THE LUCKY PENNY

THE LUCKY PENNY

By Linda S. Gunther

Cynthia pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. The drizzle of rain blurred her eyeglasses.  She ached for a walk, the one she did most every day - two miles round trip along the beach path. But it had been a week full of rain.

She started across the parking lot and spotted a shiny penny on the blacktop. She heard on NPR news that nobody picks up lucky pennies anymore. People don’t want pennies. In fact, penny production in the U.S. would be halted this year. Cynthia didn’t like pennies either. 

But there it sat on the ground, the shiniest penny she’d ever seen screaming to be picked up, kept for luck, respected as a prize, and likely forgotten within thirty minutes of being found. 

No need to pick it up. Just a silly superstition.

She crossed the parking lot, leaving the glittering penny behind. Upon reaching the entrance to the beach path, the rain came down harder. I want that penny. Can’t have good luck go to waste.

Cynthia pivoted, back across the parking lot to grab the lucky penny. The rain now a downpour. She scanned the area near the lamppost at the curb where she had seen it. No penny. Puddles had formed. But that penny glittered like gold three minutes ago. It had to be there. She retraced her steps across the lot three times, her sweatshirt wet, her hair drenched, her sneakers squishing with each step. 

Bending down, she eyed that corner section of the parking lot from a different angle. Nothing. Not a person around nor had she seen anyone earlier, someone who might have picked up the shiny penny. 

How curious it was that two people could view the same exact scene very differently, one person spotting the penny on the ground as she did, yet another in the same location not registering the penny at all. In this case, Cynthia herself, who had easily spotted the penny three minutes earlier, could not, for the life of her, spot it again.  

But it had to be there. The moisture seeped through her left sneaker where she had worn down the sole and a small hole had developed, her sock beyond damp. She re-traced her steps again and tripped on the cement curb. And, there it was. The penny, face up on the wet blacktop. Dulled. It had lost its shine. 

Bending down she slid her fingernail under the slippery penny.  She picked it up to look at it close up but couldn’t make out the year it was minted. She placed the penny in her pocket, her fingers on it as she made her way home.

In her bedroom at home, she examined the penny with her ivory-handled magnifying glass, the one she had purchased at an antique market last summer.

1989, the penny read. The year her sister Ginny had taken her own life, leaving three young children behind. The year Cynthia thought she wouldn’t survive the trauma of Ginny ending her short life, in her garage, sitting in her Toyota. It was the same year Cynthia had gone through a divorce. A year Cynthia wished she could completely forget.

She placed the dulled penny on a small ceramic art deco tray she kept on the marble-topped walnut dresser. She lifted the rain-soaked sweatshirt over her head, struggled to pull off her wet leggings, peeled off her socks, and threw all of it in the wicker hamper before she stepped into the shower. 

1989. The year echoed in her head. The phone call from her brother. His words flooded her mind, “Ginny’s gone,” he said. “We didn’t get to her in time.” 

The shower water washed over Cynthia’s body, flushing away the scene of her wet clothes, but failing to relieve the knot in her chest, the tightness in her neck, the guilt she had tried to bury all these years for not somehow saving her sister from suicide. 

Images crowded her head: Ginny performing in a white tutu at a school ballet recital, Ginny holding her newborn first child  in the New York hospital, the glowing bloom in Ginny’s cheeks when Cynthia arrived from London to the Frankfurt train station, the city where Ginny’s husband was stationed in the military, Ginny in the train station in a royal blue wool coat with gold buttons, a dark blue beret tilted to the side on her head of long dark brown hair. Both Ginny and Cynthia had become mothers within the same year. And coincidentally, both lived in Europe at the same time. Scenes from their shared past were so vivid. She closed her eyes feeling the warm spray of the shower run onto her shoulders, down her back to her tail bone and to the heels of her feet. Wash away the grief.

Grabbing a bath towel, she stepped onto the mat and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. So long ago but still as painful, she thought, as she brushed out her hair, trying to let go of the images of her sister. 

She pulled out the hair dryer from under the bed. Cynthia liked to sit cross-legged atop her comforter cover and blow dry while she read a chapter in her latest book, avoid wasting valuable time doing a mundane task. Reaching for her book, she glanced over at her dresser. There was a glint of light on the art deco tray where she had placed the dulled penny. She turned off the hairdryer, and hopped off the bed. The 1989 penny seemed to have re-gained its shine. But how? The rain outside had stopped. The skies were grey but somewhat brightened. Cynthia picked up the penny, moved it out of the daylight and placed it on the bed. 

“Impossible,” she said aloud. The glow was magnificent as if the penny had been re-polished like new while she was in the shower.

It was Ginny shining through. She could feel the warmth of her sister’s smile.

Author Bio:

Linda S. Gunther is the author of six published suspense novels: Ten Steps from the Hotel Inglaterra, Endangered Witness, Lost in the Wake, Finding Sandy Stonemeyer, Dream Beach, and Death is a Great Disguiser. Her memoir titled A Bronx Girl (growing up in the Bronx in the 1970’s) was released in 2024. Her short stories and book reviews have been published in a variety of literary journals across the world. Linda’s short plays, Listen While You Work, Divided We Stand, and Waiting for Magic were produced and performed in 2025 at theaters located in New York, Napa Valley, CA and in the Monterey Bay area in Northern California. Visit her website: www.lindasgunther.com