The Ticket Was On The Fridge

At 4:12 p.m. Mama Pearl checked her numbers on her phone, screamed loud enough to stop the spades game in the backyard, and pinned the ticket to the refrigerator under her Jesus magnet “where the Lord can watch it.”

At 6:40 p.m., when it was time to cut the cake, the magnet was on the floor and the ticket was gone.

Darnell, the oldest, locked the front door and announced that nobody was leaving “until the money shows up.” Keisha, the middle child, pointed out that Darnell had been in the kitchen “for a suspicious amount of time” refilling a cooler that was already full. Little Tre said he was in the bathroom the whole time. Nobody believed him, because Tre has never once in his life been in a bathroom for forty minutes.

And Mama Pearl just sat in her folding chair, eating cake with her hands, saying the same thing over and over: “I know who did it. I’m just waiting to see who confesses.”