On the day Raul got fired, the lawns in that wealthy California neighborhood looked like magazine covers—perfect emerald carpets under a sky so blue it almost hurt.
His hands were still damp from the last sprinkler valve he’d tested when the front door of the biggest house on the block swung open. Roseanne stepped outside in oversized sunglasses and a silk robe, the kind you only ever see in Beverly Hills reality shows and perfume ads.
“Raul,” she called, lips pursed. “We need to talk.”
He wiped his palms on his work shorts and walked toward her, boots leaving neat prints on the flagstone path he’d pressure-washed the week before. Ten years he’d kept this property spotless. Ten summers of pruning her roses, reseeding bare patches, fighting gophers like a trench war so her yard would look flawless for her charity luncheons and Instagram photos.
“What’s going on, Ms. Roseanne?” he asked.
She didn’t invite him inside. She didn’t even step off the porch.
“I’m going to have to let you go,” she said, just like that. Like she was returning a dress that didn’t fit.
Raul blinked. “Let me go? But I’ve been your landscaper for over ten years.”
“Exactly,” she said. “You’ve been wonderful. But I found a guy who’ll do the same job for half the cost. It’s just business.”
He felt the words in his chest before he understood them. Half the cost. Ten years erased in four syllables. He thought about the stack of unpaid hospital bills on his kitchen table, the ink barely dry on the birth certificate of his daughter, still waking every two hours to eat.
“Please don’t do this,” he said quietly. “I need this job. My wife and I just had a baby and—”
She lifted a manicured hand, cutting him off like a commercial break.
“Oh, spare me the sad story, Raul. I do not owe you anything. My decision is final.”
For a second, just one, anger flared. He had planted these trees when they were sticks. He knew every sprinkler head by heart. He’d rushed here on weekends after storms, unpaid, just to check for flooding. But the anger died under the weight of something heavier: fear.
“All right,” he said, because what else was there to say? “I’ll send you the final invoice.”
She turned and went back inside before he’d even finished the sentence, the automatic door whispering closed behind her.
The job, like the conversation, was over.
He sat in his truck for a full minute, hands on the steering wheel, engine off. The houses on the cul-de-sac stood in a tidy row—big, shiny, expensive, each lawn a small green kingdom. Somewhere a leaf blower hummed, and a UPS truck rumbled past, driver singing along softly to a country song about losing everything.
Raul’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw his wife’s name on the screen.
“Hey, cariño,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.
“Hey,” she replied, voice warm and bright, the way it always was when she knew he was coming home. “I was just calling to remind you to stop and get a lotto ticket on your way home. That jackpot is over five hundred million tonight.”
He almost laughed. “Of course you remember that.”
“I’m serious! It’s fun. And if we win, you can retire from mowing lawns and I can hire someone to rock the baby to sleep while I nap.”
He glanced at the house one more time, the manicured hedges he wouldn’t be trimming anymore.
“I’m on my way to the store now,” he said. “Is everything okay there? You don’t sound like your normal self.”
“I’m fine,” he lied. “I promise.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
When he hung up, he rested his forehead against the steering wheel. The baby’s face swam in his mind: dark hair, impossibly tiny fingers gripping his thumb.
He started the engine and drove toward the gas station on the corner by the freeway, where a flashing LED sign screamed TONIGHT’S JACKPOT: $500,000,000 and a cardboard cutout of a smiling California Lottery winner posed by the coffee machines.
He bought a ticket anyway. One line of numbers, chosen the way they always did: his birthday, his wife’s, their anniversary, their daughter’s due date that had come three weeks late. He slid the slip of paper into his wallet, behind his driver’s license and a grocery receipt no one would ever frame.
Then he went home and told his wife he’d lost his job.
She didn’t yell. That almost hurt more.
Her name was Maya, and she met him at the door with the baby cradled against her chest, dark half-moons under her eyes. She listened as he rehearsed the conversation with Roseanne, the explanation about the cheaper landscaper, the “just business” line, his own swallowed anger.
“That’s unfair,” she said, voice shaking with outrage on his behalf. “After everything you’ve done for her. Ten years.”
He shrugged, trying to make it small. “It is what it is.”
“The timing couldn’t be worse,” she whispered, glancing toward the kitchen table where the medical bills sat in a neat, intimidating stack. “We have thousands of dollars in hospital charges from the delivery. Formula, diapers, insurance…”
“I’ll find something,” he said. “Another regular client. Maybe a restaurant that needs outdoor work. I’ll take whatever I can get. I have to. Tori didn’t ask to be born into this.”
His daughter, sleeping on Maya’s shoulder, made a tiny sound, a squeak of a sigh, as if agreeing.
Maya shifted the baby and cupped his cheek with her free hand, thumb brushing the day’s stubble. “Everything’s going to be okay,” she said, the way she always did when things were very clearly not okay. “Remember what I always say?”
He knew the words by heart. “When one door closes…”
“…another one opens,” she finished.
He looked around their small rental duplex—secondhand couch, mismatched chairs, baby swing in the corner humming quietly. He tried to see an open door anywhere.
“I’m looking hard, babe,” he said. “I don’t see any doors, just walls.”
“Then maybe it’s time we build one.” Her eyes brightened a little. “You’ve talked for years about starting your own landscaping company. Your own truck, your own logo. No more Roseannes telling you they found someone cheaper.”
“Starting a business costs money,” he said. “We don’t have any money we can spare. Not right now. It’s too risky.”
“Playing it safe hasn’t exactly kept us safe,” she said softly. Then she smiled, suddenly mischievous. “Come on. Let’s at least watch the drawing. Maybe the universe decides to take a shortcut and just drop five hundred million on us.”
He snorted. “Yeah. That would be nice.”
They watched the drawing late, after Tori finally went down and the dishes were piled in the sink. The local news cut to the state lottery feed, a cheerful woman in a bright blazer standing in front of spinning balls.
“Here we go!” Maya said, bouncing a little on the secondhand sofa. “You ready?”
“I’m ready to lose dramatically, sure.”
“And the first number of the night is…” The woman paused for effect, smiling wide. “…number five!”
“My birthday!” Maya gasped. “We got one!”
Raul checked the ticket. First line: 5. His stomach flipped.
“The second number is… twelve.”
“Two for two,” Maya whispered. “This is our night, Raul.”
He swallowed. “Don’t jinx it.”
“And the third number is… twenty-three!”
He exhaled hard. Their ticket said twenty-one.
“It’s okay,” Maya said quickly, still smiling. “We can still win something with three numbers. Or four.”
“The fourth number is… thirty-six.”
Nothing. His ticket had thirty-four.
“And the final number is…” The woman let the moment stretch. “…nineteen!”
Their last number was eleven.
“Oh, man,” Maya said, falling back against the pillows. “We were so close for a minute. Still fun, though, right?”
Raul stared at the ticket, then at the television screen where confetti graphics exploded over the winning numbers.
“Yeah,” he said. “Fun.”
She reached over. “You know I like to keep these for our scrapbook.”
He almost told her no, but she was already plucking it from his fingers and tucking it into an old shoebox where she’d been taping losing tickets for years, each one labeled with the date and some silly caption. “The Almost-Millionaire Night,” she wrote, tongue between her teeth.
He didn’t tell her that losing didn’t feel silly this time. It felt like being shoved out of a plane and missing the one parachute that had been tossed after you.
“What’s with the grouchy face?” she teased gently. “This isn’t anything to get upset over. We play for fun. Nobody really wins these things.”
He broke then.
“It is a big deal,” he said, voice rough. “We really needed that money.”
She stared at him, startled. “What has gotten into you tonight?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Roseanne fired me today,” he said. “And I don’t know how I’m going to keep the lights on by next month.”
For a week, Raul hustled.
He printed flyers at the library—RAUL’S LANDSCAPING, RELIABLE, AFFORDABLE—and taped them up at the laundromat, the grocery store, the taco shop. He called old clients who’d moved away or cut back, asked if they knew anyone who needed yard work. A few offered one-off jobs. No one offered anything steady.
Rent loomed. Formula cans emptied faster than he thought possible. The medical bills didn’t care that he’d lost his biggest client.
When the dishwashing job fell into his lap, it felt like one of those cracked-open doors Maya kept talking about.
He saw the “Help Wanted” sign on the window of a busy family restaurant off the freeway—a place with a neon sign that had been flickering since the ‘80s and a line of pickup trucks in the parking lot every night.
He stepped inside, smelling grease and garlic and the familiar comfort of other people’s dinners.
“Excuse me,” he asked the hostess. “Are you still hiring?”
In the back, a heavyset man in a chef’s coat looked up from a ticket line. “You looking for work?”
“Yes, sir. I can start today.”
He tossed Raul a pair of rubber gloves. “I need a dishwasher pronto. Job’s yours if you can keep up.”
Raul didn’t think twice. “I can start right now.”
The pay was low, the hours late, and his feet ached in a new way by the end of the night, but there was something solid about the clatter of plates and the roar of the industrial sprayer. Work was work. It was a check. It was something.
For two months, he split his time between the sink and whatever odd lawn jobs he could scrounge. He slept less. Smiled less. Maya started sticking Post-it notes with encouraging doodles on his lunch containers.
Then one afternoon, as he was stacking clean plates and humming along to the radio, the kitchen door swung open.
“Raul,” the owner said. His name was Greg, but everyone called him “Boss.” “Finish up and meet me in my office.”
Raul wiped his hands and followed him, stomach already tightening. The office was a cramped room off the walk-in fridge, stacked with invoices and a small fake fern that had never seen sunlight.
Greg didn’t sit. That was Raul’s first clue.
“I’m going to have to let you go,” he said.
Raul stared at him. “What? Why? I’ve been working my tail off for you.”
“It’s not personal,” Greg said, almost bored. “Business is slow. I just can’t afford to keep you on the payroll.”
Raul thought of Roseanne, her silk robe and cold smile. He thought of the phrase “just business,” like it was a magic spell that made human beings disappear.
“Please,” he said. Pride was a luxury he couldn’t afford. “I need this job to feed my family. I’ll do anything. Extra shifts. Fewer breaks. Whatever you need.”
“I can’t help you,” Greg said, already turning back to his desk. “I’ll mail you the last check. Have a good one.”
Raul stepped out into the alley behind the restaurant, the sharp smell of old fry oil hanging in the air, and sat on a milk crate. Somewhere, a radio played a Christmas song even though it was still only June. He pulled out his wallet to look at the last crumpled dollar bills, thinking maybe he could get a cheap gas station coffee to stop the shaking in his hands.
A folded piece of paper slid out and landed face up on the concrete: one of Maya’s old lottery tickets, the date on top from a few weeks ago. He picked it up, thumb brushing the fading ink.
On the sidewalk by the bus stop, someone had left that morning’s newspaper in a plastic sleeve. The headline on the local section caught his eye:
$500 MILLION JACKPOT STILL UNCLAIMED
He almost didn’t pick it up. Almost didn’t flip to the numbers. But he did.
Back home that night, after he told Maya he’d been fired again—her shoulders sagging just a little further this time—she tried to cheer them up the way she always did.
“I know what will help,” she said. “The lotto drawing is on. I didn’t have money to buy a ticket, but maybe just watching will get our minds off things for a little while.”
“Watching other people get rich while we decide which bill not to pay?” he said, but he followed her to the couch anyway.
They watched the familiar host, the whirling balls, the same bright music. Old routine in a new kind of darkness.
“And the final number,” the woman said, “is… twelve!”
Maya laughed. “We could have at least picked twelve. We always pick twelve. It’s my birthday.”
“Just a reminder,” the woman added, “last week’s five hundred million dollar ticket is yet to be claimed. So check your tickets. Maybe you’re the winner.”
They both chuckled, because what else could you do?
Raul’s hand slipped into his pocket.
His pulse stuttered.
He pulled out the old ticket—the one that had fallen in the alley. Not from “last week.” From the drawing before that. The one they’d watched while he spiraled about Roseanne. The one Maya had meant to tape into her scrapbook but hadn’t, because the baby had cried and life had intervened.
He flattened the paper out on his knee and glanced at the numbers printed there. Then, slowly, he reached for his phone and pulled up the lottery’s official site, fingers clumsy on the screen.
“Hey,” Maya said, amused. “What are you doing?”
“Just… checking,” he murmured.
The winning numbers glowed on his phone screen: 5 – 12 – 23 – 36 – 19.
He looked back at the ticket in his lap.
5 – 12 – 23 – 36 – 19.
For a long second, his brain refused to line them up as the same.
Then his vision went white around the edges.
“No,” he whispered. “No, this can’t be right.”
“What?” Maya asked, sitting up. “What is it?”
His voice came out hoarse. “We… we…”
He held the ticket out with shaking fingers.
“Maya,” he said. “I think we won.”
She frowned, took the slip, and checked it against his phone. Once. Twice. A third time, her lips moving silently as she read the numbers.
Her eyes went wide.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
They stared at each other. Then she started to laugh, an almost hysterical sound, and then cry at the same time. The baby in the bassinet stirred, confused by the sudden noise.
“We won,” Maya said, clutching the ticket to her chest like it might fly away. “We won. Raul, we actually won. Five hundred million dollars.”
The next few weeks felt like some bizarre American dream montage, the kind of thing people in other countries probably think happens every other Tuesday in the United States.
They didn’t tell anyone at first. Not even their parents. They drove, hands slick on the steering wheel, to the state lottery office in downtown Los Angeles, past billboards that suddenly seemed both ridiculous and prophetic.
They took the lump sum. Hired a lawyer. Hired a financial advisor. Signed forms that turned them, on paper, into multi-millionaires overnight.
Then Raul went home, kissed Tori’s fuzzy head, and cried on the bathroom floor, his whole body letting go of a decade of fear.
Maya sat beside him and squeezed his hand. “So,” she said eventually, eyes puffy but shining. “Are you finally going to start that landscaping company?”
He looked up at her, at the woman who had taped losing tickets into shoeboxes and said “another door will open” even when there were none.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think I am.”
Two years later, the company trucks lined up along a different affluent street in Southern California, logos gleaming in the early sun.
RAUL’S GREEN SPACES, the lettering read. Beneath it, a clean tagline: We care for what you’ve grown.
He still drove one of the trucks himself.
“All right,” he said, clipboard in hand, as his crew gathered around. Paul and Jorge, who’d used to work under him part-time and now ran whole routes. Two new guys he was training. A young woman who handled design consultations, measuring yards and sketching out drought-resistant plans.
“Paul, you and Jorge have the Benton house this morning. Full maintenance plus the new drip system. You two”—he nodded to the new hires—“will be at the Françoise place in Burbank. Front yard only. Don’t overtrim the boxwoods; she’ll know.”
They nodded, scribbling notes, sipping coffee from paper cups.
One of the new guys, a kid barely out of high school, lingered. “Boss?” he asked. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“You’re, like… rich, right?” The kid flushed, embarrassed but curious. Everyone in the shop knew about the lottery. It had been all over local news. “Like, you don’t have to be here. Why are you still working?”
Raul looked around: the truck bays, the racks of neatly maintained tools, the office with the framed first flyer he’d ever printed on the library printer. Beyond the fence, the sky was the same impossible California blue it had been the day Roseanne fired him.
“Because I love what I do,” he said simply. “Not everything’s about the money. Now go load up. Clients like when we’re on time.”
The kid grinned. “Yes, sir.”
As the trucks pulled out one by one onto the quiet suburban street, Raul stepped out to the sidewalk to wave them off. That was when he saw her.
Roseanne’s car looked different—older, a little sun-faded—but the woman who stepped out was unmistakable, even without the designer sunglasses.
Except now her robe was replaced with discount store jeans and a blouse that had seen better days. Her hair, once salon-perfect, was clipped back in a rushed messy knot. The confident glide he remembered had turned into something smaller, shoulders slightly hunched.
“Raul?” she called, squinting. “Is that you?”
He blinked. “Roseanne?”
She gave an awkward laugh. “The very same. Wow. You look… great. I saw your trucks driving around last month. ‘Raul’s Green Spaces.’ Look at you.”
She stepped closer. Up close, the strain was obvious: faint lines around her mouth that hadn’t been there before, the kind of tired that makeup couldn’t fix.
“What happened?” he asked. The question slipped out before he could stop it.
She sighed, the sound long and bitter. “Turns out my landscaper was a crook,” she said. “Not you—the one after you. I went out of town for a few weeks last year, and while I was gone, he broke into my computer, into my accounts. Wiped me out. Every dime I had. Investments, savings. Even the little trust fund my parents left me.”
Raul’s stomach tightened. It was the exact horror story wealthy people always said would never happen to them.
“It’s been a rough year,” she added. “I had to sell the house. I’m renting an apartment now. I heard about you, though. You were all over the news. California’s newest lottery winner. Multi-millionaire. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
She hesitated, biting her lip, then plunged ahead.
“So, um… this is awkward,” she said. “But I actually tracked you down because I was hoping you could… help me out a little. Not a lot. Just enough to get back on my feet.”
There it was. The ask.
“How much are we talking?” he asked, already knowing he didn’t like where this was going.
She waved a hand, as if the number weren’t important. “Oh, hardly anything for you. Maybe… twenty thousand? Twenty-five? Just a little bridge until I can sort things out. You’re a multi-millionaire. You’re not even going to miss it.”
He looked at her. Really looked. At the woman who had once stood on a porch and told him, pregnant wife and all, “I do not owe you anything.”
“Remember,” she added, as if sweetening the deal, “I provided you with employment for over ten years. You owe me, in a way. I kept you afloat.”
He exhaled slowly.
“I’m sorry things have been hard,” he said, and he meant it. Losing everything, no matter how you’d lived before, was brutal. “But I can’t give you a handout.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What? Why not? It’s nothing to you. You tip waiters more than that now, I bet. Come on, Raul. Don’t be selfish.”
“I’m not being selfish,” he said. “But I learned something from you, Roseanne. You told me once that you didn’t owe me anything. You were right. You didn’t. And I don’t owe you anything now.”
She stared at him as if he’d slapped her.
He continued, gently but firmly. “What I can offer you is a job. My business is expanding. I need someone in the office—answering calls, scheduling, billing, that kind of thing. It pays well. It’s steady. If you’re willing to work, I’d be happy to have you on.”
“Work?” The word left her lips like it tasted sour. “I didn’t come here for a job, Raul. I came for money. I am not going to sit behind some desk answering phones like…” She trailed off, as if the rest of the sentence were too ugly to say out loud.
“As what?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
She shook her head, eyes flashing. “You know what? You are a real piece of work. I can’t believe you. After everything I did for you.”
He thought about the ten years of early mornings, the late-night emergencies, the check she’d mailed him a week late more than once.
“I am grateful,” he said simply. “But gratitude doesn’t mean I let you use me. The offer stands. Job, not charity. Let me know if you change your mind.”
She scoffed. “Keep your stupid job. I don’t need your pity.”
She turned and stalked back to her car, shoulders stiff. The engine coughed to life, and she drove away down the tree-lined street, past houses with lawns his crews now kept green.
Maya appeared in the doorway of the office, baby Tori—now toddling and sticky with breakfast jam—balanced on her hip.
“Was that…?” she asked.
“Roseanne,” he confirmed.
Maya watched the car disappear around the corner. “She didn’t ask you for a handout, did she?”
“She did,” he said. “I offered her a job instead.”
Maya smiled slowly. “You remembered your own rule.”
He chuckled. “No. I remembered hers.”
Maya stepped onto the sidewalk, leaning her head against his shoulder. Tori reached out with one chubby hand and slapped his cheek gently, laughing.
“Can you believe her?” Maya asked.
“Nope,” he said. Then he looked at the trucks, at his crew heading off to jobs he’d chosen, at the phone in his pocket that no longer filled him with dread when it rang.
“But you were right all along,” he told her. “About the doors. When one closes…”
“Another opens,” she finished, eyes lifting to meet his.
He wrapped an arm around his wife, pressed a kiss to his daughter’s hair, and watched the sun glint off the logo on his nearest truck.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
“For what?” Maya asked.
“For helping me find my open door,” he replied.
In a country where a lottery ticket bought in a fluorescent-lit gas station can change your bank account overnight, it turned out the real winning number had been there all along: the person standing beside him when the doors slammed shut, pointing toward a future he couldn’t see yet.
The money paid the bills. The work fed his soul. And the memory of a woman on a porch saying “I don’t owe you anything” reminded him, every time he signed a paycheck or drafted a new contract, exactly what kind of man he refused to become.
