I slipped the ticket into my inside jacket pocket and drove away.

Chapter 2 — Grand Prize

At 1:17 that afternoon, stuck in gridlock on the interstate with the city crawling around me, I remembered the ticket and scanned it on the state lottery app, just to satisfy my curiosity.

The screen took three seconds to load.

Then it flashed in gold: GRAND PRIZE WINNER: $80,000,000.

I laughed first.