“Of course! Red leather, I think.” She got off the couch and walked around it. Unsurprisingly, it was top of the line and, for a mobility scooter, as sleek as it could be, looking almost like a motorcycle from the front. Which Josh would know would help with the indignity aspect. A surge of love for her husband brought tears to her eyes—and these tears, she would allow. She kissed Josh’s neck, then hugged him. “I love it. I’m calling it Godzilla. Every bike needs a name. Come on, let’s break it in.”

She climbed on it, hit the forward button, then laughed as it lurched. Pebbles leaped and barked, and Lauren turned in a tight circle. “Whee! This is fun, honey! Come on, you try it.”

He did. He went down the hall, tried to do a K-turn, got stuck, and the two of them laughed till it hurt.

From then on, it was a little easier to take walks and be outside. The reality of needing a scooter was outweighed by the ease of getting around. Sarah came over one night and bedazzled the back of the seat with hearts and gave her an air horn to scare the bejesus out of inconsiderate pedestrians.

Lauren and Josh combed through Providence for places with good paths—Blackstone Boulevard’s gravel paths, the Botanical Center at Roger Williams Park, India Point Park, or Providence College’s pretty campus. Being outside made Lauren feel less like an invalid, even if she was sucking oxygen and riding a scooter. She’d always loved the cold air (which was also easier to breathe). Godzilla let her spend more time outside, so it was a win. She loved going as fast as possible, then circling back to herd Josh or Jen and the kids, telling them to hurry up. Sebastian loved riding on her lap, and really, why had Lauren ever thought a scooter was an admission of defeat? Godzilla let her be even cooler in the eyes of her nephew, and that was everything.

One evening, with Lauren bundled in a pink wool coat, scarf, hat and mittens, they walked/rolled down Blackstone Boulevard, admiring the gorgeous houses and Christmas decorations. A familiar figure came running at them, blond ponytail swinging. “Sarah!” Lauren cried. “Hey, you!”

“Hey!” Sarah stopped. “How’s it going?”

“Great! You look very fit!” Sarah looked like Catwoman, dressed in tight all-black running clothes.

Sarah smiled. “How’s Godzilla?”

“Awesome. Want a turn?”

“Yes!”

Lauren climbed off and took her portable oxygen out of Godzilla’s basket. “Go for it. I’d love to walk for a little while.”

“See you later, losers!” Sarah said, and she waved and went full speed ahead. “This is awesome!” she yelled over her shoulder.

“Now we can walk like normal people,” Lauren said, taking Josh’s hand.

“Normal people are overrated,” he said. “But this is great.”

It had been a while since they’d held hands and meandered for no reason. The loveliness of the fall evening settled around them, the smell of wood smoke and crisp leaves, a hint of cold in the air.

“I love this house,” Josh said, stopping in front of a sprawling Victorian. The lights were on inside, and the yard was tastefully decorated for the holidays, strands of white fairy lights meticulously twined around a few trees. It looked like a Christmas card, so cozy and posh and welcoming. Lauren suspected her husband had stopped to give her a rest, and she was grateful. Slow and easy, slow and easy, fill those lungs as much as you can.

“What kind of house should we get?” she asked.

“Something like this would be nice.”

“In the city, though?”

“Wherever you want, honey.”

The thought that she wouldn’t live long enough to pick out a house flitted through her mind, as fast as a hummingbird, here and gone. “I do like this one,” she said. “Or the brick one up here. Very impressive, as my genius husband deserves.”

“That’s big, all right. We could have ten kids in that house.”

“Ten, huh? Spoken like a man. We might have to adopt a few.”

“That’s fine by me.” He kissed her then, and she hugged him close, his mouth so perfect against hers.

“Break it up, lovebirds,” came Sarah’s voice. “Are you trying to make me jealous?”

“Why don’t we have dinner together?” Lauren said. “Us three. And get off Godzilla. He misses me, and if you break him, I’ll kill you.” The fatigue was heavy tonight, but she didn’t want to go home just yet.

They switched places and headed for Declan’s, an Irish bar on Hope Street. As they walked ahead of her in the deepening dark, Lauren had a thought. That someday, maybe, Sarah would be holding Josh’s hand. That she would be his wife. It would be good to know that Josh had a lovely, caring, smart woman as his second wife . . . someone who had known her and would understand that he would always love Lauren just a teeny bit more.

She rolled her eyes at herself and bumped Godzilla up a little faster. Not today, Satan. Not today.

5

Joshua

Three (or four?) weeks after Lauren’s funeral

March

FOR A STREAM of unmarked days after his wife’s funeral, Joshua Park, BFA in industrial engineering (summa cum laude), MS in biomedical design (ditto), and PhD in mechanical engineering, watched TV. Not his usual shows—The Great British Bake Off and Star Trek, the original series—but cooking shows that involved frantic dashes to the grocery store and making a dish out of rattlesnake and watermelon. Those docudramas about ancient battles. Alaskans looking for gold. People who cleaned hoarders’ homes.

He was fine. It was fine. The shows all put him to sleep, which was the point. Numbness settled in around him, and he welcomed it.

He ate. Or he didn’t eat. It was one extreme or the other—an entire pizza in one sitting, resulting in his feeling sick for the next twelve hours, or blurry days without food, marked by his phone; he’d set an alarm to feed Pebbles so she wouldn’t starve to death. His own intake seemed irrelevant. Back before he’d dated Lauren, and when they were first dating, he’d been like this—unstructured, eating to survive, not to enjoy. It had driven Lauren crazy. By their third date, she was organizing his life.