Frank Miller sat at his kitchen table with a cup of coffee that had gone cold twenty minutes ago and a ledger that contained numbers he had been looking at for three hours without seeing them. The ledger belonged to the factory—the one on West Street that had been closed for eight months, the one where he had worked for twenty-two years, the one where he had earned enough money to buy a house in a neighborhood that was slowly becoming something else, something that did not have a place for men like him who knew how to operate a lathe and nothing else.

The money was sitting in the accounts of the factory's closure fund. It was not his. It belonged to the workers, to the three hundred and forty-seven men and women who had spent the better part of their lives turning metal into parts for machines that made things that people bought and used and threw away, the way people threw away everything now, the way Frank had thrown away his own life without noticing that it was gone until it was already in the trash.

The sum was simple. Two hundred thousand dollars. Enough to buy the new treatment that the clinic in Pittsburgh was offering. The treatment that would add twenty years to his life. Twenty years. He was fifty-four years old. With the treatment, he would be seventy-four. He would live to see his daughter graduate from college. He would live to see his grandson be born. He would live to see—

He stopped. He had been stopping at this point for three hours. He always stopped at this point. Because the next thought was the one he did not want to think, the one that sat in the back of his mind like a stone in a shoe, small and persistent and impossible to ignore.

The next thought was about Dorothy.

Dorothy "Dot" Kowalski lived two houses down from him on Elm Street, in a house that she had bought after her husband left her ten years ago and had not tried to sell because selling it would have meant admitting that she was alone and she was not ready to admit that yet. She was fifty-two years old. She worked at the grocery store on Main Street, stocking shelves and ringing up people who bought things they did not need with money they did not have. She had a daughter who lived in Columbus and called her once a week on Sunday evenings and forgot to call the other six days.

Frank loved Dorothy. He had loved her for eight years, since the day she had walked into the diner on Main Street and ordered coffee and sat down at the counter next to him and asked him what he was reading. He had been reading the newspaper. He had told her. She had said something about the sports section. He had said something back. They had both been drinking coffee. The coffee had gone cold. Neither of them had noticed.

If he took the money, if he moved it through the accounts the way he had figured out how to do it, the way he had figured out everything in his life, quietly and without asking anyone's permission, the discrepancy would not be discovered for six months. Six months. In six months, he would have taken the treatment. He would have begun the twenty years. And in twenty years, Dorothy would be seventy-two. He would be ninety-four. He would be an old man taking care of another old man who would probably die before he did, the way it always went, the way it always had gone, the way it always would go.

He picked up his coffee and drank it. It was cold and it tasted like nothing, which was appropriate because it was nothing and he was nothing and the numbers in the ledger were nothing and the two hundred thousand dollars were nothing if he could not share them with the woman who sat next to him at the diner every Tuesday and Thursday morning and drank coffee while it was still hot and talked about her daughter and he listened and said nothing because there was nothing to say.

The phone rang. He let it ring. It was probably the collection agency. It was probably the bank. It was probably someone who wanted something he did not have and could not give them. He let it ring until it stopped, and then he picked up the ledger and looked at the numbers again.

They had not changed. They never would change. The sum remained two hundred thousand dollars. The sum remained everything. The sum remained nothing.

He closed the ledger. He stood up. He walked to the window and looked out at the street, at the houses on both sides, at Dorothy's house, at the porch light that was on even though it was only three in the afternoon, at the way the light made the window glow like a small warm eye looking out at a world that had forgotten how to look back.

He went to the door and put on his coat and walked out onto the sidewalk and walked two houses down and stood on Dorothy's porch and raised his hand to knock and did not knock and stood there for a long time with his hand in the air and his heart beating in a way that had nothing to do with the treatment and everything to do with the simple fact that he was standing on a woman's porch at three in the afternoon with his hand raised to knock and he could not bring himself to knock.

Because the truth was that he did not need twenty more years. The truth was that he had fifty-four years and they had been enough. They had been more than enough. They had been enough to love Dorothy Kowalski for eight years, which was more than most people got in a lifetime, more than most people deserved.

He lowered his hand. He turned around. He walked back to his house. He sat down at his kitchen table. He picked up the ledger. He closed it. He put it in the drawer. He went to the sink and poured out the cold coffee and filled the pot with fresh water and set it on the stove and turned on the burner and waited for the water to boil, the way he had waited his whole life, the way he would continue to wait, not for twenty more years but for the next cup of coffee, hot this time, and the next day, and the next, and the next, until the days ran out and there was nothing left to wait for and he could sit on his porch and watch the sun go down and think about the woman who had sat next to him at the diner and drunk coffee while it was still hot and talked about her daughter and he had listened and said nothing and it had been enough.

It had been enough.