I won twenty million dollars to save my sick son. But before I walked into his hospital room, I heard him say over speakerphone, “If I make her think I’m worse, she’ll give me every last penny.”

Part 1

“If my mom thinks I’m dying, she’ll give me every last penny she has.”

Abigail Riley froze outside room 12 at St. Jude Community Hospital in Savannah. Inside her purse was a lottery ticket worth twenty million dollars. She’d come to change the life of Spencer, her only son, and that one sentence went through her before she could even knock.

The door stood ajar. Spencer was on the phone with a woman, speaker on.

“Doesn’t your conscience bother you?” the woman asked.

“Sometimes.” Spencer laughed. “But my mom loves feeling indispensable, so I don’t even have to ask her for anything. I just tell her I’m worried, and she finds a way to cover it.”

Abigail tightened her grip on her bag as her hands began to shake.

For months she’d sold jewelry, pawned her mother’s sewing machine, and taken out personal loans to pay for specialists, tests, medications. The doctors kept telling her Spencer could recover, but every relapse opened a new hole in her finances.

That morning, checking the winning numbers for the fifth time, she’d pictured telling him at his bedside. She’d wanted to whisper, You won’t have to worry about anything ever again, my son.

Now she was listening to him plan how to spend a fortune he didn’t even know existed.

“When I get out of here,” Spencer went on, “I’ll tell her I need to save the print shop, and she’ll cover the rent, buy another printer, clear my credit cards.

She always ends up solving everything for me.”