The last thing Logan Echolls needed was more money.
His mother had always played the lottery for a laugh, saying that it would be nice to pay for Botox® with her own money. She'd always used the day that her father escaped the POW camp in Vietnam. Once the results came up, she'd pull out his lighter and burn the ticket, scattering the embers to the California wind.
Ten years to the day after his mother jumped off a bridge, Logan put in the same numbers for the California lottery.
That night, he had the ticket in his hands, the same lighter poised to torch the paper, an empty bottle of vodka between his knees, salt water lingering on his cheeks.
Then they read the numbers.
He’d won.
With his dead mother’s numbers.
He choked, shoulders shaking and shut his eyes when he held the lighter up to the slip of paper. He felt it burn away, the flames licking his fingertips. It hurt, but he’d been burned enough not to jump back.
He looked down at the lighter and reread the engraving he’d read every day for the past ten years.
Free at last.
Logan wondered when he would ever be so lucky.