At 71, I Quietly Won $89 Million. Three Months Later, My Son Asked Me Over Dinner, “Mom, When Are You Going to Move Out?” I’m Margaret Briggs. I’m seventy-one.

He told me that once. Early on. A Saturday. I asked him why he always made a second cup on weekends when he only drank one on weekdays.

“The first cup,” he said, “is for waking up.”

“And the second?”

He looked at me over the rim of the blue mug.

“The second cup is for staying,” he said. “It’s for when you’re not in a hurry to be anywhere else. When the place you are is the place you want to be.”

He made a sign.

That week, in his garage workshop. Out of a piece of mesquite. He burned the lettering himself. He hung it on the porch, right above the rocker.

EVERY HOUSE NEEDS A PORCH FOR THE SECOND CUP.
It stayed there thirty-seven years.

Daniel grew up beneath it.

Daniel was born in 1987.