“God bless you, Gordon.” He could hear she was holding back tears.

“But of course, Helena. And I’ll send you the full amount.”

Internet scams had made money transfer companies like Western Union suspicious of large sums wired to Ghana and Nigeria. They would likely decline Gordon’s transfer, so an interbank transaction was the only way to do it. Helena texted him the details of her account in Accra and then began getting dressed to go out to his bank. As he changed into his long johns, he heard the door of his townhome opening downstairs. That would be Derek paying one of his semi-regular visits.

“Dad?”

“Up here.”

Derek walked in and they gave each other a manly bear hug. At forty-three, Derek was a younger version of his father although his skin tone was a golden brown (paler in the wintertime) against Gordon’s white, and Derek’s curly hair was an espresso color where his dad’s was ginger red. Most of the similarity was in the sharp jaw and their eyes, both possessing greenish irises and heavy lids people sometimes called bedroom eyes. They bore an implied suggestion of languid sex on a lazy Sunday morning. That was what initially got the attention of Claire, the woman Derek eventually married and later divorced.

“What’s up?” Derek asked, plopping his long frame onto Gordon’s recliner and pushing the seat back. “Were you going out?”

“Just some errands,” Gordon said, sitting down to put on his socks. “Nothing special.”

Derek scrutinized his father a moment. “You okay? You seem a little preoccupied.”

Gordon shrugged and made a show of nonchalance. “Not really. I’m okay.”

Derek nodded. “What you been up to?”

“Nothing much. I was online with Frank a little while ago.”

“How’s he doing?”

Gordon shook his head. “Very rough for him right now.”

“How about you, Dad?” Derek said, his forehead creasing. “All this helping people stress you out any? You know what they say—the caregiver needs care too.”

“True.” Gordon shoved his feet into his shoes. “It’s not too intense, though. I can always pull away from it if I need to. It’s not as if Frank lives next door and comes running in every minute. He lives in California, for God’s sake.”

“Yeah. Funny you’ve never even met him in person. The Facebook definition of ‘friend.’”

They went on to talk about other matters. Claire, Derek’s ex-wife, was being “difficult,” as he put it. But Simone, their daughter, was doing well in school. Derek wished she could be with him all the time, but he had to be content with the present arrangement and the uneasy truce with his ex-wife.

At length, Gordon looked at his watch. “I’d better get moving. You wanna stay till I get back?”

“Nah,” Derek said. “I need to get going myself.”

Gordon went to his bank and set up the wire transfer to go out that afternoon. On Massachusetts Avenue at Dupont Circle, he cast a look, with a touch of wistfulness, at the bookstore he used to own up until eight years ago, Tilson Books. Dupont Circle had always been expensive over the two decades that Gordon ran the store, but it got even more so as the coffee joints, Shake Shacks, and Krispy Kremes of the world moved in. The 2008 economic crash was a death knell and Gordon sold out for a respectable amount. His investments had been good, and he was comfortable—very. Now, under new management, Tilson Books included the obligatory café with high-priced, frou-frou drinks, something Gordon had eschewed. If he had acquiesced to that kind of stuff, who knows? He might still have the bookstore. But no regrets, no looking back.