CHAPTER 11 – Conclusions

Year 2019 – Henrietta (NY). Not far from the Greater Rochester International Airport.

Sonja turned the last page of the diary, with tears flowing from her eyes, before closing it. The last annotation was from Megan. It said “Mom died peacefully in her bed, surrounded by the whole family, including grand-grand-grand-children, and all our love, the twelfth of April 1851, at 85 years of age.”

Signed “Megan Collins Hood”

Now she knew. Her ancestor was a heroine. She fought. And she created a family. Sonja Brooks Hood would never refuse to train again. She would never drop ‘Hood’ from her surname again. If she had to drop something, she would drop ‘Brooks’, which she already knew was that of her father, the first husband of her mother, who died of cancer when she was five. She was the firstborn, and she would be the one tasked to continue the tradition. Tradition. How she hated that word, until a few hours earlier. It is the modern world that teaches you to hate and refuse traditions, to dump all the old as wrong and embrace the new, to always look for changes, and never let anything stay the same. To run, never tie to anyone, to be free and ignore others… to be vulnerable, selfish, and submitted to the system, not to the family and the traditions that once made that same system great. Then the diary taught her what tradition was. It was family. The change was good, to adapt to the world, but family, roots, and love were the things that gave life real meaning. Not the traditions that the system imposes on you, the changes that the system inculcates in you, those are chains, meant to subjugate you. But without a family, you would lose everything… lose your identity, that they hate and try to change in what’s acceptable for their standard; lose your freedom, becoming tied to their ideology; lose your empathy, being taught to hate who is different while claiming to be inclusive; lose your humanity, so to be able to walk over the lives and needs of who disagrees with the mainstream; lose your soul, so to be reduced to an obedient and subjugated puppet; lose your heart, being always fearful of having a different opinion, a different appearance, a different something from what’s acceptable for the ‘tolerant’ crowd; lose your unicity, to conform to their idea of diversity. Family was everything.

She went to her grandmother, Julie Stewart Hood. The old woman always defended her against her mother. And then tried to quietly explain to her the reasons of her mother. Until she asked her to go into the old room in the corner, the room nobody touched without the family head's permission, and to try to imagine the life of the woman who lived there, their progenitor. She was curious, started rummaging around, and found the diary. She was initially uninterested in the old document, but the nice calligraphy roused her curiosity, and she started reading.

“Grandma… I found the diary of the founder of our dynasty.”

“Oh, really? Did you read it?”

“Yes, I did.”

“She was a remarkable woman, quite exceptional, wasn’t she?”

“She was so much more! Do you know that there is a huge treasure buried in two places in this house?”

“There isn’t anymore. How do you think we built our economic empire? The gold is stored in a bank, as some doubloons. Most has been converted into ingots over two centuries ago, even if the letters of credit were already a fortune.”

She could read the disappointment of the girl. She added, “We could still explore the old secret room, even if the one on the ground floor has been modernized, and made a panic room. The one below, instead, we kept it as original.”

“Would be nice.”

Then, after a moment, Sonja spoke again. “I understood grandma… I’ll obey mom, and will try to excel in everything, even more than my sisters. I’m the firstborn, and unless something happens to me, my duty and honour is to give the example and make sure that the dynasty lives on and prospers.”

“I’m proud of you, Sonja.”

“Why? I’ve been a spoiled brat, rebellious, and disrespectful. I was well on the path to cause only harm to the family. I hated the family, the tradition, the bonds, and everything. There is nothing in me to be proud of.”

“Exactly because of what you said. You learned your mistake, accepted it, and decided to remedy it. Most people wouldn’t be so wise and humble. Most people can’t accept, and neither admit that they make mistakes.”

“Thank you, Grandma. I must look for Mom and apologize to her. Then I have a lot to catch up with.”

She left the room. From another door, a woman of around thirty-five, Diana Martinson Hood, emerged. “How did it go?”

“As it went for you, and for me. And for my mother, and hers, back for generations. Cyndria worked her magic again. Sonja is looking for you to apologize.”

“Then I won’t let her wait. Thanks, Mom.”

And the woman left. Inside every single one of them, there was the flame of Cyndria. They would all read her diary, or a copy of it, when older. But if someone was particularly rebellious, they would make so that she would read it ‘by chance’ much earlier, and it would light the fire that drove their souls. Cyndria put herself into her revenge and got it perfectly. Then, she put herself into building a family, a legacy. And they were evidence of her success. For generations, every member of the family would help the female firstborn, or the designated successor, to make the best for the family. And every female firstborn would put herself completely in what the family needed, and even if formally the only owner, would take care of all the family as they deserved. That, with the help of the immense wealth left by their pirate ancestor, helped them build an economic empire that had no rivals in the world. And that nobody even suspected existed.