Chapter 8 - THE RECLAMATION
A few months later,
the Harrington Hotel filed for bankruptcy.
The ballroom was closed,
the gold flatware sold off to pay the debts of the Sterling wedding.
I was hired as a consultant for a nonprofit that specialized in recovering stolen pension funds.
I used my father’s ledger as a guide,
finding the patterns of theft that had ruined so many families.
It wasn't just the Sterlings;
they were just one branch of a much larger tree of corruption.
I spent my days in dusty archives and cold offices,
piecing together the lives that had been torn apart.
It was hard work,
exhausting work,
but it was the most important thing I had ever done.
One afternoon,
I found a record of a small loan my father had made to a young family in 1995.
The loan had been repaid with interest,
but the Sterlings had pocketed the profit.
I found the family,
now living in a small house in the suburbs.
When I handed them the check for the recovered funds,
the mother began to cry.
“We thought this was lost forever,”
she whispered.
“Truth is never lost,”
I said.
“It just sometimes takes a long time to find its way home.”
I thought about my father,
meticulously recording the Sterlings’ crimes in his small office.
He had been an auditor of souls,
waiting for the moment of reckoning.
I went back to our one-bedroom apartment and sat with my mother on the balcony.
The city was quiet,
the lights of the South Side twinkling like fallen stars.
“You are doing good work,
Lily,”
she said,
her hand resting on my shoulder.
“I am doing your work,
Mom,”
I replied.
“The work of making things right.”
She smiled,
and in that moment,
I realized that we had reclaimed more than just our name.
We had reclaimed our place in the world.
May you like
We were no longer the outsiders looking in at a glittering ball.
We were the ones building a world that didn't need to glitter to be gold.
