The days before the summit were filled with unromantic work. Constance reviewed the trust's disclosure requirements, the fund manager prepared a list of meetings I could attend without speaking for the entire partnership, and I asked my mother which of Samuel's old investors would recognize me. I had forgotten how much of my father's work consisted of introductions made over years, not grand announcements. A trust could own fifty buildings and still be useless to a community if the people directing it never met the people who lived beside those buildings.
At Eastgate I continued my inspections. The fourth floor finally received concrete on Friday, and Danny proudly showed me photographs, delivery tickets, and the updated schedule. I approved the completed work only after the crew finished the required inspections. Louise watched me sign and said, "You look like you slept a whole night for once."
"Not quite," I replied. "But the paperwork and the building agree today."
"That's more than I can say for the people downtown," she said, without explaining. I didn't press her, but I remembered the comment later, when I began to understand how many people at Rhodes Point knew something was wrong and considered it somebody else's problem.
The Regional Development Summit occupied the east ballroom of a downtown convention center. At nine on Thursday morning, I entered wearing a navy suit without a tie and carrying the same yellow legal pad I used at site meetings. The lobby smelled of fresh coffee and carpet cleaner. White American executives, engineers, public officials, and builders crowded around registration tables, shaking hands and exchanging business cards as if they were collecting proof that they mattered.
I was one of the few people there who normally worked in steel-toed boots. When I gave my name, the woman at registration looked at the organization printed beneath it and raised her eyebrows. "Thornton Family Land Trust?" she asked. "We weren't told anyone was attending from the trust."
"I'm Elijah Thornton," I said. "My father was Samuel."
She smiled with genuine surprise and went to find an organizer. In the next half hour, I met people who had corresponded with our attorneys for years but had never seen a Thornton in person. A planning board member recalled a neighborhood clinic our trust had helped finance; a county commissioner remembered Samuel coming to a hearing in a plain brown jacket; a lender told me that my father had taught him the difference between a profitable loan and a responsible one.
I had been so accustomed to protecting our privacy that the warmth of those conversations startled me. Not everyone was impressed, and I was grateful for that. A skeptical contractor asked whether the trust would finally be willing to explain why some of its warehouses stood unused, and I admitted that several properties needed better plans. A city employee asked about affordable housing, and I said we had been discussing it privately far too long.
At eleven, an organizer asked whether I would fill a vacant seat on the afternoon panel about private land and downtown growth. I asked whether she wanted me to speak as trustee rather than as a Barrow and Lang engineer. She said that was precisely why she was asking. I agreed, then retreated toward the coffee station because I wanted ten minutes to prepare before anybody else decided what I should represent.