Prologue
The first time the Breaux sisters played the lottery, they were eating dinner at Theo’s, a no-frills seafood restaurant downtown. Lexi loved this place, with its weathered barstools, equally weathered crowd, and the familiar scent of fried hush puppies wafting through the air. The six o’clock news was playing on the grainy television screen above them. As Lexi and her sisters ate at the bar, feet dangling from the stools, Wynn Kernstone, the young local reporter with a thick head of blond hair, chiseled jawline, and tailored blue suit, was talking about that night’s jackpot.
“You have a better chance of being hit by lightning, becoming an astronaut, or giving birth to identical quadruplets than winning tonight’s record-breaking four-hundred-and-five-million-dollar jackpot.” He flashed a brilliantly white smile. “But hey, someone’s gotta win, right?”
“What would you do if you won?” Her sister Hanna posed the question with a wink, popping a fried pickle into her mouth.
Lexi pondered it for a second. “I’d go shopping.” She paused. “Maybe Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue.” She envisioned herself buying the designer outfits that only celebrities wore—the kind she saw in the pages of Us Weekly and People magazines. Lexi loved fashion, but there was only so much she could do with discount store finds. “And I’d open a dog sanctuary.”
She always imagined a large property with several acres of lush green grass where rescue dogs could run happy and free. Her heart broke as she volunteered week after week at the shelter, giving the scruffy pups a shampoo and groom. It felt good giving them some love—and a better shot at getting adopted with their fresh coats—but she wished she could do more.
“Clothes and puppies… cute,” Callie said with a dry laugh. Lexi rolled her eyes and smiled. Her older sister was more a serious, intellectual type. Callie leaned forward. “Okay, here’s what I would do. I’d travel the world as an international freelance reporter, writing exposés on injustice around the globe. And I’d give the rest of the money away to people and causes that need it.”
Hanna chuckled. “Is that your beauty pageant answer or your real one, ’cause I’m not buying it.”
“What do you mean?” Callie asked with mock outrage. “That’s what I’d do. You know I don’t like to buy useless crap.” She threw a pickle at her sister, hitting her shoulder. “How dare you question my integrity?”
Lexi snorted but secretly wondered if Callie was being honest. Her sister worked at the run-down local newspaper, which Lexi assumed had maybe fifty subscribers. If she really wanted to make a difference, why was Callie devoting her life to this small-town rag? She was good enough to write for a national publication, but it was as if something was holding her back. Then again, something was always holding Callie back. Her sister had a tough exterior, but there were little cracks in her façade that made Lexi suspect she was vulnerable. Callie was twenty-three and she’d never had a real boyfriend. And she’d never traveled abroad like she dreamed of as a child. She just went home to an empty apartment every night after work. It sounded pretty lonely to Lexi. And she wondered if any amount of money would change that.
Hanna raised an eyebrow but dropped the issue. “I’d give my kids the best of everything that money could buy,” she said. “Then I’d take my family on a vacation—maybe Disney World or the Grand Canyon. A real adventure where we could all be together.” She stirred her drink with a pensive look on her face. “Tom and I have never gone away with the kids,” she said. “Even Mom and Dad found the money to take us overnight to New Orleans—remember that?”
The girls smiled, remembering the trip. Lexi had been nine, Callie was eleven, and Hanna was fifteen. They only had to drive two hours to get there, but it felt like they were in another world. They weaved through crowds of people and stuffed themselves with beignets at Café Du Monde, tried on elaborate masks at a costume store on St. Ann Street, and danced in the middle of Jackson Square to a brass band’s rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Lexi had an idea. “Let’s buy some tickets,” she said excitedly. “The guy on the TV is right—someone’s gotta win. The store next door sells them.”
Hanna and Callie smiled and shrugged their shoulders as if to say, “Why not?” Before heading out the door, the sisters left crumpled bills on the bar for their Cokes, fried pickles, and shrimp po’ boys.
Sugie’s Superette was a small grocery store and deli with five plastic red booths, a chalkboard menu, and a white-haired lady behind the counter who was dressed in denim overalls.
“We’d like three lotto tickets, please,” Lexi announced.
“What numbers would you like?” the old lady asked as she walked over to the lottery machine.
The sisters looked at one another.
“The computer can pick for you,” the woman said, clearly noting the panic in their eyes. “Or if you have numbers that are meaningful to you…”
“Let’s have the computer pick for two tickets,” Callie said, taking command of the situation, “and let’s do one of ours.”
“Okay,” Lexi said. “What are our special numbers?”
“Two,” Hanna blurted out before grinning. “For how many kids I have.”
“Thirty-eight,” Callie added. “For my jersey number on the newspaper’s kickball team.”
Lexi pondered what number meant something to her. Finally, she knew. “Twenty,” she said. “For when I started dating Seth.”
The other two made a gagging face and laughed.
“We still need three more,” Callie said, leaning on the counter.
“How long have Mom and Dad been married?” Lexi asked with a little jump of excitement.
“Oh, good one,” Hanna said. “Thirty years.”
“And the number of their house address is twenty-two, so maybe that?” Callie asked, running her fingers through her brown hair.
“Sounds good to me,” Hanna said. “Okay, last one. We gotta make this a good one. What’s it gonna be?”
Lexi thought hard for a second, and then her eyes lit up with an idea. “Three,” she said. “For the three of us.” She threw her arms over her sisters’ shoulders and looked toward the lady at the register.
“You got all that?” Callie asked her with a chuckle.
The woman punched some numbers into the machine. “Yep,” she said, flashing a smile. “Here’s your winning ticket.”
That night, the sisters curled up on Callie’s couch and watched the handsome man deliver the winning numbers. Not one of their tickets had a single correct digit. But they were already addicted to the fantasy.
Three years later
CHAPTER 1 Lexi
Lexi squinted and rolled over to see her alarm clock blinking a bright and cheery twelve o’clock. Her eyes shot open as the morning sun seeped in through their small bedroom window. “Babe, what time is it?!” she shrieked, poking her fiancé Seth’s shoulder as he lay on top of their sheets in nothing but camo boxers. She sat up quickly and immediately felt the pounding headache and roiling stomach from one too many margaritas the night before. It had been her twenty-fourth birthday, and her sisters and friends had insisted that an extra round of tequila on a Thursday night was a brilliant idea.