“The transfer is set to—cancel it.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry?”
“Cancel the transfer. All of it. I don’t want a single dollar going to her account.”
“Brooke, slow down. What happened?”
I read him the text message, my voice surprisingly steady. When I finished, David was quiet for a long moment.
“I see,” he finally said. “Are you sure about this? That’s a significant amount of money, and this decision feels very emotional right now.”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. I can cancel the transfer immediately. But Brooke, once I do this, the bank will send an automatic notification about the cancellation to the receiving account. Your mother will know that a large transfer was scheduled and then cancelled.”
“Perfect.”
“How large will it show on her end?”
“The full amount. $22 million.”
“Do it.”
David transferred me to hold while he called the bank. I used those few minutes to pour myself another cup of coffee, my hands finally steady again.
The strangest part was how calm I felt. Not angry. Not devastated. Just done.
“It’s cancelled,” David said when he came back on the line. “The bank confirms no funds will transfer, and the cancellation notification will be sent to the receiving account within the next few minutes.”
“Thank you.”
“Brooke, are you sure you’re okay?”
I looked around my apartment, my tiny, humble, embarrassing apartment that I had worked so hard to afford.
“I’m better than okay, David. I’m free.”
We hung up, and I sat back down at my kitchen table to wait.
The call came at 9:23 a.m.
“Brooke.” Mom’s voice was so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “What is this? What is this bank notification? It says… it says a transfer was cancelled for $22 million. Twenty-two million.”
I took a sip of my coffee.
“I can hear you, Mom. You don’t have to yell.”
“Don’t you dare act casual with me right now. Where did this money come from? What transfer? Why was my name on it?”
“It was a wedding gift,” I said simply. “I won the lottery. I was going to give you $22 million as a surprise for your big day.”
The silence on the other end was so complete I thought we had been disconnected.
“You… you won the lottery?”
Her voice was barely a whisper now.
“Thursday. $180 million total. I wanted to share it with you. I thought maybe if you never had to worry about money again, you could finally be yourself instead of whoever Richard wants you to be.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God, Brooke. This is incredible. This changes everything. I can’t believe…”
“Could have been,” I corrected. “But then I got your text message this morning.”
Another silence. Longer this time.
“What text message?”
“Really? She was going to pretend she didn’t remember the one where you uninvited me from your wedding because I embarrass you and Richard?”
“Brooke, I…” Her voice trailed off. “That wasn’t… I didn’t mean…”
“You did mean it, Mom. You meant every word. And you know what? You were right to send it. It saved me from making a $22 million mistake.”
“Baby, please. You don’t understand the pressure I’m under today. The stress of the wedding. Richard has very particular ideas about how things should go, and I just thought—”
“You thought I was an embarrassment. You were probably right about that, too. I don’t fit into Richard’s world, and I don’t want to. I’m not sophisticated enough, not polished enough, not worth the risk of having around when he’s trying to impress his friends.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?”
I stood up and walked to my window, looking out at the city below.
“When’s the last time you defended me to him, Mom? When’s the last time you told him I was worth something?”
No answer.
“I thought so. Well, here’s the thing about that $22 million. It’s gone. You made your choice this morning when you sent that text. You chose Richard over me, just like you’ve chosen every man over me for the past twenty years. And for the first time in my life, I’m choosing myself over you.”
“Brooke, wait. Don’t hang up. We can fix this. I can call Richard, explain everything. You can still come to the wedding. Everything can be like it was before.”
“No,” I said quietly. “It really can’t.”
I hung up the phone and turned off the ringer. Then I ordered Chinese takeout, put on my most comfortable pajamas, and spent my mother’s wedding day binge-watching Netflix with $98 million in the bank and absolutely zero regrets.
The pounding on my apartment door started at 2:17 p.m., right in the middle of the ceremony that I supposedly wasn’t sophisticated enough to attend.
I paused my Netflix show and listened. The knocking was frantic, desperate. Definitely not my elderly neighbor asking to borrow milk.
Through the peephole, I could see Mom still in her wedding dress. Makeup streaked down her face, hair half fallen from its elaborate updo. She looked like she had run straight from the altar to my apartment building, which apparently she had.
“Brooke.” Her voice was muffled, but clearly panicked. “Brooke, please open the door. I know you’re in there. We need to talk.”
I sat back down on my couch.
“We really don’t.”
“Baby, please. I made a mistake. A terrible mistake. Let me in and we can fix this.”
“Can’t fix it from out there.”