Two years after the attack on the World Trade Center, I was transferred by my company to New York to help run its financial research department. As part of the move, the company put us up in corporate housing for a bit, which turned out to be only a block south of Ground Zero (the cheapest real estate in Manhattan at the time).

When we first visited the apartment, I opened the door for my wife and two little girls. Rose, who was five at the time, immediately ran across the living room, wrapped herself in a sheer curtain, and said, “Look Daddy, I’m a ghost!” Later, when we put them to bed, we had to shut the curtains because the construction lights in the pit, which by then was clean of debris pile, were too bright.