I sat at my kitchen table, phone in one hand, lottery ticket in the other, staring at a text from my daughter like it was in a language I no longer understood.
“Mom, please handle it yourself. I’m strapped right now—I’m sure you’ll be okay.”
Eighteen words. That was all it took to show me exactly where I stood in her life.
Three weeks earlier, I was just Sandra Williams—seventy-two, widowed, living on Social Security and a small pension from years waiting tables. Life was simple, careful, and quiet: grocery sales, doctor appointments, stretching every dollar so I wouldn’t have to ask anyone for anything.
My one indulgence? The lottery.
For fifteen years, I played the same numbers: my late husband Tom’s birthday, our anniversary, my grandson Jake’s birthday, and a few personal dates stitched into memory. Sentimental, not logical. A quiet ritual that felt like speaking to the past.
And that Tuesday, the universe decided to answer me.
Fourteen. Twenty-three. Thirty-one. My numbers. My ticket. My life, about to change forever.
Two hundred and thirty-three million dollars. Before taxes. A fortune beyond reason, beyond imagination. Enough to buy everything I could ever want—or everything I thought I should share.
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