The version they met to consider was not the one Mara had carried to Elena's room.
The figures were the same. The basis beneath them had taken more pages, more questions and several days in which nobody answered for anyone else. Each woman had gone through it with her own adviser. Mara had wanted to finish it on Monday; Anna had told her which questions remained unanswered, and Mara had put away the pen.
Now the five sat around a table in a meeting room with a window that opened onto another building. Bev had brought her glasses in their case. Jo had a folder with a child's drawing pressed flat inside the back cover. Priya put her phone facedown. Elena took the place beside the window.
Anna was there for Mara. The other women had their own marked copies and their advisers' answers to the questions they'd raised. They had not come to discover the terms for the first time, but nobody had yet said the final yes.
Bev turned to the page she'd folded at the corner.
“I'm agreeing to a quarter of the balance,” she said. “After the provision in here. Not a quarter of the headline and a bill somebody hasn't mentioned.”
Mara nodded. “Yes. It's more specific than what I first offered.”
They had agreed which taxes and costs each of them would bear. The money needed for those bills had to be covered, including amounts that must stay set aside until they could safely be released. Changing the shares wouldn't wipe out a tax bill owed on an earlier claim. A court order changing who received a payment wouldn't, by itself, change who owed the federal tax. Each woman still had to report and pay what was hers to report and pay.
What they were dividing was the money left after all of that had been provided for. Nobody could spend a reserve as though it were part of her share. Of the balance actually free to divide, Mara would have five percent, Elena twenty, and the other three twenty-five each.
Each of them had gone through what that meant for her, with her own adviser. Those were the new terms they were all being asked to accept. Bev ran her finger down the lines she had marked.
“And I know which costs I'm agreeing to,” she said. “Those. Not whatever anyone decides later without asking.”
Anna asked whether there were any further questions about the written terms. Bev shook her head. Jo checked a note at the front of her folder and said hers had been answered. Priya turned a page, read a sentence once more and looked up.
“Mine too.”
Elena nodded. Mara could see the edge of her copy beneath her hand. It had been read enough times for the corner to have softened.
Beside Bev's copy lay the account of Saturday: the contributions, the returned two dollars, the four plays. None of that had changed. They were settling their competing claims. Nobody had been declared the winner of the old argument.
Bev took out her pen.
“I want this settled,” she said. “I want to look at places without wondering every time if I'm being stupid to think about them. I've had the advice. This is what I'll agree to.”
She signed. Her name was smaller than Mara had expected, the first letter pressed harder than the rest. She sat back and put the pen on the table without handing it to anyone.
Priya had her own. She took off its cap and held it between two fingers.
“Arun asked if we'd have to move again,” she said. “I told him we'd only just got there.”
She smiled briefly at Mara. Mara could feel the couch halfway down the stairs again, Priya laughing beneath its tilted weight.
“I'd like to know what I can plan. Not have another year of this.”
She signed, checked where she'd put the date and set the cap back on her pen.
Jo was looking at the drawing inside her folder. Mara could see a blue line, a piece of the lake Milo had been making while Calvin folded shirts.
“I'm glad we've done it this way,” Jo said. “With people who can tell me what I'm actually saying yes to.”
She looked at Mara, not smiling.
“I didn't have that on Sunday.”
“No,” Mara said.
Jo closed the folder. “I want a house. I want to take them away without working out what we can't do when we get home. I want to stop waiting to know if that's real.”
She read the last page again before signing. Nobody hurried her. When she'd finished she put the pen in her bag and reached for the glass of water beside her.
Elena had not moved. Mara watched her look toward the window, where the wall opposite held a narrow line of sunlight.
“I still remember twelve years,” she said. “I also remember taking the two dollars.”
She looked back at the paper.
“I've talked it through. I want to accept this.”
Anna waited while she signed. There was nothing here about going home, keeping a secret or seeing Mara. Those old promises could not be enforced through this agreement.
Mara was last. She had read every page. She had asked which obligations needed money held back, how the figures worked after that, what she could safely treat as her own only when the proper process had been completed. She hadn't been promised that everything she wanted would follow from a signature.
“Yes,” she said. “This is what I'm offering.”
She wrote her name. No one congratulated her. Anna made sure each of them knew what would happen next, and they remained long enough to check they had the same complete copies.
They all chose the lower cash option for the claim. It would be less than the advertised hundred and eighty-six million, even before the taxes and costs. Mara stopped doing sums with that number.
Their signatures were a beginning. The original stayed secured while the ownership questions and the transfer of prize rights went through the required process. Assigning rights after the draw required an appropriate court order; their private agreement alone could not tell the Lottery to change who it paid. Questions came back. Papers needed clarification. They waited for the court to consider the arrangement and make its order.
When that order was in place and it was time to submit the original for validation through the proper claim process, Mara went with Anna. The release from secure custody was recorded. At the office she saw the paper again, her own name and Saturday Club still on it, the four lines unchanged. She checked the receipt for its transfer before leaving without it a second time.
The later validation, payment and truthful reporting took their own time. The money did not arrive on the night of the supper or the afternoon they agreed. Bills came while they waited. Calvin still went to work. Priya went back for the last boxes. Mara bought milk and found herself checking what was left in the account she'd used all her adult life.
Anna kept her informed. Later, the accountant showed her what had been paid, what still had to be held for bills and taxes, and what was now hers to use. Mara asked him to go through it again. He did, without sounding impressed by how many zeros were involved.
By the time her payment had cleared and she could use her share, the mornings had turned cold. She sat at her table with the accountant's explanation beside her. First the money she couldn't touch yet. Then the money she could. She checked them again. There was still more money she could actually use than she'd ever expected to have. She put her hands flat on the table and laughed, once, in the empty kitchen.
Then she called Iris.
Her daughter was at work. The call went to voicemail, the familiar voice asking her to leave a message without sounding as if it expected any urgent catastrophe.
“It's me,” Mara said. “Call when you're off. I'd like to go and look at your bicycle.”