On Monday, Bev brought a notebook.
It was a small hard-backed one with a bird on the cover. She put it on Mara's table beside the plate nobody had put away, uncapped a pen and asked who was making the call.
“We don't all have to talk,” Priya said.
“Somebody does.”
“Mara can start.”
Jo arrived carrying the coat she had put on to hide the fact that she was still in the shirt she had slept in. Elena came last, took the chair beside the refrigerator and asked Mara whether there was any more coffee. It was eight thirty. Three of them were due at the hotel later that morning; the others had managed, after considerable discussion on Sunday, not to invent a shift merely because it seemed wrong to be at home.
They called the official lottery number Priya had found. The first person put them through to somebody else. While they waited, Bev wrote the date across the top of a page and Jo asked if this was the part where they bought a better hold tune.
“Don't,” Priya said. “I'm trying to hear.”
She leaned toward the phone, one elbow on the table, and raised a finger when a voice came on. Her son was waiting for a ride she had promised; he had given her fifteen minutes and then asked whether being millionaires meant time had changed too.
The woman on the phone asked whether they had the physical ticket and what they believed it had won. She did not sound amazed. Mara found herself wanting her to be amazed, just briefly, before they became something to be dealt with.
“The jackpot,” Mara said. “From Saturday.”
“And the ticket was purchased in Rhode Island?”
“Yes.”
They gave the drawing date. The woman explained that this call did not validate the ticket. They would need the original, identification, the claim process. A significant group prize deserved independent professional advice. Mara glanced at the cupboard. Yesterday she had been afraid of letting go of the paper; now she was afraid that the people who knew about money would take it from the table and put it somewhere it could not make any of them happy.
“How many people are in your group?” the woman asked.
“Five,” Mara said.
Elena kept her eyes on her coffee. Bev's pen stopped.
“We can explain the information needed for a group claim,” the woman said. “You'll need to decide the proper ownership and shares with appropriate advice. We can't establish that from a phone call.”
“We haven't made a claim,” Priya said, leaning closer. “This is just finding out what to do.”
“That's right.”
Bev wrote that down too.
The advertised jackpot could be paid over time, the woman explained, or there was a lower cash option. Both were before applicable taxes. Mara had known there would be tax. She hadn't thought of the amount on the screen as something that could change before tax even began.
“How much lower?” Jo asked.
The woman gave them practical directions for checking the advertised options and discussing them with an adviser. Priya had already opened the page on her own phone. She turned it toward Jo, who looked, then leaned back.
“It's still a stupid amount.”
“We're not dividing it on this call,” Priya said.
“I wasn't. I was looking at it.”
Elena asked how long they had to claim. The answer was a year from the drawing date, not the next business day. The money would not appear in their accounts because they had spoken to a nice woman on a telephone. They did not need to rush into a public appearance that afternoon or send the ticket to anyone who had not been properly checked.
“Thank you,” Elena said.
The woman gave them a number for the next practical step. Bev made Mara read it back. When the call ended, the five sat looking at a phone that had become an ordinary phone again.
“I thought she'd shout,” Jo said.
“She's at work,” Priya told her.
“I know. I thought maybe once.”
Elena laughed, and Bev crossed something out in her notebook. Mara got the pouch from the cupboard and put it into her bag. There was a lawyer she had spoken to years before, when the divorce had stopped being a list of things she wanted removed from the apartment and become something she had to pay for. She had called the office on Sunday and left a message. They had called back that morning with a time.
“The woman I know can see me at four,” she said. “To work out where to start. You should speak to whoever you want as well.”
“Which woman?” Bev asked.
“Anna Moss. I used her for something before.”
Elena looked at her, understanding which something. She took her cup to the sink.
“Tonight?” Jo asked. “Are we still doing it?”
“Yes,” Bev said. “I can afford a meal without the Lottery's permission.”
Priya was standing with her car keys already in her hand. “I have to get Arun. Don't book anything with a cancellation charge until I know when I can get back.”
“Seven?” Mara asked.
“I'll tell you.”
They walked out together. On the landing, Jo stopped to answer a message from Calvin. Bev had lost the cap of her pen and was searching the pockets of a coat she had taken off twice. Priya had gone ahead, calling her son to say she was coming, not soon, now.
Elena remained beside Mara while Bev searched.
“Bring the lamp tonight,” Mara said, then realized how odd it sounded.
“To dinner?”
“No. On Thursday.”
“I am.”
“I mean don't leave it because it's a nuisance.”
Elena's face softened. “I won't.”
Bev found the cap inside her sleeve and went downstairs holding it up as if she had recovered a small valuable animal. Elena followed. Mara locked her apartment and put a hand against the bag that held the ticket.
At four, Anna Moss opened her office door with a paper cup of coffee in one hand. She was smaller than Mara remembered and wearing the same kind of sensible shoes Mara had bought and immediately hated. There were no other women waiting to be told how to be rich. There was a man collecting a file from reception and a printer that kept trying, loudly, to finish something.
“Come in,” Anna said. “I've got forty-five minutes to begin with. Then we'll decide what else you need.”
Mara sat. Anna asked to see the ticket, compared the date and put it between them. She did not congratulate Mara until she had asked a few questions. When she did, she smiled properly.
“It must be quite a morning.”
“Two mornings.”
“Quite two mornings, then.”
Mara almost told her about the plate. Instead she gave her the names of the five women and the history of the Saturday tickets. Anna wrote the names on separate lines.
“And you're asking me to advise you,” she said. “Not to act for the whole group.”
Mara nodded.
“Make sure they understand that. They'll need their own advice about their interests. Particularly if there's any disagreement.”
The printer outside stopped. In the new quiet Mara could hear the pen moving over the page.
“I gave one of them her money back,” she said.
Anna waited.
“Before I bought the ticket. We had an argument.”
“Tell me that part from the beginning.”
Mara began with Elena wanting to leave Daniel. Anna asked when the money had been given to Mara, when it had been returned, what each woman had said and how the others understood the pool. She kept the questions separate. When Mara started describing Daniel's good intentions, she listened, then asked again about the two dollars.
“She took it,” Mara said.
“And after the drawing?”
“I told them she was included.”
“Had they already been told about the refund?”
“No.”
Anna put her pen down.
Mara looked at the five names. She had liked seeing them written there together.
“I wasn't trying to keep anything,” she said.
“I understand that you were offering her a share. But you need to tell the others what happened before they make decisions on a different account.”
“We haven't signed anything.”
“Then don't start by signing something untrue. I'm not going to tell you, from this conversation, that possession or one sentence settled everyone's ownership. There may be different claims. They need the actual facts and separate advice, and you do too.”
Mara rubbed a thumb along the edge of her bag.
“I thought I'd made it right.”
Anna gave her time to say more. Mara did not.
They discussed keeping the original secure. Anna could arrange that through the office with a record of what had been received and how it could be accessed; she wasn't taking it to make a claim or deciding whose money it was. Mara watched while they made copies, then checked the receipt and the ticket once more before letting the original go. Leaving without it felt like leaving a very young child in a room where everyone else thought a file would be enough company.
Outside, the afternoon was bright. A delivery cyclist was trying to untangle a strap from his wheel. He had one shoe on the curb and was swearing with increasing precision. Mara moved around him and took out her phone.
There was a message from Priya confirming dinner. Another from Jo, asking whether she was meant to dress up or merely not smell of work.
Mara typed that anything was fine. Then she deleted it and wrote that she was wearing her blue dress.
Elena had sent one message: I can come for a bit. Don't wait for me to order.
Mara called the restaurant to change the number back to five.