Now, his name on a screen was simply information. The way a weather forecast is information, I let it ring twice, then I answered, ‘Mom.’ His voice was different, softer, measured. The voice he used when he was trying to get something. Derek, I said, I want to apologize, he said, for how things went last week. I was stressed.
The money, it’s a lot. I reacted badly. I set down my knife. I appreciate that, I said in the tone of someone who appreciates it the way they appreciate a weather update. Receiving it without being changed by it. I want to work this out, he continued. between family without lawyers. Mom, we can split this. I’m not trying to cut you out.
I never was. It’s just that Cynthia and I had plans. We had things we’d been working toward. What percentage? I asked. A pause. What? You said split. What percentage are you proposing? Another pause. Slightly longer. He had not expected me to engage with the arithmetic. 20%. He said, ‘That’s $18 million, Mom.
You could live anywhere you wanted, Derek.’ I said, ‘The ticket is mine. Not 80% mine, 100% mine. I bought it. It was purchased on my customer account at a pharmacy where I have shopped for 9 years. There is camera footage of me buying it. There is a timestamped transaction record in my name. There is a sworn statement from the owner of the pharmacy. I paused.
I’m not negotiating a percentage of something that belongs entirely to me. Silence. You’re making a mistake, he said. And the softness was gone now, replaced by the thing underneath it. You’re going to spend the next year in court, and the lawyers are going to take a fortune, and you’re going to be alone through all of it.
I’m not alone, I said. There was a quality to the silence that followed that I can only describe as recalibration. He had assumed my isolation. He had built his strategy on it. A 74year-old woman living alone, recently expelled from her own home, facing a legal battle against her only son. He had imagined that scenario as one in which I would eventually inevitably become tired enough to accept whatever he offered.