The knocking stopped.
I could hear her crying through the thin door, gulping sobs that might have broken my heart six hours ago. Now they just sounded like an expensive performance.
“I left,” she said finally. “I left the wedding. I walked out on Richard and two hundred and fifty guests because I realized what I’d done. You’re more important than any of this.”
I muted the TV and walked closer to the door.
“Are you saying that because you love me or because I won $180 million?”
Silence.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Brooke, that’s not fair. You’re my daughter. Of course you matter more than money.”
“Do I? Because this morning, you uninvited me from your wedding to protect your fiancé’s image. But now that you know I’m rich, suddenly I matter again. Funny how that works.”
Through the peephole, I could see her lean against the hallway wall, her expensive dress wrinkled and stained.
“I was scared,” she whispered. “Richard has such high standards, and I wanted everything to be perfect. I thought if you weren’t there, if it was just his friends and family, maybe he’d finally see me as worthy of his world.”
“And where does that leave me in your world?”
“Mom, you’re everything in my world. You always have been.”
I laughed, surprising myself with how bitter it sounded.
“Really? Because my entire childhood suggests otherwise. How many times did you leave me behind for some guy? How many times did you choose their dreams over my needs?”
“That’s different. I was young. I was trying to build a life for us.”
“You were trying to build a life for you. I just happened to be along for the ride until someone better came along.”
The crying got louder, more dramatic. In the past, those tears would have brought me running, desperate to fix whatever was wrong, to prove my love by sacrificing my own needs. But sitting in my apartment with $98 million in the bank and nowhere I had to be, I felt something I had never experienced before.
Complete indifference to her emotional manipulation.
“Brooke, please. I chose you. I left Richard standing at the altar because I chose you.”
“No,” I said, settling back onto my couch. “You chose $22 million. If I had won fifty dollars instead of fifty million, you would still be at that country club cutting cake and making small talk about market volatility.”
“That’s not true.”
“Prove it.”
Another silence. Longer this time.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, prove that you left because you love me, not because you want my money. Prove that your choice has nothing to do with the lottery.”
Through the door, I could hear her shifting around, probably trying to find a comfortable position in that ridiculous dress.
“How do I prove something like that?”
“Go back.”
“What?”
“Go back to your wedding. Marry Richard. Tell him you had a panic attack or wedding jitters or whatever rich people call it when they temporarily lose their minds. Finish what you started.”
“But what about us? What about fixing our relationship?”
“If you really want to fix our relationship, Mom, you’ll do it because you love me, not because I can afford to pay for your mistakes. Go back to Richard. Live your life. Make your choices. And maybe someday we can figure out if there’s anything real left between us.”
The hallway was quiet for several minutes.
Then I heard footsteps walking away.
An hour later, my phone buzzed with a text from Richard’s cousin, whom I had met exactly once.
Your mother made it back. Told everyone she had a panic attack, but she’s fine now. Ceremony resuming in 10 minutes.
So she went back.
She chose Richard after all, just like I knew she would.
I spent the rest of the evening in my embarrassingly small apartment, eating Chinese food out of cardboard containers and thinking about how much everything had changed in twenty-four hours. This morning, I had been a broke marketing manager whose mother was ashamed of her. Tonight, I was worth $98 million, and my mother was legally bound to a man who thought I was an embarrassment.
Funny how winning the lottery hadn’t changed the important things at all.
My phone rang around eleven p.m. Mom, probably calling from her wedding-night hotel room while her new husband showered off the stress of the day.
I didn’t answer.
Some choices, once made, can’t be undone. And some relationships, once broken, aren’t worth the cost of repair.
Tomorrow, I would start figuring out what my new life looked like. Tonight, I would just sit here feeling grateful that I had finally learned the difference between being loved and being useful.
The difference, it turns out, is about $22 million.
Three weeks after her wedding, Mom started calling every day. Not to apologize. That would have been too simple. But to check in and rebuild our relationship.
Amazing how my emotional well-being became a priority right after she discovered I was worth $98 million.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she began during her fifth call that week, “about proving that I love you for you, not for your money.”
I was at my lawyer’s office signing papers to establish a charitable foundation. David had become more than my attorney. He had become the voice of reason I desperately needed.
“And how exactly do you plan to prove that, Mom?”
“Well, I was thinking we could start having regular dinners again. Just us. Like we used to.”
“Like we used to when, exactly?”
I couldn’t remember a single period in my life when Mom and I had regular mother-daughter dinners without some boyfriend hovering in the background dictating the conversation.
“That sounds nice,” I said, watching David organize documents. “But I’m pretty busy these days.”
“Busy with what? Brooke, honey, you don’t need to work anymore. You could quit your job, travel, enjoy your life.”