They arrived at Meier and Frank, a stately, white building near Pioneer Square. It was among the last traditional department stores in town, and Dan generally preferred it to the mall. They pushed through the glass doors into the perfumed air.

“What is Meier and Frank?” Celia asked, as the doors sealed behind them.

Dan was puzzled by the question. “A department store,” he said. “You’ve been here before.”

“No,” she said. “Meier and Frank. What does it mean?”

“The words?” Dan said. “They’re people’s names. Meier and Frank are the guys who founded the store. Meier and Frank. They were a team.”

“Who were they though?”

“I don’t really know,” he said. He had never thought about the names as connected to actual people before. It was just the name of the department store he favored. The names were almost entirely abstract in his mind.

“Some Jewish merchants, I guess,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“Their names,” he said. “They’re Jewish names. Meier anyway.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

Celia shook her head, frustrated by all the knowledge still outside her grasp. “I don’t know how you can know that,” she said.

“I’m a lot older than you,” he said.

Walking through the cosmetics section and riding the escalator, Dan explained to Celia, as best he understood it, the history of anti-Semitism in the West. The Jews, he told his daughter, had been persecuted in Europe for centuries. They had been prohibited from owning property, which was to say from farming, and forced to live in squalid ghettos. They had thus turned to financial and mercantile trades, like owning department stores, for their living. Now they were hated because they were bankers and scholars. The legacy of political oppression, he suggested, played out in all kinds of unexpected ways.

His history lesson was cut short, though, when the escalator deposited them at the edge of the children’s shoe section. The smell of new leather was heavy in the air, and the display pedestals formed a simple maze crowded with goods.

“We have arrived,” Dan said grandly.

“Here we are,” Celia said.

“Shall we commence looking?” Dan said.

“Yes,” Celia said, “we shall.”

They waded into the shoe department. Celia had a strategy, which involved making a first pass to get her bearings, then going back with a finer eye, and then going back again to winnow down the options. Dan followed at a distance, letting her take the lead and offering his opinion when asked, but mostly keeping out of it. He checked his phone to be sure he hadn’t missed any calls.