My name is Margaret Torres. I’m seventy‑two years old, a retired paralegal, a widow, and until that summer I believed that if you worked hard and raised your child right, certain lines simply wouldn’t be crossed. Losing my home proved how naïve that belief really was.
I grew up in a cramped walk‑up in Brooklyn, born to parents who argued about money over a metal kitchen table that shook every time someone bumped it.
My father worked nights at a factory. My mother cleaned offices.
I was the first person in my family to set foot inside a Manhattan law firm for something other than a cleaning shift. In the late seventies I started as a secretary for Harrison & Cole, back when partners still smoked in their offices and dictated letters onto cassette tapes.
I learned fast.
I kept calendars tighter than a drum, caught typos the attorneys missed, and made myself indispensable. Over the years I clawed my way up to office manager and eventually paralegal. I learned how the system worked, who it protected, and how easily people with power could twist the law to suit themselves.
I married a machinist named Tom.
We had one daughter, Jennifer. We bought a small house in Queens and spent thirty years paying it off.
We were not wealthy, but we were steady. We saved.
We clipped coupons, drove an old car, passed on vacations.
When Tom died fifteen years ago, his pension and our savings became my responsibility alone. The penthouse on Riverside Drive was my wildest dream come true. In 2002, after decades of work, I wrote a check for three hundred and seventy thousand dollars and bought Unit 15G in cash.
No mortgage.
No bank looking over my shoulder. Just my name on the deed.
A corner unit with floor‑to‑ceiling windows, a small balcony, and a view of the Hudson that glittered at sunset. For twenty‑three years I lived there.
The penthouse was more than an address.
It was proof that a girl from a shaky kitchen table in Brooklyn could build something solid and lasting. Every morning I’d watch the sun rise over the river and think, I did this. I bought this.
I earned this.
Jennifer grew up visiting that apartment. As a little girl she’d sleep in the guest room and press her hands to the tall windows, making prints I’d have to wipe off later.
I helped pay for her college, watched her walk across the stage shaking hands with the dean, helped with the down payment on the modest colonial she bought in the suburbs when she married Michael. Michael was charming when I first met him.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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