In his older age, the man’s knees now ache. He feels the urge to look at a piece of yellowed newspaper hidden away in his closet, which he keeps a secret from his wife, although he doesn’t know why. Right now, he lays in bed while his wife is reading on a chair in the woods. He reads the yellowed newspaper, and it makes him recall his father.

As a boy, his father’s room in the apartment he rents is dusty, and a red suitcase props the mattress level on its box spring. In it is also a small fridge with yogurt and soft drinks, which the father gets up to rummage around some nights. He visits every summer, during which he almost always has to clean in order to get around. Inside his drawers are books from the time when his father used to own and run a moving company, when his father and mother were still together.

In his living room, he has a tube which he runs to his nose for oxygen, which the boy sometimes uses out of curiosity while his father is away, sometimes to the wound clinic where the sores on his leg are treated. While staying with him, the boy often helps his father get comfortable in his chair, though his father never complains about his illness or health to him.

Later on in life, the man visits his father with his wife. Although the man is hesitant, both his father and his wife are insistent, so they go to his apartment. For two days, the father seems different around him, especially as he gets to know his wife better. His father peppers her with all sorts of questions and gets along with her well, as if truly interested.

The night before they leave, the father is restless and struggles in bed, which causes the man to wake up. Fearing that his wife’s sleep will be disturbed, the man gets his father beverages from his fridge until his father passes out on a futon in the back porch. In the morning, the wife asks what’s wrong, though the man says to just leave him be, reluctant to tell her the truth about who his father really is. Outside, on the back porch, his father picks and pulls at the sores on his leg, causing immense bleeding. The man and wife then help him upstairs and take their leave from a shuttle.

The visit to his father never actually happened, however. While he and his wife really were in town, they were only there for a little while before the man got a call about what happened. On the plane back home, the man replays voicemails left from his father. Even while in town, the man never got to see the apartment where his father lived. Only the now-yellowed newspaper, which tells him about the house fire which destroyed it and killed his father, bears witness. Now and again, when he thinks about his father, or looks at the yellowed newspaper, he wonders if he could have been nicer.