They arrived at the Vance Foundation just after nine. The morning was cool and clear, the city already awake, the sidewalks crowded with people heading to work. Aaron had not slept well — the letters from the storage unit had kept him turning, the name Eleanor Vance circling through his mind like a question he could not set down.
The building was an old office building near Market Street, the kind with marble floors and a slow elevator and the smell of decades of work lingering in the hallways. Suite 300 was at the end of a long corridor, a glass door with the foundation's name etched in clean lettering.
Aaron opened the door and stepped inside.
The reception area was small but warm — plants in the corners, a couch that looked comfortable, and a desk where a woman in her fifties sat reading a book. She looked up when they entered, closed the book without marking her page, and smiled.
"Can I help you?"
