Papa told him that the orphanage had been taken down for good in 1919, and of course by that time he was a man on his own, a veteran of the Great War with his life ahead of him.

“I grew up inspired by soldiers in the military,” Papa had said. “At the start of the war, the young men enlisted and it was an honorable thing, but due to my leg—I was born with a turned foot—I served as a medic.”

“Tell me how you found the shop again,” Andrew used to prod, enchanted by the tale. His father had no clear memory of his childhood home, only that it was a basement room with windows level with the street. He used to watch pedestrians’ boots passing by. And of course, after the disaster, it was impossible to recognize the neighborhood. There was one clue he recalled, and that turned out to be the key to finding home.

“I came back from the war with a bride—and a purpose,” Papa was proud of saying. He was a skilled healer and apothecary, and he eventually went looking to establish a place of business in the city. After the fires, San Francisco rebuilt with a vengeance, and it was full of bustling newness. Julius Harper found home by chance one day. He was walking along Perdita Street on an errand when he saw the winking sun symbol at the top of a derelict, abandoned building.

The sight awakened a slumbering memory in Papa. His mother told him when he was a very little boy that if he ever lost his way to look for the building with the winking sun. It was a distinctive feature on the facade, a sun with a face and one eye open, the other eye shut. In olden times many people didn’t know how to read, so they looked for symbols instead.

“Mam drew a picture of it for me,” Papa said. Years later, when he saw that symbol, he realized he was looking at the place where he had lived when he was a little boy.

He broke down weeping as memories thundered through him.

That day, Julius Harper found an opportunity. He acquired the neglected building and made it his home once again, laying claim to it by paying its back taxes. He and his bride repaired the place and founded the apothecary shop, the Perdita Drug Company.

“My father was a good man but a troubled man,” said Andrew, looking at the strange doctor as the past melted into the present. “He was so young when he went to war, an ambulance driver and medic. He always said that in war and in peace, it is the lives you save that give your life meaning. My mother, Inga, was a nurse, and they came together much like the love story in that Hemingway novel.