The Daughter They Didn’t Want Won The Lottery Chapter 09
The living room went silent.
Dad shot up off the couch. The remote hit the floor. “You—what? How much?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars,” the woman repeated, pleasantly. “Emma came in personally with her ID and the ticket. Everything’s verified.”
Five hundred thousand.
The number went off like a bomb in the room.
Chloe came flying out of her bedroom, both hands over her mouth. “Oh my God—MOM. Emma won half a million dollars?”
She spun around the living room. “MOM. I can go to Europe. I can study abroad. Mom, I want Paris—I want London—”
Dad paced, punched one hand into the other, grinned so wide the lines around his eyes disappeared. “New car. That old Camry’s been on its last leg for years.”
Mom leaned back against the doorframe, and the shock on her face melted, one inch at a time, into pure hunger.
She started muttering to herself, ticking things off. “New house. We have to move—this place freezes in winter, leaks in summer. Pay off the store. Put the rest away. No more scraping…”
Chloe already had her phone out pulling up European vacation packages. Dad had switched tabs to SUV listings. Mom was on her fingers, calculating down payments.
Nobody asked, Where’s Emma?
The lottery rep waited, polite, then cleared her throat. “So—is Emma home? We really would love to talk to her directly. Get that photo.”
That was when Mom finally remembered I wasn’t there.
She pulled out her phone. Scrolled to my name. Then remembered my phone had died days ago.
“She’s, uh—out job hunting,” Mom said, and the smile she gave was tight and thin. “I’ll have her call you first thing.”
The rep left a business card and walked back to their car.
The second the door shut, Mom’s face collapsed into fury.
“That little rat! Half a million dollars and she didn’t say a word!”
She started pacing. “That’s a fortune sitting in a nineteen-year-old’s account. What if she does something stupid? What if she got her head turned and she’s trying to keep the whole thing—”
Dad, still floating on the SUV, waved her off. “Come on, Linda. Emma’s a good kid. She probably just didn’t know how to bring it up.”
Mom stopped mid-step. “A good kid? A good kid who’s running around with older men and hiding half a million dollars from her own family? What if she’s being scammed right now? What if she’s about to disappear on us?”
She grabbed her jacket. “We’re finding her. Tonight. That money is not staying in her hands.”