The Gift Horse Garden
In the spring of 2025, I came across an article describing ‘the Powerball Curse’ – a litany of winners who regretted ever having cashed their winning ticket. One winner was murdered and buried in concrete. Another committed suicide. One man, already wealthy, saw his marriage dissolve and his daughter die. I wondered what would happen if one of my stable of characters held a winning ticket?
I knew who the right characters were: Anne Evans Carlton and her husband, Matt. They’re both smart and Anne knows how to tell a great story. After doing much research on lottery rules, charitable trusts, podcasting, and town meeting governance, I set out to write a plausible story of two intelligent people who inadvertently find themselves in possession of the lone winning $1.7 billion Powerball ticket.
Matt and Anne agree they don’t want the money (they read up on the ‘curse’ and understand all too well what can happen). Can they devise a way to give away the money anonymously, with their names never appearing on any document? In theory, they can… all they have to do is create a charitable trust in 58 days and make certain the receiving charities are comfortable never knowing the identities of their benefactors. With the assistance of Michaela McDermott (Anne’s Jeopardy!-winning friend from ‘How to Murder Your Contractor’), they find three well-run charities that will take $800 million of the $813.3 million cash payout, and deploy the funds in five years or less.
Anne, though, wants to do something for her adopted home town on Hardington, Massachusetts. Specifically, she wants to build a showcase six-acre native plant garden. The site will be on a parcel of town conservation land that, two years earlier, was the planned location of a dozen soccer fields. In a months-long battle fought with lawn signs and social media, Hardington residents narrowly turned down the proposal. Its proponents, though, never got over their loss.
‘The Gift Horse Garden’ is Anne’s tale of trying to get her town to accept a wonderful, healing gift. What she finds is politics run amok, an avaricious Water & Sewer Department manager who in incensed his employees will not build it, and would-be podcasting stars vying to unmask ‘America’s newest billionaires’. The book was a joy to write. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. Here are the opening chapters:
The Gift Horse Garden
If you follow the chain of events back to a lone, undeniable catalyst, Matt and I became unwilling billionaires because of a malfunctioning receipt printer on gas pump 2 at the Pit Stop convenience store in Berryville, Virginia.
It was a Sunday in late April and we had enjoyed a blissful six days of touring Virginia during Historic Garden Week. We were headed back to our home just outside Boston and, to avoid the morass of I-95 traffic around Washington, Baltimore and points north, we were on Virginia Route 7, headed west for the slightly longer but infinitely less stressful I-81. Matt was driving; I was in charge of navigation and, more urgently, Gas Buddy.
We wanted to fill up for the trip home before we hit the high-priced gas that lay ahead of us in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. For reasons known only to the Gods of Fuel Pricing, Pit Stop’s price for regular gas was six cents less than what lay ahead in Winchester. We exited Route 7 and drove the half mile into Berryville. Matt pumped the gas while I tried to predict the cleanliness of the rest rooms by judging the exterior of the building.
When the pump clicked off, Matt tapped the button requesting a printed record of the transaction. Nothing happened. Matt growled and said he was going inside to ask for a receipt. Yes, most people ignore paper receipts but Matt religiously collects and compares them to what shows up in the credit card statement. It’s part of our inherently frugal nature–about which I’ll have more to say.
We both went into the building. Pit Stop could best be described as a convenience store that also happens to have gas pumps out front–and Matt headed for the cash registers while I made my way to the ladies’ room. At the time, I briefly glanced at the other side of the store and vaguely remember there was short line of people and a youngish woman taking their payments. Two minutes later, I noted the line was longer. Matt was waiting for me outside and made no mention of anything unusual having happened. In fact, it would be two days before the topic came up.
What did happen was this. Matt suffers from an acute case of what I call ‘Damsel in Distress Syndrome’ and it is particularly active when the damsel in question is young and attractive. Lindsay Hoffman (we would learn her name two days later) was waiting on ‘Bert’ (Matt heard Lindsay call him by that name). Every time the Powerball drawing rose to a certain level, Bert apparently purchased twenty-one (presumably his lucky number) tickets, all with random numbers. Because Bert was a regular customer, Lindsay dutifully printed out the tickets, then asked for forty-two dollars. Unlike many other states, Virginia law does not allow lottery tickets to be paid for by credit card; and cash must change hands before tickets are generated.
Bert opened his wallet and found it contained just two, twenty-dollar bills. Lindsay pointed to the in-store ATM and Bert said, in an agitated voice, he would be damned if he would pay the ATM’s three-dollar fee and Lindsay should just hold the ticket aside while he went home or to a bank. Which is when Lindsay’s face turned red (apparently, failing to collect money in advance is a firing offense), tears began to well up, and Matt’s Damsel in Distress response kicked into overdrive.
“I have two dollars,” Matt said, pulling two singles from his wallet. He handed them to Lindsay, expecting her to give the stack of tickets to Bert. Instead, Linsday said, “If Bert can’t count to forty-two, he doesn’t deserve a break.” She handed the top ticket to Matt who, surprised by the gesture, completely forgot to ask for the gas receipt. He put the ticket in his wallet and went outside to wait for me. I showed up fifteen seconds later and we continued our journey home.
It would have been nice if he had said, sometime in the next few hours, “You know, the darndest thing happened back there at that convenience store…” But he did not, of course, likely because he was embarrassed by the event. Older man gives pretty girl two dollars to prevent her from crying. My husband has certain soft spots, though he will never admit it.
And so, we drove home, oblivious to the seismic event that was about to upend our lives.
Before continuing, I should formally introduce myself. My name is Anne Evans Carlton. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, it is because I’m the lady who built her dream retirement house while contending with the world’s worst contractor. Those events took place three years ago. The house is wonderful; the garden is coming along nicely. Best of all, as a result of that four-month nightmare, Matt became a much better husband. He is still the world’s most brilliant biotechnology contract lawyer, but he no longer comes home only to announce he’s booked on the 8 p.m. flight to Zurich. He works from home three days a week, he hired two phenomenally talented attorneys who have started gaining the trust of Matt’s clients, and he blocks off entire weeks during which he doesn’t look at his computer–which is how we managed to be in Virginia for those six blissful days.
We live in Hardington, Massachusetts. It’s a lovely small town just eighteen miles southwest of downtown, yet maintains its village character thanks to an organization called Trustees of Reservations which owns nearly half of the town’s land. No four-lane road–much less an expressway–traverses our border and, except for the ubiquitous Starbucks and Dunkin’ shops (one each), we are free of big-box stores and fast-food franchises.
It’s a great place to raise kids, though Matt and I have been empty-nesters for six years and have no expectation of a boomerang generation. For the record, Matt is 54 and I’m 52. Matt is the handsome guy whom everyone says bears more than a passing resemblance to a younger Kevin Kline. Two decades ago, I was often told I looked like Danica McKellar. It was news to me back then because I didn’t see it. As for today, I can only say gardening keeps me in good physical shape.
This is also the right place to say that neither Matt nor I ‘come from money’. Matt was a scholarship student from his freshman year forward (UConn for both of us). I was the only child of parents who had to stretch to indulge my passion for horses. If we would grudgingly admit to being ‘comfortable’ on that day in April, it is because Matt is an exceptionally talented attorney who chose an arcane legal specialty when it was in its infancy. We never lived beyond our means and banked every bonus. Put simply, spending money on frivolous things has never been part of our nature, and purchasing a lottery ticket with a one-in-three-hundred-million chance of winning falls squarely under that definition.
Except, of course, for that one brief moment when Matt decided two, one-dollar bills might stop an attractive woman from crying. And, after all, we had saved fifty-two cents by stopping for gas at the Pit Stop rather than one of the half-dozen stations at the I-81 interchange in Winchester.
The Powerball drawing was the Monday night following our arrival home. Over breakfast Tuesday morning, we heard on Boston’s news radio station that ‘there was one lucky Powerball winner in Virginia from last night’s drawing’. The announcer added the jackpot was $1.7 billion–the fourth largest in Powerball history–and the cash payout would be about eight hundred thirteen million before taxes. Neither Matt nor I thought anything more about it. Powerball drawings were not news worth processing or commenting upon.
On the network news Tuesday evening, the fourth segment opened with a correspondent standing in front of a convenience store. I started paying attention when she said, ‘Berryville, Virginia, where the ticket was sold’. And then, there, on screen, was cute Lindsay Hoffman with her hair and makeup freshly done, saying excitedly she had no idea who bought the ticket “because sales were so crazy on Monday.” Ms. Hoffman had every reason to be in high spirits. She stood to receive roughly a hundred thousand dollars (before taxes, naturally) for having sold the winning ticket.
“Isn’t that the place we bought gas on the drive home?” I asked.
Matt looked more closely at the TV screen and nodded. “That’s definitely the lady who was at the cash register.”
The correspondent went on to say speculation was rampant about who in town had purchased the lucky ticket as–wisely, in my view–no one had voluntarily stepped forward.
Over breakfast Wednesday morning, the news radio station continued to pump the Powerball story, adding the new information that lottery officials said the ticket was purchased between noon and one o’clock on Sunday. This seemed to catch Matt’s attention. I did a mental tick-tock of our trip and realized we had departed the last garden in Middleburg at noon and driven the twenty-five miles to Berryville in just over half an hour. We were buying gas and I was using the rest room right in the sweet spot of when the ticket was purchased.
It was a work-from-home day and Matt usually disappeared into his office about half an hour after breakfast. This morning, though, still clad in his bathrobe, he excused himself from the table saying he needed to check something. I noted he headed for the pantry where, in a drawer by the door that leads to our garage, he keeps his keys and wallet. I didn’t see what he retrieved though I would soon learn it was his wallet.
At 8:23, Matt came into the upstairs bedroom I use as an office. I was on my computer, still catching up on emails from our week away. Wordlessly, lifting and putting aside a pile of gardening magazines, Matt took a seat on the old loveseat we had chosen to bring with us from our old too-large home. I looked up from my laptop. The look on Matt’s face was… inscrutable.
“Anne,” he said, softly. “I need to show you something.”
From his robe pocket he extracted a small Zip-loc bag, inside of which was a three-inch-by-four-inch piece of paper, dense with numbers and letters. I took it from his hand, which I noted was shaking ever so slightly.
It was a flimsy bit of paper with a bar code across the bottom. I’ve handed hundreds of receipts just like it to cashiers at supermarkets for the returnable bottles and cans I pushed into recycling machines. But across the top were the letters P-O-W-E-R, each in its own tiny circle. Next to it was the word, ‘BALL’ printed in tiny white letters inside a black ball. Below that was a row of numbers.
“You’re holding the winning ticket from Monday night’s drawing,” he said.
“But you didn’t buy a lottery ticket,” I said, not really comprehending his words. “You only went into the store to ask for a receipt for the gas.”
Matt explained about the customer in front of him wanting twenty-one quick-pick tickets, having the cash for just twenty, and my husband taking pity on a young woman. “I had two dollars,” Matt said. “I gave them to the cashier. Instead of handing over all the tickets to the guy, she insisted on my taking the top ticket. It was easier to take it than to argue, and I knew we both were anxious to be back on the road.”
Which was when the scene I saw so briefly played out in my head: the cashier’s eyes tearing up. She was going to be in trouble; maybe even (in her mind) fired because some jerk who was willing to squander forty-two dollars on lottery tickets wouldn’t waste three dollars more to use an out-of-network ATM. Matt had accepted the twenty-first ticket and placed it in his wallet; probably planning to discard it once he disgorged his other travel-related receipts when the credit card statement came in next week.
“What do we do?” I asked, my own hand shaking as I returned the bag and its contents.
“We have to decide if this is a blessing or a curse,” Matt replied, his voice gentle. “And I do mean ‘we’. This will be the most important financial decision of our lives.”
I gulped. Really, I literally gulped. “How long do we have?” The way I asked the question made it seem as though we had caught some incurable illness and I was wondering how many hours we had to live.
Matt fingered the bag. “I did some quick research and there is a window. The Virginia Lottery Commission gives you six months to claim the prize. But, within sixty days you have to tell them whether you want the lump-sum payout or take the payments over thirty years. Anyone with an ounce of sense will opt for the cash. My suspicion is they want the winner to come forward so they know the ticket didn’t disappear in a washing machine.”
“So that piece of paper is worth more than eight hundred million dollars,” I said, the reality sinking in.
Matt nodded. “To be precise, eight hundred thirteen million, three-hundred and eleven thousand dollars.”
I tried to wrap my brain around that sum of money. What on earth would we do with it? We already had the house we wanted, and it was just three years old. There was no mortgage or college loans to pay off; and our children–Kate and Noah–were gainfully employed in jobs they said they enjoyed. When reporters asked us what we were going to do with all that money, what would we say?
When reporters asked us… I suddenly had horrifying visions of television crews camped in our driveway, people peering in windows and trampling our shrubs, plus helicopters circling overhead day and night; all trying to catch a glimpse of America’s newest billionaires.
“Matt, I don’t think I want that money,” I said.
“Neither do I, my love,” my husband replied.
“So, we should put it through the washing machine a couple of times?”
Matt smiled. “I was thinking more along the lines of giving it away.”
My vision of those television cameras and helicopters was now augmented by an even larger horde of people with open bags, some pleading for, and others demanding a piece of our largesse. My garden was being reduced to twigs and leaves.
“The Virginia Lottery Commission rules stipulate winners of awards of ten million or less must allow publicity,” Matt said. “Above that amount, there’s no requirement.”
I saw a glimmer of hope.
“But, doesn’t the name of the winner always leak out?” I asked.
“It will take some research,” Matt said. “Someone who had intelligent advice would likely claim the prize through a trust or a limited liability corporation. The problem is, eventually those shells have real names attached to them. And, information being a valuable currency to obtain respect, people inside the Lottery Commission may talk.”
Shifting on the sofa, Matt added, “I was thinking in terms of our names never appearing on any paperwork. It could, I imagine, even be an untaxed transaction–though the state revenue department would likely raise a stink.”
“You’ll have to help me out,” I said, baffled.
Matt looked around my office for a pencil and paper. He found both and began drawing. “Let’s say Mary Jones wins the lottery, signs her name on the back of the ticket, and takes it to the Lottery Commission.” He drew an arrow half-way between his cartoon Mary and a box representing the Virginia Lottery.
“Mary has read that the cash value is eight hundred thirteen million dollars. But, that’s before taxes.” He drew an arrow to what I imagine was a government building. “The state of Virginia considers this to be ordinary income. Let’s say the maximum tax rate in Virginia is five percent. They want forty-two million off the top.” Matt drew something that could have been the Capitol building and added an arrow. “The federal government wants thirty-seven percent. That’s three hundred million. Mary is still going to be quite wealthy, but her check is now for a little less than five hundred million.”
I thought I grasped the idea. “So, if Mary wanted to give all of the money away to charities, what happens if the charities’ names are on the ticket instead of Mary’s?”
Matt smiled, nodded, and added more boxes. A new arrow went around the federal and state buildings and went directly to five charity boxes he had sketched. “It’s a tax-free transaction. You can bet the IRS is going to put the organizations under a microscope. But, it’s all legal.”
“Wow,” I said. Clearly, Matt was miles ahead of me on this. “So, you think we could give it away and remain anonymous?”
Matt hesitated before responding. “Anne, I’ve done half an hour of research on this. And please remember that until half an hour ago I had no inkling we might have a ticket worth anything–much less the lone winning ticket.” He added, “We both need to do some research. I can focus on the legal aspects. Remember, the window for the winner to tell the Lottery Commission they want the cash instead of the thirty-year payout is sixty days. We’ve already used two of them. Your job is going to be to figure out who to give it to, to ensure our names never come up.”
“Is that the easy assignment or the hard one?” I asked. I didn’t know if I was joking or not.
“It’s probably harder than either of us imagine,” he said. “My guess is the Lottery people will balk at a list with ten names on it. I know they would refuse to issue checks to fifty different organizations. Think carefully, and make certain it’s a non-profit in the eyes of the IRS. I suspect Virginia started making plans for that forty-two million as soon as the Lottery people knew they had sold the lone winning ticket. We’re going to tell them they can’t have it. I would expect serious pushback unless we’re on rock-solid ground.”
I thought Matt was finished, but he had one more sobering bit of advice. “You’re also looking for organizations that can handle a huge sum of money without drowning–or going on a spending spree that has nothing to do with helping people.”
With that, Matt rose from the sofa, gave me a soft kiss on the lips, and headed downstairs to figure out the legal mechanics to give away a gigantic sum of money without leaving our fingerprints on it.
I closed my Gmail tab and started a Word document. I needed to make a list.
Chapter Two
58 days to the deadline to present the ticket
Around the end of October each year, Matt and I usually sit down one evening and decide what we want to do about year-end charitable giving. It’s a relaxed evening accompanied by a bottle of wine and the classical music station on as background. We each bring a list. Over the course of maybe two hours, we determine how large a pool of money we have and agree on how to divide it. The next day, I write between one and two dozen checks.
What I was being asked to do now was off-the-charts different. Matt had just charged me with finding a home for a number with nine zeroes and that started with an ‘eight’. My list last year included two hundred dollars for the Hardington Public Library, a thousand dollars for the Hardington Food Pantry, and five hundred for the animal shelter. What would any of those organizations do with ten million dollars?
The short answer is that they would drown… or else take the gift, put it in the bank, and live on the interest; in which case Matt and I might as well opt for that thirty-year payout. While it seems cruel to say so, too large a gift will likely destroy an organization instead of helping it.
Which led me to a revelation: if we were going to shower an organization with a huge amount of money, it ought to be for a specific purpose and should be given with the explicit understanding it will be spent within a finite period of time–perhaps a maximum of five years. And, the money should be dedicated to doing things; not adding staff or building a new headquarters complex.
In addition to local charities, we give what is to us sizeable sums to several large organizations with missions that align with our own thoughts and hopes for the future; and that appear to be run exceptionally well. Accordingly, the first name that went on my list was The Nature Conservancy. Climate change is real and so is biodiversity loss. TNC buys, manages and preserves vast chunks of land. They partner with businesses and governments to intelligently conserve nature for future generations. They are a class act.
What would I tell them to do with the money? Do what they were already doing, but do it faster and think larger. Yes, The Nature Conservancy was going to receive a big chunk of money.
Trustees of Reservations has been on Matt’s and my annual giving for two decades. Technically, it’s a land trust; a land trust with a vision and a mission. It ‘owns’ almost half of Hardington; mostly parcels gifted to the organization more than a century ago. Some remain woodlands; others are CSAs–excuse me, community supported agriculture–and summer camps, hiking trails and preserved wetlands. They give Hardington its small-town ‘feel’ because they form the boundary of the community on two sides. Trustees is climate-conscious because many of their properties are tied to the coast, and many are fragile eco-systems. In short, they’re another class act. Trustees of Reservations was definitely on the list.
What else did Matt and I believe in strongly?
I went through the list of worthwhile charities we had given to in the past few years. Almost all of them failed the “I can spend this massive amount of money wisely in five years or less” test. But there was one category that wasn’t on our annual giving list simply because anything we gave would not amount to a drop in the bucket for what was needed. And, there were so many competing organizations asking for money it was impossible to choose ‘the right one’.
One reason Matt was on a needs-based scholarship through college was that his father had begun exhibiting signs of dementia when Matt was just ten years old. Before Matt was in high school, his father could no longer work. Matt’s mother held two jobs, and every dime Matt earned after school went to keeping a roof over the family’s head. Because Matt’s father was a veteran, you would think the VA would have picked up all or part of the tab for care. Not a chance. Because Matt’s father’s ‘disability’ wasn’t tied to his military service, his lone benefit was a bronze grave marker with his service rank.
Forty years after that diagnosis, Alzheimer’s Disease is no closer to a cure than it was when it yanked Matt’s family out of the ranks of the middle class. As far as I can tell, mapping the human genome and the advent of designer pharmaceuticals has yielded nothing more than a few drugs that promise only to ‘slow the progress of the disease by a few months’. But a few years ago, the same could be said of immunology. Then, along came mRNA and, in less than a year, we had a toolkit that turned COVID-19 from an out-of-control pandemic into something manageable.
The Nobel Prize committee awarded its 2023 Prize for Chemistry to Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó, two professors at the University of Pennsylvania who caused the industry to notice mRNA’s potential for disease prevention. Penn paraded the two scientists as though recognition of their work was some foregone conclusion, and Penn has been with them all the way.
Except it wasn’t anything of the kind. A few days after the award, Matt showed me an article from the Wall Street Journal. It turns out Dr. Karikó had been on the trail of mRNA for years, but Penn considered her research frivolous. She was demoted, took cuts in pay, and exiled to Penn’s outer precincts for the sin of being so gung-ho about what was obviously a dead-end technology. Of course, Penn owned the rights to that worthless science and reaped tens of millions from licenses. None of that was mentioned when the two doctors were on stage at the university following Stockholm’s announcement.
Which caused me to wonder if there were other Katalin Karikós out there, being ignored by the grant-giving world because their science was revolutionary rather that evolutionary. What would happen if several of those Katalin Karikós were working on Alzheimer’s? And, what would happen if an organization set out to look for those outliers and fund them with that same urgency?
I had no idea what group had the capacity to absorb more than a quarter of a billion dollars and promise to give it to scientists who had a different way of looking at a horrible disease that eats away at memory. But I intended to find that organization.
So, I had two names or, rather, two causes; both with a name already attached to them and a third with the recipient to be filled in as soon I could do some on-line research. Was two hundred sixty million per organization too much or too little? It was an important question because I had a fourth, smaller charitable gift in mind.
If we gave three organizations a total of eight hundred million dollars with the stipulation that they spend it in five years or less, we could make the world a better place. That would leave thirteen million leftover dollars lying on the table. Matt had said the Lottery Commission would balk at a list of ten names. I was going to pare it to four.
And, the fourth gift would be for the benefit of the people of Hardington.
Two years ago, Hardington was torn apart–and I mean neighbor pitted against neighbor–by a plan to build a complex of (wait for it)… soccer fields. Prodded by an ad-hoc town group called Hardington Advocates for Accessible Soccer, the town’s Parks and Recreation folks proposed turning fifteen acres of town-owned conservation land on the far north side of Hardington into a dozen or more playing fields plus ancillary things like bathrooms and locker facilities. The price? Ten million dollars.
Please don’t ask me why soccer fields should cost that much money. Parks and Rec had a list of what surrounding towns had spent on comparable projects. Their number was right in the middle of the pack.
Regardless of the price tag, critics pointed out Hardington already had a perfectly serviceable group of twelve soccer fields on the south side of town. Advocates wanted to roughly double the number of fields so they wouldn’t have to chauffeur their progeny from one side of town to the other. Oh, and they wanted to be able to host regional tournaments, garnering the prestige afforded to the hosting town. As if the Hardington name carried some stigma that needed to be eradicated.
The new soccer fields would be accessible only from one of the town’s most historic streets: King Philip Road. Half a dozen houses from the colonial era dot that byway; three of which are less than twenty feet from the street’s edge. To accommodate school buses, the street would need to be widened and a charming, one-lane bridge over Mill Creek would need to be rebuilt to withstand heavy vehicles. What about those houses built close to King Philip Road? Parks and Rec said only that the ‘concerns of abutters would be taken into account.’ Uh huh.
Did I mention the town-owned land on which the soccer complex would be located was under the auspices of the Conservation Commission, which exists to preserve open space or at least ensure it isn’t covered in Astroturf? For reasons I could not fathom, ‘ConComm’ approved the soccer field proposal with a minimum of discussion.
Just as important to many Hardington residents, the existing fields are walking distance from the homes of several hundred soccer-aged kids and easy biking distance to at least that many more. The site on King Philip Road is walking distance to almost no one, plus there are no sidewalks. Of course, the costs of widening the road, building the sidewalks and replacing the Mill Creek bridge were not in that ten-million-dollar estimate. Parks and Rec’s response to all this: crickets.
Sadly, the architect’s illustrations of the new soccer complex were dazzling. There were twelve, artificial turf soccer fields plus the bonus of two baseball diamonds. There were changing rooms, showers and lavatories to accommodate visiting teams. Everything on everyone’s wish list was included. All that was needed to make this dream a reality was to clear two tiny hurdles: a tax override vote followed by a Special Town Meeting.
For three months, the Hardington Advocates for Accessible Soccer hammered home its reasons for the King Philip site. In addition to the positives, it raised the specter of a failed vote: a clear message to our children we didn’t really care about them. We’d rather use that two hundred dollars a year (for twenty years) in higher property taxes to buy ourselves fine wines and lobster rolls. LOBSTER ROLLS YES, CHILDHOOD FITNESS NO! That was one widely distributed lawn sign paid for HAAS.
Oh, yes. This was a battle fought not just in Facebook and Instagram groups; it was evident where people stood by what was in their front yard. All over town, signs went up on lawns. YES FOR ACTIVE CHILDREN! with a green check for those who were in favor. For those who were content with the status quo, the signs read VOTE NO! PRESERVE KING PHILIP ROAD. On social media, the ‘Concerned Citizen of Hardington’ thread was active around the clock.
Though no lawn sign ever appeared on our property, Matt and I leaned toward voting ‘no’. One reason was the fate of those old houses on King Philip Street; three of them belonged to friends of ours. Advocates knew darned well the road would need to be widened and straightened. A one-mile stretch of winding country road would need sidewalks separated from the street by at least four feet. If our friends’ houses weren’t taken by eminent domain and razed in the name of progress, the sidewalk would be two feet from their front door.
The other reason was… grass, whether real or plastic. I am a Master Gardener. I own and have read all of Doug Tallamy’s books. Fifteen acres of rolling, one-time farm fields (plus a few acres of wetlands) being converted to perfectly flat sports fields is not something to be proud of, especially when there were already more than enough soccer fields in town.
I did not broadcast Matt’s and my views to our friends, much less the world at large. We were the Silent Minority. Not only was there no lawn sign to indicate our view, I scrolled through the social media posts yet chose not even to ‘like’, much less forward, any viewpoint that echoed our sentiments.
In the end, we voted ‘no’. And so did fifty-two percent of Hardington’s voters. The soccer field debate was laid to rest with a stake through its heart.
While the debate was raging, I wondered what else could be located at the site. What if, instead of soccer fields, the plan had been to build a park? And not just any park. What if it were one that used all native trees and shrubs? What if it educated adults and children alike to the problems of ‘alien plants’ and showcased native alternatives? What if it was a place people gravitated to just because it was beautiful?
I would definitely have voted for that.
What if, two years later, someone anonymously gave the town of Hardington the money to build such a park?
I wrote it down as my fourth and final proposal.
While I was trying to decide where to give away our unwanted windfall, Matt was wrestling with the ‘how’. An hour after he went downstairs to his office, he was back in mine, and with a somber look that told me things had not gone well. I patted the sofa and Matt obediently sat down.
“I’ve seen that look before,” I said. “The last time you had it, you ended up in Switzerland for three weeks. Please don’t tell me there’s no way to do this.”
Matt looked down at his legal pad, which was dense with notes in his annoyingly neat printing.
“I’m stuck with the problem of the human element,” Matt said. “Everything else is straightforward. We appoint an agent. Our agent goes to the organizations we choose and lays out the ground rules. The agent negotiates on our behalf, except the agent makes clear this is a ‘do it our way or the money goes elsewhere’ offer. Our agent creates a one-time, tax-exempt entity to claim the prize, and deals with the lottery folks. Fifty-eight or fewer days from now, the money is disbursed and our lives become our own again.”
“I don’t see the problem,” I said.
Matt nodded. “The problem is curiosity and leakage. Our agent will contact an organization and say they represent a client who wants to give them a hundred million dollars…”
“Actually, more than two hundred sixty million,” I said. “I have just four recipients.”
Matt gave me a silent nod indicating a job well done. “All right. Our agent is going to contact an organization and say they represent a client who want to give them almost three hundred million dollars. And the agent is going to say he or she will lay out the details to a person in the organization who has the authority to accept our terms.”
Matt turned a page of notes. “As soon as the appointment is made–and there’s no guarantee the first meeting will be with the right person–the guessing game begins. And the game begins because of human nature. With a bequest of this size, everyone will want to know who the benefactor is. Is it MacKenzie Scott? Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife can make that kind of gift, but she apparently doesn’t do so anonymously. And, every large philanthropic group would be up front about the donor’s identity because they have no reason for anonymity. The receiving organization is going to wonder either if it’s drug money, or it’s a scam.”
“So, our agent says, ‘it’s lottery winnings,” I offered.
Matt shook his head. “You disclose that only to the person who is authorized to accept the funds, and you do that only after they’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement. You don’t say it to someone two layers down the food chain. Unless we do this right, the day after the first meeting, we’ll be reading and hearing from every corner of the media that whoever won the lottery wants to give the money away.”
“That’s the curiosity,” I said. “Where does the leakage come in?”
“That may be the harder part,” Matt said, sighing and shaking his head. “Even if we do it right–and I’ll speak to that in a moment–people will find out because gossip is currency. And, at the risk of passing judgment on my profession, attorneys are some of the worst gossips on the face of the earth.”
Matt continued. “I’ve thought about every major law firm in the Boston area–the ones who can snag a meeting this week with the CEO of a candidate non-profit–and they all leak. I go to conferences and I hear what amounts to boasting from the moment I pick up my name badge. When I say we don’t want our names ever to be known, I don’t mean this week or this month. I truly mean ‘ever’. Benjamin Franklin said it: three can keep a secret only if two of them are dead.”
Matt looked at me to see if I comprehended his dilemma. Now, I understood the hangdog look on his face. This wasn’t a matter of tapping one of his buddies in one of the ‘white shoe’ firms with which he so frequently teamed in his biotechnology contract law work.
“You need an army of one,” I said, summarizing what I had just heard. “And, armies of one don’t just knock on the door and speak with the right person.”
Matt nodded.
“Plus, it has to be someone you already know and can trust with the biggest secret you will ever have because, if they start talking out of school, we’re toast,” I added. “Oh, and they have to be a one-man band so no one in their office can happen on the paperwork with our names on it.”
Matt continued nodding. I understood all too well that we had hit an insurmountable obstacle. That trip through the washing machine was looking better all the time.
“Matt,” I said, “except for the part about knowing the right name to call to cut through the decision-making command structure, we already know the right person.”
Matt shook his head. “Lew Faircloth crossed my mind, too. But he specializes in criminal law, and he has a recognizable face. He is the most discreet man I have ever met but, when he walks into a building, everyone who sees him assumes someone in that building has committed a felony; probably murder.”
“I was talking about Michaela McDermott,” I said. “She just passed the Massachusetts bar exam. On her first try.”
I will pause here to explain who Michaela McDermott is. Part of my exceptionally odd curriculum vitae is that, a decade ago, I was a five-day winner on Jeopardy!. I had accompanied Matt to a legal negotiation in Los Angeles, became quickly bored by the usual tourist sights, and took it into my head that I knew enough about oddball subjects that I might be a natural for Jeopardy!. So, I went to Culver City, filled out some forms, took a written test… and discovered nerdy women are a scarce commodity. I aced the test and the practice rounds. Six weeks later, I received the call to fly to Los Angeles and bring multiple changes of clothing.
I might have gone on to the Tournament of Champions and untold glory except that I bet it all on a ‘Shakespeare Quotes’ (the one about ‘Not that I loved Caesar less…’) daily double in the second round on my sixth show… and let ‘Cassius’ slip out of my lips and was buzzed before I could correct my answer. There wasn’t enough money remaining on the board to claw my way back into contention.
When my episodes began appearing six weeks later, I received a phone call from a woman who invited me to become part of an exclusive sorority of female Jeopardy! winners in the Boston area. Four years ago, Michaela joined our group by taking home more than a hundred thousand dollars in three days. She was a paralegal at WilmerHale–one of the largest law firms in Boston–and earmarked her winnings to pay for law school. Just as Matt and I were completing our ‘dream retirement house’ with all of its complications, Michaela landed a spot at the Duke University School of Law. We stayed in close touch through her three years there; she wanted to return to Massachusetts to practice law–preferably in private practice even though a Duke degree was a ticket to almost any law firm in the country.
“Michaela from your Jeopardy! crowd?” Matt asked.
“And, also from Duke,” I replied. “Near the top of her class. I’ve only told you this six times in the past three months.”
“Michaela…” Matt rolled the name around in his mouth. “She was at WilmerHale…”
“She wants to go into private practice.” I added, “I had hoped you would give her some advice. I also told you that six times. She saw more than enough at WilmerHale to know thousand-attorney law firms wasn’t what she wanted. We would be her first and only client.”
Matt sat on the loveseat, his mind whirring.
“Is she married, or living with someone?” he asked.
“I know she’s not married,” I said with some confidence. “I think she would have told me if she was seeing someone seriously. She may or may not have roommates.”
Matt waved his hand to indicate dismissal. “I’m not worried about roommates. And, if we do this right, it’s all over in fifty-eight days.”
“I take it Michaela might be the solution to our problem,” I said.
Matt gave me a bemused look. “I can answer that question after you, she, and I have what will likely be the strangest conversation any of us can imagine. Now, tell me about these four names.”
Trustees of Reservations and The Nature Conservancy were an immediate ‘thumbs up’ from Matt. My ‘moon shot funding’ for a dementia cure drew an appreciative nod.
“It will likely be one of the big hospitals–MassGeneralBrigham or Beth Israel Deaconess,” he said. “Their funding comes from all manner of sources. They pull together teams. I imagine they have a pile of submissions that are too speculative to pursue. One of them might be from the next Katalin Karikó. Let’s both do some research.”
The ‘native plant park’ was the point where Matt’s smiles turned to looks of concern.
“I love the idea,” Matt said. “But this is flying awfully close to the flame. Three large organizations are going to announce that the person or persons who won the Powerball jackpot have given them several hundred million dollars to buy land, conserve nature, and cure dementia. They will be able to say, honestly, that they have no idea who their benefactor is.”
Matt’s voice turned somber. “Then, someone from Hardington town government is going to say they’re getting ten or fifteen million dollars, and that they, too, have no clue who is behind the gift. I think reasonable people will jump to the conclusion all four bequests are from someone who lives in Hardington and happened to be in Virginia in late April. It won’t take long to put us under the microscope. I don’t think our denial would be sufficient.”
I was silent. Matt was right. But I didn’t want to give up so easily. “But the money is being given anonymously through a charity,” I said.
Matt shook his head. “The problem is still, ‘why Hardington?’.”
I was frustrated. I had what seemed like a noble idea to do something for the town I have called home for almost thirty years. But in doing that good deed, I would be planting the seed that would undo our lives once everyone figured it was Anne and Matt on River Street who were the lottery winners…
“Matt, what would happen if Hardington won a competition? Five finalists and we came out on top? A contest to design a teaching garden?”
Matt started to speak, then went silent, his mind parsing the question. When Matt had that look on his face, I knew it was best to keep quiet. Good ideas frequently came out of those silences.
Fully thirty seconds elapsed. Then, Matt nodded his head. Always a good sign.
“I need to do some research,” he said. “I don’t guarantee we can pull it off so, for the moment, let’s focus on finding out if Ms. McDermott is the right person to entrust with the project.”
So, it was a ‘project’. Just two hours earlier, we had been enjoying breakfast, aware only that we had been at the same convenience store where a winning Powerball ticket had been sold. We might even have pumped gas next to the lucky man or woman who would soon be fabulously wealthy. Now, we knew we had won the one-point-seven-billion-dollar jackpot. And we were going find a way to give it away so it didn’t destroy our lives.