The morning arrived in downtown San Francisco with a pale, metallic light that made the windows of Mercer Meridian Tower look almost colorless.
Sixty-four floors of glass rose into low clouds, their edges disappearing whenever the fog rolled in from the bay.
People hurried beneath the building's enormous silver letters with paper cups in their hands and expensive watches flashing at their wrists. Most of them had never heard the name of the woman who had once helped keep the electricity on in the rented warehouse where the company began.
A man in a charcoal coat stepped through the revolving doors shortly before eight. He was twenty-nine, broad-shouldered, and handsome in an unpolished way, with dark hair that had not been cut recently and a face made older by exhaustion. His white shirt was clean but wrinkled at the elbows, and the heels of his brown leather shoes had worn unevenly. He carried an old folder under one arm while his free hand held the small hand of a six-year-old girl.
The girl's name was Matilda Mercer, although none of the people crossing the lobby knew it. Her pale blue cardigan had a loose thread at one cuff, her hair still carried the disorder of an early flight, and a stuffed rabbit hung from the crook of her arm. One ear of the rabbit had been repaired twice with thread that did not quite match its fur. Matilda had insisted on bringing it because the rabbit had belonged to her mother before Matilda could remember her mother's face.
She stopped beneath the company name and sounded out the letters as if she were reading an especially difficult page in her schoolbook. Then she tilted her head and looked at her father. "Daddy, is this the company Mommy used to talk about?" she asked. Dante Mercer followed her gaze to the letters above the reception desk and felt a familiar ache settle behind his ribs.
"Yes, sweetheart," he said, squeezing her hand. "This is the one."
"Did she work here?"
"Before it looked like this," Dante replied. "Before there were so many windows."
Matilda thought about that while a group of executives walked around them as though they were an inconvenient piece of furniture. "Did she like it?" she asked. Dante bent slightly so that they could look at the building together, and when he answered he kept his voice gentle. "She loved what we were trying to do. That isn't exactly the same thing as loving a building."
Five years had passed since Dante had last crossed this lobby as anything more than a distant shareholder. He had been on magazine covers once, with a young founder's bright eyes and the careless conviction that a good idea would protect the people who built it. Now his photograph had been removed from the entrance display, replaced by architectural awards and photographs of recent investment conferences. He noticed the change without surprise, although the absence of any photograph of Rosalind hurt more than he expected.