Most people make promises the way they make New Year’s resolutions.

With enthusiasm. With sincerity. And with absolutely no expectation of being tested.

Years ago in North Carolina, a brother and sister made a different kind of promise.

If one of them ever hit it big in the lottery, they’d split it.

Simple. Clean. No lawyers. No fine print. Just a pact.

Fast forward to a random stop at Prince Mart on Wilson Road in Sanford. Beverly Berryman buys a $5 “Cash King” scratch-off ticket. Nothing dramatic. No premonitions. Just another small gamble in a world built on small gambles.

She scratches it in the parking lot.

Shock.

Not the polite kind. The kind where your brain stalls for a second because the number on the ticket doesn’t match the number you expected to see.

$200,000.

Now this is where most people quietly “forget” about verbal agreements made years ago over coffee. This is where people start doing mental gymnastics.

“Well, technically…” “Did we really mean it?” “After taxes though…”

Instead, she called her brother.

Ivan Barrett picked up the phone and heard the kind of sentence that rearranges your week: “You can’t believe this.”

He didn’t have to.

They both showed up at lottery headquarters in Raleigh and claimed the prize together. $200,000 split down the middle. After taxes, about $72,011 each.

Not life-ruining money. Not yacht money. But meaningful money.

She’s putting her share into her house. He’s paying off his car.

And here’s the part that matters: the ticket wasn’t the story.

The pact was.

Lotteries are built on odds. This one launched in January with overall odds of 1 in 4.32 for any prize. There are still top prizes left. Numbers everywhere. Probabilities. Percentages.

But this story wasn’t about probability.

It was about integrity.

Anyone can promise to share hypothetical money. It costs nothing. The real test is whether you’ll share real money when it’s sitting in your hand.

A $200,000 scratch-off didn’t just reward luck. It rewarded a relationship that was strong enough to survive good fortune.

And that’s rarer than any jackpot.