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Chapter 13 of 14

Chapter 13 — HELD IN PERPETUITY

By Mavenlus Desk · 2026-08-29

Here is the fact that this entire story turns on, and it is not a moral one, it is an administrative one, and I have built a career on it and I still find it remarkable.

When the state sells unclaimed property at auction, the state does not keep the money.

It holds the proceeds for the rightful owner.

In perpetuity.

There is no deadline.

There is no expiry.

You can claim it thirty years later, and your children can claim it after you, and your grandchildren after them, and it costs nothing to do, and no percentage comes off it, and there is no statute that runs out.

The ring is gone.

The three hundred and forty dollars is not.

It has been sitting in an account of the Illinois State Treasurer in the name of ELENA M ROSEWOOD since the eighteenth of February 1997, and it was sitting there through all twelve of the years she was alive after that, and through her death in 2016, and through every one of the mornings that her granddaughter pushed a flower cart across a hotel lobby with a seven-year-old in tow.

I filed the claim on the eighth of August.

Deceased owner, claim by lineal descendant.

Death certificate for Elena M. Rosewood.

Birth certificate for Teresa Marchetti.

Elena's marriage record, her daughter's, the chain of the name down to a woman who no longer carries it.

Ruben Ocampo processed it in nine days, which I am told is fast.

The cheque was for three hundred and forty dollars.

Tess has not cashed it.

She has it in a frame in a hallway above the radiator, next to Junie's school photograph, and I have seen it, and the thing she wanted is on it, printed by a computer in Springfield in a font nobody chose:

*PROPERTY OF ELENA M ROSEWOOD.*

Not *estate of*.

*Property of*.

That is the whole ending, as far as Tess is concerned.

Everything else is mine to carry.

All chapters
1. Chapter 1 — THE GIRL WITH THE ROSES 2. Chapter 2 — WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER 3. Chapter 3 — WHAT I THOUGHT IT MEANT 4. Chapter 4 — THE INSIDE OF A RING 5. Chapter 5 — MY MOTHER'S VERSION 6. Chapter 6 — LOT 1147 7. Chapter 7 — TEN YEARS UNTOUCHED 8. Chapter 8 — THE ADDRESS ON THE NOTICE 9. Chapter 9 — WHAT $340 BUYS 10. Chapter 10 — THE NAME 11. Chapter 11 — EVERYTHING WITH MY NAME ON IT 12. Chapter 12 — TESS 13. Chapter 13 — HELD IN PERPETUITY 14. Chapter 14 — TWO RINGS