Chapter 11: Build This

Margaret took off her red glasses and polished them on her apron, which she only did when she was about to be rude.

"Sit, both of you," she said. "This takes a while."

Harrison sat on the stool across from her.

I took the armchair by the flat file, with my hand on my stitches.

"Eight years ago," Margaret began, "I supervised a thesis."

She tapped the board on the table.

"This one. The best I had seen in thirty years of teaching."

"A girl from Worcester with a scholarship, a secondhand drafting set and a roof I couldn't stop thinking about."

"Margaret," I said.

"Let me talk."

She turned to Harrison.

"Five years ago, I went to the library opening, because a client asked me."

"I walked in and looked up, and I had to sit down on a bench."

Harrison's face did not change.

"The roof," he said.

"The roof, the windows, the light falling onto the tables."

"Every line of her thesis, built in stone and glass, with a few proportions fixed by a good engineer."

"That's what Lucy said."

"I called her that night. She cried, and then she asked me not to make a fuss."

"Why would she ask that?"

Margaret looked at me.

I looked at the floor.

"Because she'd tried once, and her husband said please," Margaret said.

Harrison made a small sound.

"I wrote to Merrick Design anyway," Margaret went on. "A polite letter."

"I got a very polite answer from a lawyer. The design was Conrad Merrick's."

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