Chapter 4 - The Face of a Millionaire Without a Dime
“Mom,” Michael choked out, his voice dropping into that wheezing, pathetic register he used whenever he got caught lying in high school. “Mom, listen. It was a mistake. Ashley and I—we were just joking around. We were going to tell you! We were going to buy you that nice condo with the ocean view!”
Ashley stood behind him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, though her lower lip was trembling. “We didn't mean any harm, Margaret. It’s just... ninety million dollars changes people. We got carried away.”
“It didn’t change you, Ashley,” I said, my voice as cold as winter iron. “It just unmasked you.”
Michael lunged forward, grabbing my wrists with hands that were ice cold. For a second, I felt a flash of old maternal instinct—the urge to pull him close, to tell him it was alright, that whatever mess he had made could be fixed. But then I looked past his shoulder at my brown suitcase sitting in the dirt beside the American flag, its zipper still split open, exposing Ramon’s blue cardigan.
I pulled my hands away from his grip with a sharp, unexpected strength.
“Who do you think called you from the lottery office just now, Michael?” I asked quietly.
His eyes widened until the whites showed all around his iris. “What?”
“That was Mr. Vance from the state commission,” I said, stepping out onto the porch so I stood tall beneath the lintel Ramon had carved with our initials back in seventy-eight. “He told me all about your little interview down at the headquarters. He told me about how you tried to claim a ticket tied to my loyalty card, using my birthday numbers, signed with a signature that doesn't even match your driver’s license.”
Michael staggered back a step, colliding with the porch railing. “No... no, you don't understand. The ticket was on the table! Finder's keepers, Mom! Everyone knows—if it's left out in the open—”
“Finder's keepers?” Carmen scoffed from the doorway, stepping out with her arms folded. “What are you, six years old, Michael? This isn't a lost quarter behind the couch cushions. This is grand larceny.”
“Shut up, old woman!” Ashley snapped, her composure finally shattering completely. She pointed a shaking finger at Carmen. “This has nothing to do with you! This is family business!”
“Family business,” I repeated, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “Ten years you lived in this house, Michael. Ten years you didn't pay a single dime of rent, while I cooked your meals, washed your clothes, and listened to you complain about how the world wasn't fair to a man with your talents. And the very morning you think fortune has smiled on you, you throw my suitcase into the flower bed like I’m an old piece of garbage.”
Michael dropped his head into his hands. A dry, jagged sob broke from his throat. For a second, he looked less like a grown man and more like the little boy who used to scrape his knee riding his bicycle down the driveway.
“I was drowning, Mom,” he whispered through his fingers. “You don't know what I owe. The credit cards, the loans... if I don't pay them off, men are going to come after me. Real men. Not collection agencies.”
I looked at my son—really looked at him—and felt a profound, hollow numbness where grief used to live.
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“Then I suggest,” I said, turning my back on him and grabbing the handle of my brown suitcase, “that you start running now. Because Mr. Vance said the state investigators are already on their way out here to ask you a few questions about mail fraud and property theft.”
The sound of a distant siren began to wail down the end of our quiet suburban street, cutting through the morning air like a knife.
