Free Galveston by Paul Quarrington

wall phone, but sat there staring through the window at the falling snow. The flakes were becoming thuggish, pounding against the pane and making it rattle.
    Jaime bounded up the half-stairs from the mud room with her coat still on—having kicked off her boots—and began to water the plants that were collected on the countertops. Snow was on her shoulders, in her hair, melting now and making her glisten. The flakes were huge and intricately fashioned, lake-effect snow blowing off the big bay. Caldwell’s wife always got back from hockey practice full of industry and energy. The plant-watering was part rebuke, albeit a good-natured one. It was something both husband and wife did, coming back from hockey practice with ever more little chores to perform, making the other feel guilty. Which the other would, obligingly, not very convincingly.
    Andy came to the kitchen table and flipped open the newspaper, finding the scores from last night’s hockey games. He studied them intently. The kid could not retain multiplication tables, but name any player in the NHL and he could rattle off goals and assists; name one of his favourites and he could recite shot percentages and penalty minutes; name one of his heroes and Andy would go through the entire career,commencing with Junior B. Andy knelt on a chair, his hands banded across his forehead to keep his hair out of his blue eyes. For a long moment there was silence, and Caldwell didn’t suspect it was the last moment of peace he would ever know.
    The silence registered on Jaime, who straightened up from her watering, a look of concern on her face. “What’s up?” she demanded. She shook her arms and shrugged her shoulders, dropping her coat onto the kitchen floor. As clothes became useless for any reason—if she no longer needed their warmth, if she wanted to be naked—she would throw them off wherever she stood.
    “Lemieux got a hat trick,” said Andy.
    “What’s up is,” said Caldwell carefully, “we’re rich.”
    When Jaime encountered a sentence she didn’t understand, her reaction was to bristle, to furrow her brow. She would search the deliverer’s eyes for enlightenment. This is what she did now, looking deeply into Caldwell, trying to see what lay in there. “Okay,” she said finally, relaxing, “what the heck are you talking about?”
    She began to remove her sweatshirt—it announced the existence of the Barrie Berries, a women’s hockey team that Jaime played goal for—yanking up her undershirt in the process, so that for an instant Caldwell saw his wife’s breasts.
    “What I’m talking about is …” Caldwell snapped his fingers, making the thick paper pop. He didn’t know how long he’d been holding the ticket. “We won the lottery.”
    “Bullwhip.” Jaime didn’t swear, wouldn’t say “shit” if she stepped in it. She had a repertoire of tamer stuff: “bullwhip,” “fudge,” “cheesy cripes” and, of course, “A-hole.”
    Caldwell held out the ticket with a hand that shook slightly. “Son,” he said—Andy jerked his head up from the statistics only then, apparently the statement “we’re rich” had made little impact on him—“son, do you see those numbers at the top of the front page?”
    Andy found the right page, dragged it across the table. He spotted the numbers and, collapsed over his folded arms, read them aloud. Jaime took a few steps forward so that the ticket pulled into focus, and when the last of the six numbers was read aloud, she shrieked. “What do we have to do, what do we have to do, we have to—” Jaime stopped suddenly. “Did you call your mother?”
    Caldwell’s shoulders sank suddenly. “No.”
    “Why not?”
    Not because his first thoughts were of Darla Featherstone. No, Caldwell hadn’t called his mother because, well, he could legitimately claim some concern for her fragile health, her brittle mental faculties. Caldwell’s mother wandered through the hallways of a private nursing home, all