Chapter 12: The Video

The video kept playing.

On the little screen, my father tore open the ticket and scratched it with the quarter.

The quarter I had taped to the card.

I remembered that part.

He scratched one box, then another, and then he stopped moving.

"Gary?" my mother said.

"Linda," said my father. "Linda, look at this."

Somebody screamed.

It was my aunt, and the camera swung wildly toward the ceiling and back.

On the screen, I jumped up from my chair and covered my mouth with both hands.

My father grabbed me around the neck and shouted into my hair.

"Half's yours, kid! Half's yours!"

I remembered that, too.

I remembered laughing and crying until my chest hurt.

My phone had rung in my pocket that night.

It was Ben, asking about a storefront he had found.

I had gone out onto the back step to take the call.

I had been out there for about ten minutes.

I didn't remember anything else.

"Here," said my aunt, behind me, very quietly. "This is the part."

On the laptop, the picture jerked as Tyler set his phone down on the kitchen shelf.

It tilted against a cereal box and filmed the room at an angle.

My chair was empty in the frame.

My father was at the table with the ticket spread flat in front of him.

My mother stood at his shoulder, and my aunt sat across from them with a hand over her mouth.

Nobody noticed the phone.

"Five million dollars," my father said. His voice cracked.

"Three, after the taxes," said my mother.

"Half of that is one and a half million dollars."

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