers to make the temporary custody official for the time being. Hank would not oppose it; Randi could not.

That night, before he went to sleep with a huge grin, Tom took one last look at the "lottery" ticket and marveled how a world of possibilities opens up when you have a great photoshop app and a reputation for honesty.