Lucy

Lucy is Ben’s older sister, and her addiction becomes an enduring force in his family’s life even though she is mostly encountered through other people’s memories and decisions. Ben recalls the sister she had been before drugs, continues to regard her as a person beneath them, and struggles with how to help without mistaking money or treatment programs for a solution. Her story ends in an overdose during a promising period of recovery and renewed responsibilities, a reversal that deepens Ben’s grief and helps redirect his wealth toward supporting other families.

Identity and Family Background

Lucy is five years older than Ben. In his childhood, she was a gifted soccer player and a lively presence at the family dinner table. Ben remembers her as funny, able to make sense, and capable of ordinary anger and laughter. These recollections are important because they preserve a fuller identity than the family’s later shorthand of addiction: to Ben, the person he loved did not simply disappear, even as drugs changed her life and behavior.

Her addiction began when Ben was young, and its effects became part of his understanding of danger. His mother repeatedly warned him that trying drugs even once could ruin his life, holding tightly to the fear that had grown around Lucy’s addiction. Ben remembers the contrast between his sister’s earlier life and what followed: stealing and breaking things, volatile anger, and relationships that alarmed him. His mother’s warnings therefore did not remain abstract rules; to him, Lucy’s experience seemed to provide the evidence for them.

Addiction and the Family’s Attempts to Help

After Ben and Jessica become wealthy, Lucy’s needs and the family’s arguments about money grow more complicated. They give her a million dollars, but she continues to ask for more. Ben’s instinct is to give, while Jessica remembers the repeated disappointment and wonders whether their problems trace back to Lucy. Their disagreements reveal how her addiction extends into the couple’s relationship: one sees giving as an immediate form of help, while the other sees how repeated giving fails to produce lasting change.

Ben and his mother try to provide assistance carefully. They establish a trust fund rather than simply giving Lucy cash, but cash is what she wants. When they buy her a car, she sells it within two weeks. The family also spends thousands on expensive rehabilitation programs, which Ben’s mother had once imagined would be the answer if only they could afford them. Having gained the money to try, they discover that the programs do not resolve the problem. Ben keeps searching for a solution; Jessica concludes that Lucy does not want help. The repeated mismatch between what the family offers and what Lucy accepts leaves them without an easy measure of what care should require.

The requests surrounding the lottery win are not confined to Lucy. Relatives, old friends, acquaintances, and community organizations contact Ben and Jessica for loans, donations, or support. Yet Lucy remains the most painful case because the appeal is both intimate and recurrent: Ben’s family cannot treat her as just another claimant, while money cannot guarantee the change they hope it will buy. At one point, Ben and Jessica’s Santorini holiday becomes a reminder of that limit. Ben thinks of Lucy, who once talked about visiting the Greek islands; Jessica recognizes that they could afford to send her, but that she is using drugs and cannot simply be brought into the life they have purchased.

Ben’s Fear and His Understanding of Lucy

Ben’s caution about drugs is rooted in what he witnessed at home. During the retreat at Tranquillum House, he is given drugs and finds the experience unexpectedly powerful, but considers whether he would steal to experience it again and decides he does not want to repeat it. That single trial does not, in his view, make him an addict. Still, he imagines how alarmed his mother would be, and the scene shows how her long-standing warnings have shaped his response even when his own experience differs from the lesson she taught.

A conversation with Zoe gives Ben room to describe Lucy without reducing her to the addiction. Asked what his sister was like beneath the drugs, he says she used to be the funniest person he knew and insists that she remains a person. He recalls that his father chose distance, arguing that cutting Lucy off was necessary for self-preservation. That decision coincided with his parents’ divorce; Ben says his father left and no longer asks about Lucy. In contrast, Ben continues to carry her history with him, even when care has brought conflict and no dependable remedy.

The exchange with Zoe also connects the siblings’ separate family losses. Zoe explains that after Zach died, her father wanted to speak about him constantly while her mother could not bear to say his name. The contrast helps make visible how families cope differently with grief and continuing pain. Ben and Zoe do not settle the question of what families owe someone who is struggling; instead, their conversation recognizes the person beneath the crisis and the different ways relatives respond, including speaking, withdrawing, and trying to preserve a connection.

Death and Aftermath

One year after the retreat, Lucy dies of an overdose. The timing makes the loss especially devastating: she is in one of her good periods, when her family has reason to hope that this time she may make it. She has started an interior design course, is driving her children to school, and has attended a parent–teacher night for her eldest child—an event described as unprecedented. She appears to be making plans and looking toward the future, which makes her death a stark reversal rather than the conclusion the family had prepared itself to expect.

Ben and his mother had imagined Lucy’s death so often that they assumed they would be ready if it happened. They are not. His mother finds Lucy and describes her as seeming peaceful, while Ben’s first impulse is to call Jessica. He does not do so immediately because he cannot bear the thought that she might not be surprised. The moment shows how Lucy’s death reopens not only the family’s grief but also the distance and sensitivities left by Ben and Jessica’s separation.

Instead, Ben calls Zoe. They have become online friends and occasional texters since the retreat, but have never spoken by phone. He begins to explain why he is calling and finds that he cannot speak. The call marks a continuation of the connection they formed while discussing their siblings: when Lucy dies, Ben turns first toward someone who has also lived with a sibling’s death and its consequences.

Legacy and Narrative Significance

After the lottery win and the retreat, Ben returns to work with Pete. He still has the car and a comfortable home, but puts much of his money into a foundation his mother runs to support families affected by addiction. The foundation does not undo Lucy’s death or provide the solution Ben once kept hoping to find. It gives his experience a practical consequence: resources that once fed arguments about how to rescue one person are redirected toward families facing related struggles.

Lucy’s narrative significance lies in the pressure her absence and addiction exert on the people around her. She shapes Ben’s suspicion of drugs, his dispute with Jessica over giving money, and his conviction that addiction does not erase a person’s humanity. The story holds together two facts without resolving their tension: Lucy’s family repeatedly tries to help, and the help they can afford does not keep her safe. Her apparent progress before the overdose makes that limit particularly painful, while Ben’s later call to Zoe and his mother’s foundation show how the loss continues to shape their relationships and choices.