Petra nodded. "Your libido is high?"

Don looked at her, said nothing.

She nodded again. "That’s common. A man’s testosterone levels drop as he ages, but a rollback restores them. That can affect behavior."

Tell me about it, thought Don. "But I don’t remember it being like this the first time around. Of course, back then…" He trailed off.

"What?"

"I was much bigger when I really was twenty-five."

Petra blinked. "Taller?"

"Fatter. I probably weighed forty pounds more than I do now."

"Ah, well, yes, that could be a factor, too, in the severity of the hormonal imbalance.

But we can make some adjustments. Have you noticed anything else?"

"Well, I’m not just feeling" — there was probably a better, more polite word, but he couldn’t think of it just then — "horny. I’m feeling romantic."

"Again, hormones," said Petra. "It’s common as the body adjusts to a rollback.

Any other problems?"

"No," he said. It had been hard enough alluding to what had happened with Lenore; to give voice to this would—

"No depression?" Petra said. "No suicidal thoughts?"

He couldn’t meet her eyes. "Well, I…"

"Serotonin levels," Petra said. "They can go out of whack, too, what with all the changes to your biochemistry that happen during a rollback."

"It’s not just chemical," Don said. "Bad things have actually happened. I — I’ve been trying to get a job, for instance, but no one wants me."

Petra lifted a hand slightly. "Just because your depression might be situational doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be treated. Have you ever been prescribed an antidepressant before?"

Don shook his head.

She got up and opened her leather bag. "All right. Let’s take some blood samples; we’ll see exactly where your levels of various hormones are right now. I’m sure we can fix everything up."

Don was at home, lying in bed next to Sarah, when he was awoken from a dream.

He and Sarah were standing on opposite sides of a vast canyon, and the gap between them kept widening, geologic forces working in real time, and—

—and the phone was ringing. He fumbled for the handset, and Sarah found the switch for the lamp on her nightstand.

"Hello?" said Don.

"Don, is… is that you?"

He frowned. Nobody quite recognized his voice these days. "Yes."

"Oh, Don, it’s Pam." His sister-in-law; Bill’s wife. She sounded hoarse, stressed.

"Pam, are you okay?" Next to him, Sarah struggled to sit up, concerned.

"It’s Bill. He’s — oh, God, Don, Bill is dead."

Don felt his heart jump. "Christ…"

"What is it?" asked Sarah. "What’s wrong?"

He turned to her, and repeated the words, his own voice full of shock now: "Bill is dead."

Sarah brought a hand to her mouth. Don spoke into the phone. "What happened?"

"I don’t know. His heart, I guess. He — he…" Pam trailed off.

"Are you at home? Are you okay?"

"Yes, I’m at home. I just got back from the hospital. He was pronounced DOA."

"What about Alex?" Bill’s fifty-five-year-old son.

"He’s on his way."

"God, Pam, I’m so sorry."

"I don’t know what I’m going to do without him," said Pam.

"Let me get dressed and get over there," he said. Bill and Pam normally wintered in Florida, but hadn’t yet headed south. "Alex and I, we can take care of all the details."

"My poor Bill," Pam said.

"I’ll be there soon," he said.

"Thanks, Don. Bye."

"Bye." He tried to put the handset on his nightstand, but it tumbled to the floor.

Sarah reached over and touched his arm. God, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his brother. And then it hit him—

Not since before. He normally only saw Bill a couple of times a year, but they did usually go to a Jays game each summer, although Don had begged off this year.

This damned laying low, this foolish embarrassment about seeing people he knew, had cost him his last chance to see his brother.

He left the bedroom, walked to the bathroom, and started getting ready to go. Sarah slowly followed him in. He was about to say she didn’t have to come, that he could get Gunter to drive him. But he wanted her with him; he needed her.

"I’m going to miss him," Sarah said, standing next to him by the sink.

He glanced briefly at the mirror above the basin, showing his own youthful reflection, and her aged one. "Me, too," he said, very softly.

"Sarah," said Pam, as they stood at the door to Bill’s condominium apartment, "thank you for coming." Don’s sister-in-law was a thin woman in her late seventies, short, with high cheek-bones. She looked at Don and scowled. She probably recognized the distinctive Halifax features, including the large nose and high forehead, but not the specific face. "I’m sorry…?"

"Pam, it’s me. It’s Don."

"Oh, right. The rollback. I — I didn’t imagine…" She stopped. "You look good."

"Thanks. Look, how are you holding up?"

Pam was clearly frazzled, but she said, "I’m okay."

"Where’s Alex?"

"In the den. We’re trying to find Bill’s lawyer’s name."

Sarah said, "I’ll go help Alex." And she made her way further into the apartment.

Don looked at Pam. "Poor Bill," he said, having nothing better to offer.

"There’s so much to do," said Pam, sounding overwhelmed. "A notice on the Star’s website. Organizing the… the funeral."

"It’ll all get taken care of," said Don. "Don’t worry." He gestured toward the living room, and led Pam further into her own home. "Do you need a drink?"

"I’ve already got one going." She lowered herself into an amorphous fluorescent-green chair with a tubular metal frame; his brother’s taste in furniture had always been more avant-garde than his own. Don found another, matching chair.

Pam’s drink — amber colored, with ice — was on a table by her chair. She took a sip.

"God, look at you."

Don felt uncomfortable, and he shifted his gaze to look out the fifth-floor window, taller, more-expensive condo towers filling most of the view. "I didn’t ask for it," he said.

"I know. I know. But my Bill — if he’d had a rollback, why…"

He’d still be alive, Don thought. Yes, I know.

"You were… you were…" Pam was shaking her head back and forth. She stopped speaking with her thought uncompleted.

"What?" asked Don.

She looked away. The living-room walls were lined with bookcases; Pam and Bill even had bookshelves built-in above the door lintels. "Nothing."

"No, tell me," he said.

She turned back to him, and the anger and betrayal were apparent on her face.

"You’re older than Bill," she said.

"By fifteen months, yes."

"But now you’re going to be around for decades!"

He nodded. "Yes?"

"You were the older brother," she said, as if resenting that it had to be spelled out.

"You were supposed to go first."

All Saints’ Kingsway Anglican Church had been the church of Don’s childhood, remembered now more for the Boy Scout meetings he’d attended there than for anything the minister had said. Don hadn’t been in the building for — well, the phrase that came to his mind, no doubt because of his current surroundings, was "for God knows how long," although he didn’t in fact believe in a God who kept track of such minutiae.

The coffin was closed, which was just as well. People had always said that Don and Bill looked a lot alike, but Don had no desire to have the comparison — and the contrast — highlighted. Indeed, since Bill had never had a weight problem, Don looked more like Bill had at twenty-five than he himself had at that age. He was the only one in the room who had known Bill back then, and—

No. No, wait! Over there, talking to Pam, could that be- ?