Chapter 14 - I Gave Back What I Could
There was no practical way to return twenty-nine thousand dollars of tuition from twelve years earlier to whoever morally owned it.
Alder Environmental no longer existed.
Its payment had passed through my father.
The money was gone.
My education was not.
I could not unlearn structural analysis because the source of tuition made me uncomfortable.
So I stopped searching for symbolic purity.
Instead I used part of Dad’s estate to fund independent residential water testing for households closest to the affected corridor that did not qualify for immediate public testing.
Not restitution.
I refused to call it that.
The amount could never mathematically represent whatever happened in 2014.
It was simply something useful I could do with money that otherwise would have come to me.
Wade asked if Dad would have liked the idea.
“I don’t care.”
He laughed.
I did too.
That was progress.
The club moved into a smaller building six miles away.
No underground vault.
We checked.
Twice.
At the opening gathering, there was food, terrible music, and a new electrical panel installed by an actual contractor.
Wade walked me over to it.
“Look.”
Every circuit was labeled perfectly.
I smiled.
“Dad would’ve hated the handwriting.”
“That’s why I hired him.”
For the first time since the memorial, Dad’s name did not feel like evidence.
It felt like a person.
Complicated.
Useful.
Funny.
Cowardly once.
Brave later.
Loved throughout.
May you like
That did not balance into innocence.
It did not need to.
