Toss

She lay next to him, a young bride, flushed and incredibly happy. He held up a coin. "This is the coin I tossed to decide whether to come home from the city when my parents said they had found me a bride. It told me to come home, and I did. And now I am with you."

She did not know what to say, except stare at him with all the love she could muster in her eyes. He was handsome, loving, and more understanding than she had been brought up to expect in her small patriarchal town. And he would remain loyal to her in 44 years of marriage, through difficult times, joblessness, complaining relatives, and occasionally ungrateful, always forgetful children.

Then one day, he was gone. She saved the coin, secreting it into her purse so that it would always be with her, to remind her of love, and what a matter of chance it was.

And now, it lay in the mud, slipped from her arthritic fingers. And all the world passing by could see was an old woman, stiffly bending to reach below a parked car, as a shining coin of no value lay just out of her grasp.