How are you, honey? Are you doing okay? Settling into a routine yet? I would say that I miss you, but I imagine that I’m haunting you in the really sweet, reassuring way, and NOT in the creepy-little-girl-from-that-terrifying-movie way. WHY did we watch that? Why?

 At any rate, sweetest heart, I’m hoping that this month, you might start reaching out a little bit. I know you’re a loner, and yes, it was totally hot when I met you. But I don’t want you to fall back into that because of . . . well . . . loneliness. I don’t want you to be stuck because I died.

 So I was thinking maybe you could do some volunteering. Asmaa can put you in touch with a project you’d like. Maybe you can do something with the homeless veterans, you know? Or be one of those folks who picks up trash on Sunday mornings? Maybe you can be a Big Brother or something.

 You’re too good to waste, Josh. I want the world to get to share you, my truest love, my heart, my honeybun. You have so many gifts. The world is lucky to have you, and I was the luckiest of all.

 I love you, honey. Forever.

 Lauren

He had tears in his eyes when he finished reading.

Sometimes, when they were married, they’d have the same idea at the same time. He’d call her from the market and say, “I was thinking of making chicken Parmesan for dinner,” and she’d squeal and say, “I was literally texting you this very minute, asking if you’d make chicken Parm!” Or sometimes he’d say, “Turn on the subtitles, okay?” at the very second she was reaching for the remote to do just that.

“Soon,” she once said, before her diagnosis, “we won’t even need words to communicate.” He liked that idea.

It was the same today. “Great minds think alike, honey,” he said aloud, his voice husky.

No one would ever know him the way she had.

But they could know him a little. After all, he was the man who had won Lauren Carlisle’s heart. The luckiest guy in the world.

20

Joshua

Month seven

September

THEY WERE IN Hawaii, but it was the Providence apartment, or maybe it was the Cape house they’d rented. At any rate, they were by the ocean, and it was sunny and beautiful, and he could hear the gentle roar of the ocean. The breeze skimmed their skin, blowing Lauren’s hair against his neck. She was laughing, leading him into the bedroom, wearing a filmy white nightgown, barefoot, no makeup, that cute little tummy, sexy as hell.

He was kissing her again, actually kissing her. She was real, she was back, she was his again. “I can’t believe you’re here,” he said.

“Of course I’m here, silly,” she said, and her voice . . . he’d forgotten how much he loved the sound of her voice, huskier than when they first met, but so beautiful.

“You came back.”

“I’ll always come back, honey.” Then she pulled him closer and slid his shirt off his shoulders, unbuckled his belt and pulled him onto her, falling back on the bed.

“I missed you so much,” he said.

“I know, Josh. You’ve been amazing. So brave and good.”

“You can be dead if you come back like this, okay? I don’t mind, as long as I can see you.”

She laughed, kissing his cheek, mouth, neck, sliding her hands down his back, to his hips, tugging him closer, opening her legs, and she—

* * *

HE JOLTED AWAKE with a raging hard-on and only the sleeping dog next to him.

“No!” he yelled, punching the mattress. “Goddamnit!” Pebbles leaped off the bed and ran into another room, but for the love of God, Josh did not want to wake up. It was like losing her all over again.

If he was going to have a sex dream about his wife, couldn’t he at least finish it? He flopped back on the bed and closed his eyes, but he knew it was no use. He wasn’t going to fall back asleep. His erection tented the sheet. God, it was embarrassing. Ridiculous. He had a boner for his dead wife and nothing to do for it, aside from the obvious. But he didn’t want to jerk off. He’d probably cry, and the combination was too pathetic, even for him.

He closed his eyes and tried to recapture the dream, but already, it was breaking apart, like fog. The hard-on stayed.

Ridiculous.

It had seemed so real. She had seemed so real. Missing her was a gaping maw, an ache in his whole body.

The clock read 3:06 a.m. The loneliest hour in the world.

Jen said dreams were visits from the dead, but to him, it felt like torture, to have been in that dreamworld and to have to come back to find Lauren dead.

Growing up Lutheran, he’d gone to services regularly with his mom—St. Paul’s, a beautiful old church in Providence with lots of stained glass windows and hard wooden pews. It was a nice community—his mom loved the outreach and community service they did. It was good enough in that respect, but the idea of God reaching down to help here and there, of an afterlife . . . harder to swallow. Maybe it was the science geek in him. Maybe his birth father was an atheist, and it was genetic. The idea that God was waiting in the sky somewhere, deciding whether or not to answer your prayers . . . it didn’t make a lot of sense.

He remembered when he was about eight years old, and a tornado had flattened an entire Kansas town. He and his mom were watching the news report, which showed only one house standing in the entire neighborhood amid acres and acres of rubble. “It’s a miracle,” said the weeping owner about his own survival. “My wife, she was sayin’, ‘Spare us, Lord, spare us,’ and the good Lord held us in the palm of His hand and saved us.”

In the house next door, the entire family had been killed, including a six-week-old baby.

“Why didn’t God save the neighbors?” Josh asked his mother. “Didn’t they pray?” Even then, he was cynical. “I bet the baby’s parents were praying.”