by Judy Baer
But he wasn’t writing anymore. He’d told his agent he was quitting. That he didn’t want to write about more pain and loss.
Then he recalled what Terrance had said in return. You don’t have to cover every tragedy in the world…lighten up…do something not quite so heavy for a change, a little mind candy.
Adam stuffed back a wry chuckle. He remembered very well his own final response. I’ll call you when that story comes knocking on my door.
He looked over to his couch where Cassia and Pepto were snoozing. There she was, the story who’d come a-knocking.
Adam had rifled through her purse for a key, gone upstairs and let Winslow out for a run. He’d given the dog the bone he’d found still wrapped in plastic and left him happily gnawing on the delicacy. If Pepto was going to turn on him and abandon him for Cassia, Adam decided he might as well try to woo the big dog. So far, so good.
When he returned to the apartment and found the pair still sleeping, he wished he’d walked the dog longer. He wasn’t happy about being alone with his thoughts. He’d stopped at the convenience store to glance at the headlines. Jackpot For One Winning Ticket. The story below said that the winner or winners would be claiming their money the next morning. He shook his head. One of the winners was sawing logs on his couch right now.
He didn’t like what he was thinking, but he might as well admit it to himself. His energy for writing was back. He could feel adrenaline pulsing in his system and excitement coursing through him. This was nothing like the sad, hopelessly bleak stories about the children of Burundi.
If it had ended with her winning the money, it would have been easier to turn his back on the story, to ignore it and walk away. But there was also that remarkable hook, that amazing twist in the story. Cassia didn’t want her share of the jackpot because her upbringing made her feel she’d gotten her hands on tainted money.
But, Adam mused, what that money could do….
He closed his eyes briefly, and behind his lids shimmered an image of his last day in Burundi. He’d said goodbye to Carl and John Austin, brothers and aid workers who had been distributing what little food and medicine they’d had available. He smiled and waved at the others he’d met and befriended in the brief time he and Frankie were there.
He was on his way to the truck that would take them to Bujumbura when he heard a heartrending sound somewhere nearby. It took only a moment to find the source of the sound. A mother, so thin she looked like a bony skeleton herself, was sitting on the ground holding a lifeless infant in her arms. She rocked and moaned, not even comprehending that Adam stood there watching helplessly, tears running down his own cheeks. The image evoked again the feelings that had made him retch before he got on the truck that would carry him back to the airport to catch a connection to the United States. While she grieved her child, he would return to more food than people knew what to do with, a place where obesity, not starvation, was a problem.
What could be done with millions of dollars? How many lives could it save?
But it was Cassia’s money, not his. If only she could be convinced to give it to him for…
Get a grip, Cavanaugh. Adam ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t even know this woman, and he was trying to spend her money for her!
Slowly a lightbulb came on in his mind. He couldn’t touch her money, but he could write about it. It would earn him some decent cash, seeing as he was an eyewitness. He was, literally, the only journalist in the world who could truthfully tell the story of this woman’s struggle over the money. And every cent he made would go to aiding the children of Burundi. Adam felt the blood pounding in his ears. This story had to be a success. It was, Adam realized, a matter of life or death.
Maybe Cassia could even be persuaded to donate the money to help the Burundians, but it was too early. She hadn’t talked with her family yet. He had an inkling from his own childhood in a churchgoing family, but didn’t fully understand why this was so difficult for her. The religion stuff obviously meant more to her than it did to him.
He’d been a Christian, Adam thought. He’d believed in God and accepted Christ as his Savior. But then, as he’d begun to travel the world covering humanitarian stories and seeing so much suffering, he’d thought less and less about his faith and more and more about his insidious creeping doubt about why people suffer and children die needlessly. Now, after Burundi, the doubt had fully overtaken him. Raised in a family of believers—his cousin Chase, for example—he didn’t like the conflicting feelings tugging at him, but how could a good God…
He gave himself a mental shake. There was no time for this now.
If he could convince Cassia to hang on until he could show her what kind of work she could do with that much money… Adam knew that if anyone could do it, he could, because he knew just how persistent and dogged he could be. Surely, with all the passion he felt for this cause, Cassia would consent. He would have to bide his time, however. He wouldn’t rush her. But he could start looking for potential publishers now….
She slept two hours and woke up stretching like Pepto. A yawn, Adam noticed, showing the entire inside of her pink mouth and pearly teeth that was mirrored by his bad-tempered old cat. The cat that had become so enamored of this woman that he was now throwing himself on his back for her, begging for belly rubs. Astounding.
As Cassia stirred, it occurred to him that perhaps she wouldn’t be as pleased with the idea of having her story written as he was. He would cross that bridge later. He was confident he could convince her how important this would be. He studied the lovely woman on his couch. Until she’d accepted the fact that she really was a multimillionaire, he’d keep the story he was writing to himself.
His mind went directly into writing mode.
Lottery Creates Reluctant Millionaire—Midas
Moment
Turns Sour For Minneapolis Woman Who
Doesn’t Believe In Gambling
Ever dreamed of making it big the easy way by having your ship come in—winning the lottery or finding a valuable treasure in your attic? Do you know anyone who hasn’t had that dream?
Then there is Cassia Carr, one of nine lottery winners sharing the recent $185-million jackpot. A series of misunderstandings led to one of the biggest wins in the history of the lottery, and a woman who’s been trying to give her winnings away ever since….
CHAPTER 9
I paced the floor in front of my grandmother and sister as they sat on Mattie’s couch staring at me.
“Over twenty million?” Jane echoed.
“Minus taxes,” I said faintly, although it doesn’t really matter. Having ten million is just as ridiculous as having twenty.
“Hoo-hoo-hoo,” Jane said, sounding more like an owl than a banker. “Grandpa never prepared us for this!”
“Yes, he did. That’s the problem, Jane! Proverbs 15:16!”
“‘Better a little with reverence for God,’” Mattie murmured automatically, “‘than great treasure and trouble with it.’”
I flung myself dramatically into a chair, but as usual, the theatrics were wasted on my family.
“I don’t want to be rich!” I whined. “It’s too much trouble! Matthew 6:24, and that’s all I have to say about it.” I shut my mouth.
No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Grandma clapped her hands as she always did when it was time to get to work. “We have to pray. Cassia, don’t make a decision or give away any of that money until we find out what God wants you to do with it.”
“You mean I should go to Lottery Central and pick it up?” Even saying it aloud made me feel sick.
“Everyone else is. There’s no way you can stop it from happening now, is there?”
If there was, I couldn’t think what it might be.
“If she takes it, she could tithe it,” Jane suggested tentatively. “Would that help?”
�
��Are you saying that it may be okay to put your trust in the luck of the draw as long as ten percent of anything you win goes to a church?” I asked.
“It’s not that such games of chance are innately evil,” Mattie said slowly. “The problem as I see it is that while to win might be a boon to one or two people, it can harm so many others.”
“It’s complex,” Jane acknowledged. “Acts 1:21-26, you know. The disciples cast lots to decide who would replace Judas as a disciple.”
Then they drew straws, and in this manner Matthias was chosen and became an apostle with the other eleven.
This whole thing was far more complicated than even I had realized.
“But why me? I just don’t get it. Why couldn’t some other more moneywise Christian have won it?”
Grandma chuckled. “You remind me of Moses, my dear. ‘Here I am, Lord, send Aaron.’”
Okay, so Moses, Moses, didn’t feel confident enough to talk to Pharaoh when God asked him to, so God let his brother Aaron take the job. Reading that part of Scripture always makes me want to yell, “Do it yourself, Moses! God’s behind you. You don’t need a mouthpiece.” Yet here I am, doing the same thing.
Grandma looked at me intently, as if she were weighing what it was she had to say next. “You’ve been acting as though God abandoned you when you won the lottery. I think it is His will.”
“That’s pretty far-fetched, Mattie.”
My grandmother beamed and her eyes danced with glee. “And that’s one of the reasons I love Him so much, Cassia. Nothing is too ‘far-fetched’for Him. On earth He traded in miracles. That’s His business—a virgin birth, healing lepers, making the blind see, resurrecting people from the dead. I know this situation is mind-boggling for you, dear, but just set your concerns aside. Since this snowball has already turned into an avalanche, all you really can do is wait and see what He’ll do with it.”
“You’re right, as usual.” I sighed and glanced at my watch. “I hope He’s in the mood to unveil His plan quickly.”
“Follow His leading, Cassia. He’ll pave the way.”
That would be her last comment on the subject for a while, I knew. I have a sense that it’s going to be a tangled path I travel before He gets me through this one.
I sat in the kitchen watching the hands of the clock laboriously inch toward the hour I was to meet my office mates outside lottery headquarters to pick up our money. When someone knocked on my door, I jumped up.
It was Mrs. Carver, the seventysomething from across the hall. When I opened the door, she bolted into my apartment before I could stop her. I hadn’t met a neighbor other than Adam until someone got wind that there might be a lottery winner living in the building. Since then I’d been sought out, greeted, welcomed and offered everything from homemade cookies to a new plunger and warnings about the state of the pipes in the building. Maybe I have a wannabe chaperone living across the hall from me.
The media had sniffed out Ego Ed, who, of course, wanted to play big shot and talk about being a winner. One thing had led to another, and I’m now an item of special interest in my building.
Mrs. Carver, who’d brought me a crocheted doily and a package of peppermints last night, absently patted Winslow’s head and focused her beady eyes on me. “I’ve been thinking about you all night. I hardly slept a wink.”
That makes two of us.
She sized me up before sitting down on my couch uninvited. “I have only two words to say to you: cirrhosis of the liver.”
Technically that was four words, but I didn’t bother to point it out, since I had no clue what she was talking about anyway.
“My brother-in-law came into some money a few years back. Nothing like yours, of course, but more than he’d ever had before. Worst thing that could have happened to him.” She shook her head mournfully. “My poor sister had her hands full. Wished a hundred times it had never happened.”
“The liver disease?”
“No! The money! Turned him into a regular sort of idiot, it did. He started by buying an RV.” She drawled out the letters, “Arrrr-veee,” and shook her head sadly. “He went downhill from there. A fishing boat, a new gun and a snowmobile were next. And he turned to drink—all those new ‘friends’ he picked up along the way. It was the money, plain and simple, that caused that cirrhosis of the liver. My sister’s always said so.”
She looked at me pityingly as she stood up. “I just thought you should know.”
As an afterthought, she turned back to me. “Oh, and by the way, again, welcome to the building.”
When she opened the door to leave, Adam was standing on the other side, his hand raised to knock. He looked startled to see the elderly woman, but greeted her politely. After she disappeared into her apartment, he stepped into mine.
“What was that about?”
I told him and a grin spread across his face. “I think you’d better get used to receiving advice on how to handle this windfall of yours.”
“It’s not a windfall, it’s a catastrophe. And it’s not mine to keep. I just don’t know what to do with it yet.” Give me a clue, Lord, soon!
“So you’ve decided not to give it back to the lottery organization?”
“I’m waiting for an answer on that.”
He looked confused. “From whom?”
I pointed upward. “Him.”
“God?” He looked rather incredulous at something that made perfect sense to me.
“Of course. Who else?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “And in the meantime?”
“I take one small step at a time and pray for guidance with each and every one.”
“So you are going to the lottery headquarters today?”
I sighed and felt tears welling in my eyes.
“Would you like me to drive you there?” His eyes were surprisingly compassionate considering that he obviously thought I’d lost my marbles.
“You’d do that?”
“Sure, if it would help.”
“It would. Thank you. If we left now, maybe we could stop at Parker Bennett on the way. Today’s payday and I’d like to pick up my check.”
Adam did a double take and I realized how silly that statement must have sounded to him. But I’d earned those wages and planned to live on the money. I couldn’t afford not to collect it.
“S-sure,” he stammered. “Let’s go.”
Adam pulled up in front of the building in a battered-up Hummer that looked as if it had seen more ditches and cow paths than real roads. He tossed a computer case from the front seat to the back to make room for me. It still looked as if a ream of paper had exploded in the vehicle. There were pens, magazines, notebooks and used plastic coffee cups everywhere.
Not that I’m anyone to criticize, mind you. Jane refuses to ride in my car most of the time because I have to clear out the front seat in order to fit her into it. It makes perfect sense to me. I’m a single woman who usually doesn’t have anyone in the front seat with me. Winslow is too big to fit in front. He sightsees and sleeps in the back. I clip coupons conscientiously because throwing them away unused makes me feel as though I’m throwing away money.
Whoa. The irony of that just hit me. I’m perfectly willing to hand over a few million to someone, but refuse to waste a dollar off on a brand of toothpaste I don’t even like.
Anyway, the coupons, the stuff I need to mail, things to be returned, the library audio tapes I listen to when I drive, an extra sweater and pair of gloves take up most of the front seat. Basically, I think of my car as a large purse and treat it as such. Apparently Adam uses his Hummer as a briefcase.
“Sorry about the mess. I didn’t know I’d be chauffeuring a pretty lady, or I would have cleaned it out.”
“What is it you do, Adam? I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned…” But before I could finish, I became distracted and began giving directions. “Do you know where I work? Parker Bennett? No? If you take this road…”
When we arrived, I guided him to a sing
le door that I knew was open for employees during the day. It was near the desk at which I could pick up my payroll check and, thankfully, tucked away so I could scoot in and out without attracting too much attention.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
I avoided everyone except Ellen at the payroll desk.
“Well, well, Cassia Carr, Customer Service, here to pick up your paycheck?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Ellen handed me a white envelope with my name on it. “So, is the rumor true?” She snapped the large wad of gum in her mouth, put her hand on her hip and stared at me. “Must be, or you got hit by a truck in the hallway. You look like you don’t know…and if you don’t, who does?”
“There was a misunderstanding,” I began.
“Well, I’m with you there. I wouldn’t start spending before I had that check run through my account either. What a bummer it would be to think you’d won, get all worked up and then find out you’d made a mistake. I hear you’re going to claim the big bucks today.”
I stared at her and murmured weakly, “I don’t want the money.”
“No? You’re going to take it in installments, huh? I’m not sure I’d want to take the payment all at once either. What if you messed around and lost it somehow? I’ve heard of people who’ve won the lottery, gone out and bought cars, houses, boats and ended up owing money! It’s not easy being a lottery winner. I’ve heard that sometimes the money and attention are just too much to handle.”