At 7:05 in the morning, I had Mama’s lottery ticket in a bank envelope on the passenger seat, and I was still sitting in my driveway with the Buick running. The ticket was worth checking and thirteen days from expiring. Rick wanted me to bring it to his house so we could “split it fair.” I had not decided whether I was going to claim it without him, which is the part that bothers me now.

Mama’s sewing table was in the back seat. Maple wood. Scratched on both sides.

One brass knob missing from the middle drawer. It smelled faintly like thread dust and the rose hand cream Mama used until the last year of her life.

We were six weeks past the funeral and cleaning out her house in Cullman. Rick had already taken the riding mower, Daddy’s shotgun, the coin jar, and the good ladder. I let him have those things because I was tired, and because I kept telling myself I didn’t need a fight with my only brother over stuff.

He didn’t want the table. Denise didn’t want it either. She said their house was “too finished” for old furniture. Rick shoved it toward me with his boot.

“You like sentimental junk,” he said.

I said, “Fine,” because I wanted the day over.

My neighbor Freddie helped me load it into the Buick. He complained about his back the whole time, but he came anyway.

Mama had hemmed every church dress I owned at that table. When I was little, she kept pins in a blue tomato-shaped cushion, and I used to steal them to pin paper clothes onto my dolls. She always knew. She just pretended not to.

At home, I wiped the table down with Murphy Oil Soap. The middle drawer stuck like it always had. Mama used to smack the side with her palm and say, “This drawer has a personality.”

I turned the table over to tighten the runner. That was the bad decision’s first step, I guess. If I had left it alone, none of the rest would have happened.

There was gray duct tape under the drawer.

It wasn’t dusty or dried out. The edge lifted clean when I picked at it with my fingernail. Under it was a folded Alabama Cash Jackpot ticket inside a sandwich bag.

The back was signed: Margaret L. Decker.

Mama.

I sat on the floor and read the date three times. The drawing had been 168 days earlier.

I knew winners had 180 days because Daddy used to buy scratchers at Christmas and make me check the dates for him.

I checked the numbers online. My printer was out of ink, so I wrote them on a grocery receipt. Then I checked the ticket. After that, I checked it again with Mama’s old magnifying glass, the one with a crack near the handle.

Same numbers.

The refrigerator hummed. Annie nudged my knee because she thought I had dropped cheese. I didn’t move for a while. My brain was doing that thing where it keeps counting without saying what it’s counting.

Four numbers. Then the bonus number.

I called the lottery office, but it was after hours. I called Rick instead.

That was my mistake, maybe. Or maybe I still wanted him to be my brother before he was the man who had taken half the house in his truck. I wanted to hear him say Mama had bought the ticket. I wanted one clean thing between us.

He answered from a Mexican restaurant. I could hear chips rattling in a plastic basket. Denise laughed somewhere behind him.

I said, “I found something under the sewing table.”

He asked, “What kind of something?”

I told him about the ticket. I didn’t say the numbers yet.

There was a pause. Not surprise. Just quiet. The kind of quiet people use when they are adding things up.

“Where exactly did you find it?” he asked.

“Under the middle drawer.”

Another pause.

“That’s probably mine,” he said. “I buy tickets all the time.”

“It’s signed by Mama.”

His voice got lower. “Linda, don’t get greedy over trash.”

I looked at the ticket again. The M in Margaret shook a little. Mama’s hand did that after her stroke. I had watched her sign birthday cards with that same small break in the line.

I said, “Why would your ticket be signed Mama?”

Rick breathed out hard. “She probably signed it for me.”

“You just said it was yours.”

“Because I bought it.”

“You didn’t buy it from under the drawer.”

Denise said something I couldn’t hear. Rick covered the phone, then came back.

“Bring it here tonight,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”

I asked, “Did you know it was there?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Eight minutes later, Denise posted a photo from the restaurant. Rick was holding up a margarita and grinning. The caption said, Finally done with that dump of a house.

Mama’s house.

I put the ticket in a bank envelope. Then I gathered the grocery receipt, the sandwich bag, the duct tape, and the drawer itself. Freddie’s son is a sheriff’s deputy, and he once told me not to separate things if I thought they might matter later. I had never expected to use that advice over a lottery ticket.

At 7:11, Rick texted me.

Bring it here tonight and we’ll split it fair.

I read that message until the screen went dark. I could have called him back. I could have asked him what he meant by fair. Instead, I turned the Buick toward the bank because I needed a place with cameras and people who wrote things down.

The bank opened at 8:30, not 8, so I sat in the parking lot for almost an hour. I called the lottery office again. A woman named Patrice answered and told me not to sign anything else, fold the ticket, or let anyone handle it.

I said, “It’s already signed.”

She asked whose name was on it.

I said, “My mother’s.”

Patrice told me to bring the ticket to the claim center in Montgomery. She also told me the amount listed on the system was $412,000 before taxes.

I wrote that down on the grocery receipt under the winning numbers.

My hand started shaking then. Not because I had four hundred thousand dollars. I didn’t have that. I had a piece of paper with a deadline and a family problem attached to it.

Rick called while I was driving. I let it ring. He called again. Then again. Seven missed calls by the time I reached Montgomery.

At 9:46, he texted, “You’re making this ugly.”

I pulled into a gas station and read it twice. I almost called him. That’s the shameful part. I wanted him to say he was scared. I wanted him to say he had made a stupid choice and was sorry.

Instead, I put the phone face down and drove on.

The claim center clerk took the ticket with gloves. She looked at the back first. Then she asked me for identification, the ticket history, and anything showing where it had been found. I gave her the drawer, the tape, and the sandwich bag.

Rick arrived before she finished making copies.

I don’t know how he got there so fast. Maybe Denise had called him. Maybe he had been following the location on my phone. He came through the doors breathing hard, with a folder under his arm.

“That’s my ticket,” he said.

The clerk held up her hand. “Sir, please wait.”

Rick looked at me. “You brought the whole drawer?”

“I did.”

“You’re acting crazy.”

“I’m acting careful.”

He opened the folder and pulled out a handwritten statement. It said he had bought the ticket at a store in Cullman on the same day as the drawing. He said he had asked Mama to hold it because he was working outside and didn’t want to lose it.

I asked, “Why did you tell me it was trash?”

“I didn’t know it was a winner.”

“You knew it was under the drawer.”

His mouth tightened.

The clerk asked him to show proof that he had bought it. Rick gave her a store receipt. It was faded, but the time was still clear: 4:52 p.m.

Then he made the mistake that gave him away.

On the statement, Rick had signed his name as Rick Decker. Under that, he wrote that Mama had signed the ticket for him because he was in a hurry. But he had copied Mama’s name onto the statement too, trying to show what her signature looked like.

He wrote Margaret L. Decker in one smooth line.

No shake in the M. No break near the g. Not even close.

I said, “That isn’t how she signed.”

Rick snapped, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I watched her sign for years.”

“You want the money, that’s all.”

There it was again. He knew. He knew the whole time. He knew enough to tape the ticket under the drawer, knew enough to wait until the house was cleaned out, and knew enough to call me greedy before he even saw the numbers.

The clerk asked both of us to stop talking. She said the lottery had already requested security footage from the store listed on Rick’s receipt.

We waited three days.

Those three days were ugly and quiet. Rick called Mama’s attorney and told him I had stolen family property. Denise sent me a message saying I was embarrassing everyone. I didn’t answer either one.

Freddie came over one evening and sat at my kitchen table. Annie slept under his chair.

“You should’ve called the lottery first,” he said.

“I know.”

“You should’ve called the police.”

“I know that too.”

He rubbed his back and looked at the drawer on my counter. “You still gonna split it?”

I stared at the missing knob.

“I don’t know,” I said.

That was the truth. I was mad at Rick, but I was also mad at myself for wanting his approval after everything. Money doesn’t make family problems cleaner. It just gives everybody a sharper tool.

On the fourth day, Patrice called me from the claim center. She said the ticket was valid. The video showed Mama buying it at 4:49 p.m. She wore the yellow cardigan she had on in the last church picture I kept in my wallet.

Rick wasn’t in the store.

He was outside beside a white work van, looking at his phone while Mama paid.

The store camera caught him walking back in after she came out. He took the ticket from her hand. Mama said something. Rick leaned down, listened, and put the ticket in his shirt pocket.

The clerk asked me to come in with the original ticket. Rick was already there.

He had brought another form. This time he said he had signed the ticket himself and Mama’s name was only there because she was confused.

The clerk placed the video still beside his statement.

Then she placed the ticket beside both signatures.

Rick stopped talking.

The claim was approved under Mama’s name, and because she had died, the money went through her estate. That meant it would be divided by her will, not by whichever child shouted the loudest. Rick got his share after the taxes and legal fees. I got mine too.

He never thanked me. He said the store video was misleading and that I had planned the whole thing.

The last time I saw him was outside the attorney’s office. He stood by his truck with the folder tucked under his arm.

“You could’ve just shared it,” he said.

I said, “You hid it.”

He looked at the sewing table in the back of my Buick. I had taken it to the attorney because the drawer was part of the evidence.

Rick pointed at the gray tape. “That doesn’t prove I stole anything.”

“No,” I said. “The video did.”

He walked away without saying goodbye.

I kept Mama’s table. I had the missing knob replaced, but the new one doesn’t match. The middle drawer still sticks, so every time I open it, I smack the side with my palm the way Mama did.

The lottery office sent me a copy of the claim record. Under “ticket owner,” it says Margaret L. Decker. Under “claim status,” it says paid through estate.

The grocery receipt is still in my purse. Mama’s numbers are on one side. The amount is written underneath in my handwriting.

$412,000 before taxes.

I called Rick first because I wanted my brother. He answered because he wanted Mama’s ticket.