Chapter 5 - THE PRICE OF PRIDE
Margaret Sterling called me three days later.
Her voice was no longer aristocratic;
it was thin,
shaky,
and desperate.
“Lily,
please,”
she pleaded,
her pride finally broken.
“We can settle this.
Arthur’s heart...
he can’t take much more of this.”
I sat on my small balcony,
looking out at the South Side streets where I grew up.
“You didn’t care about my mother’s heart when you mocked her in front of five hundred people,
Margaret.”
“That was a joke!
A misunderstanding!”
“No,”
I said,
my voice as steady as a heartbeat.
“It was a revelation of who you are.”
She began to sob,
a jagged,
ugly sound.
“The accounts are frozen,
Lily.
The house...
they’re seizing the house.”
“Perhaps you can find a good coupon binder,
Margaret,”
I said,
the irony tasting like copper in my mouth.
“I hear it’s a very effective financial strategy.”
I hung up before she could reply.
The weight of the Sterling name was now a millstone around their necks.
Andrew tried to see me once,
showing up at the hospital laundry where my mother worked.
He stood in the steam and the heat,
looking out of place in his tailored suit.
My mother didn't even look up from the sheets she was folding.
“Go home,
Andrew,”
she said,
her voice calm and final.
“You have no place here.”
He turned to me,
his eyes red-rimmed.
“I loved you,
Lily.”
“You loved the idea of a project,
Andrew,”
I said,
walking toward him.
“You loved the thought that you could ‘refine’ me into something worthy of your world.”
“But the truth is,
you were never worthy of mine.”
He left without another word,
his shadow disappearing into the afternoon heat.
The Sterlings’ assets were being liquidated to pay back the pension funds.
The diamonds Margaret wore were being appraised for a public auction.
The Harrington ballroom was being sued for unpaid invoices from the wedding.
The world they had built was a house of cards,
and the wind was finally blowing.
My mother came home that night and sat on the sofa,
her feet tired but her spirit light.
“I am proud of you,
Lily,”
she whispered.
“I am proud of us,”
I replied.
We were no longer the punchline of a joke.
May you like
We were the authors of the truth.
And the price of the Sterling pride was higher than they could ever imagine.
