Part 8: The Birthday Dinner
Mom's sixty-fifth birthday dinner was at Melissa's new house — because of course Melissa had already put a down payment on a house. A four-bedroom colonial in a gated subdivision, with a pool. She'd moved in nine days after claiming my ticket.
I brought Noah and a cheap grocery-store cake, and I smiled until my face hurt. The whole family was there: Mom, Melissa's husband Derek, their two kids, our cousin Ray. Melissa held court at the head of her new dining table, telling the story of "her" win for the tenth time.
"—and I just had this feeling, you know? I never buy scratch-offs, but something told me to stop at the Quick Stop that morning—"
"The Quick Stop on West Main?" I asked innocently.
She blinked. "What?"
"That's where you said you bought it. Wednesday morning. The Quick Stop on West Main."
"Right," she said quickly. "West Main."
Interesting. Because two days earlier, on the phone, she'd said nothing about which store. And in her Facebook post, she'd tagged a completely different location — a Shell station on Highway 45.
I filed that away. Tom had told me: let her talk. Every version of the story is a rope she hands you.
After dinner, Melissa pulled me into her new kitchen — granite countertops, double oven, the works — and lowered her voice. "Em, I want to help you. I know things have been hard. I was thinking... I could give you fifty thousand. As a gift. No strings."
Fifty thousand dollars. Of my one point one million.
"That's generous," I said carefully.
"It's just — I need you to stop with the accusations. The police called me, Em. A detective. Asking questions. It was humiliating. If you drop this — if you tell them you were mistaken — the fifty thousand is yours. We can be sisters again."
There it was. The bribe. The hush money. She was offering me a fraction of my own money to let her keep the rest.
"I need to think about it," I said.
She squeezed my arm. "Don't think too long. Offers like this don't stay on the table forever."
On the drive home, Noah said from the back seat, "Mommy, why does Aunt Melissa have all new stuff?"
I gripped the wheel. "Because she took something that wasn't hers, baby."
"Are you going to get it back?"
I looked at him in the rearview mirror. "Yes, baby. Mommy's going to get it back."
What I didn't say — what I couldn't say to an eight-year-old — was what Tom had told me that afternoon on the phone: the bank records were already coming in. Melissa's account showed a wire transfer of $50,000 to Marcus Doyle, sent the day after she claimed the prize. Fifty thousand dollars. The exact amount in the envelope I'd photographed.
The trap was starting to close. And Melissa had no idea.
But then, that night, I got another text from the unknown number: "Your lawyer can't help you. Drop it, or Noah pays."
I sat in the dark for a long time, holding my phone, my heart hammering against my ribs.
They'd just threatened my son.
