“Who says that?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “The Internet.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to call your mom?”
He raises his eyes to meet mine. “I sort of do, but I think I need a minute to process all this first. Plus, I’d rather do it in person. Can you imagine the look on her face when I tell her?”
I smile, thinking of Teddy’s expression when he held up the ticket not so long ago. “I can, actually.”
“She’ll be home in a couple hours anyway. Let’s just go meet Leo and figure out what the hell we should be doing next.” He stands, looking dazed, then grabs the cookie jar and tucks it under his arm. “You ready?”
I stare at him. “You’re not bringing that to the diner.”
“The ticket?”
“No, the cookie jar.”
Teddy studies it as if he isn’t quite sure how it came to be resting in the crook of his elbow. “Well, what else should we do with it?”
“I don’t know, but I think that looks a little suspicious.”
He tilts his head at me. “You think someone’s gonna see me with a cookie jar and assume there’s a winning lottery ticket in there?”
“I don’t think it’s entirely out of the question,” I say, trying to keep a straight face.
He lifts the lid and reaches inside for the ticket, which he holds carefully between two fingers. It seems impossibly flimsy and extraordinarily fragile. “So what do you propose we do with it, then?”
“Your wallet?”
“I don’t know. The Velcro is kind of worn out, and—”
“I think the bigger problem,” I say, laughing, “is that your wallet has Velcro at all.”
“Not the point.”
“Okay,” I say, eyeing the ticket. “Maybe we should leave it here.”
“Well, what if there’s a break-in?”
“What are the odds that after living here for six years, the very first break-in happens this morning?”
Teddy gives me a look. “What were the odds of us winning the lottery?”
“Good point,” I say, walking over to the drawer beneath the microwave and pulling out a plastic sandwich bag. I take the ticket from him and slip it carefully inside. “Here. This’ll keep it safe from the snow.”
“We can’t just carry it like that,” he says, alarmed. “Everyone can see it.”
“I’ll keep it in my bag.”
He looks warily at the black canvas messenger bag that’s sitting on the coffee table. “Is there, like, a pocket or something?”
“With a zipper and everything.”
“Okay,” he says as we grab our coats from the hooks near the door. “But you know this means I can’t let you out of my sight.”
I smile as I step into my rubber boots.
“I mean it,” Teddy says. “I’m gonna be your shadow. You couldn’t lose me if you tried.”
