“God listens,” his mother said. “But He’s not a grocer, okay? Just because you pray for something you want doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.”

“So why pray?” asked Josh.

“Why not pray?” she answered. “Eat your broccoli.” She paused. “It’s nice to think that someone else is out there, someone who loves and understands you. And God helps us all. Just maybe not in the way you think, or the way we want Him to.”

Not exactly a passionate argument for the power of prayer. Josh was twelve when he dropped the belief of God completely. Oh, church was fine—he liked the sameness of the service, the music at Christmas and Easter. He liked that his mother was so well regarded by the other parishioners. No one ever made a fuss over her lack of a spouse, and they always told him what a good kid he was.

But for him, the experience was more about the smells of candles and lemon wax, the handshake from the pastor, who had a certain celebrity about him in his robes. Josh had taken Lauren a few times when they were engaged, and a few times afterward, before she was diagnosed. He liked the cooing of the church ladies as Stephanie introduced Lauren, and he loved seeing Lauren charm everyone.

So Josh had nothing against church. He just didn’t believe in God. Or the Great Beyond.

Until Lauren had gotten sick, that was, and then he understood. There might not be any atheists in foxholes, and there were definitely no atheists in the ICU. You can’t be an atheist when your twenty-seven-year-old spouse is fighting to breathe, her eyes wide, clawing at her throat. You can’t be an atheist when you see her intubated and still. Or when they tell you there’s no cure for what she has.

He’d prayed. He asked God to forgive his earlier lack of faith. He accepted the prayers of his mother’s church friends, the prayer chain they set up for him, the rosaries Sumi Kim (a Catholic) fervently offered, the quieter, more poetic prayers of Ben (a Buddhist). Josh begged. There was nothing pretty or ceremonial about his praying, no sir. He asked God for time, for a trial drug to work, for a miracle reversal. Of course he did.

And then, after God failed to save her, when God said no to the prayers and left Josh alone in the world, lost and stunned and bereft, he became an atheist again.

It just made more sense. If anyone deserved to live, it had been Lauren.

He looked at the clock again: 3:22. With a sigh, he got up to work and give Pebbles a snack to apologize for scaring her.

* * *

A FEW DAYS after the marathon where he so distinguished himself, he asked Sarah out for dinner. A nice restaurant, one he hadn’t ever been to before, to avoid memories of Lauren. They ordered a bottle of wine, and Josh had half a glass. He’d written up a few index cards to remind him of things to ask her, because he tended to go blank when interacting with people he wasn’t a hundred percent comfortable with.

  How is your mother’s knee replacement working out?

    How is your grandfather?

    How was your vacation? Did you eat any good food? What was your favorite thing to do out there?

    How is work going? It must be hard to deal with some situations. What do you do to relax?

And the last . . .

    How are you doing without Lauren?

Chances were low that he’d manage to ask that one. But he referred to the first index card, asked, and Sarah started talking in a friendly-enough way.

Lauren was the one who’d been good at this. With her, Josh picked up on cues, listened to her talk to people, watched her face as she smiled or frowned or nodded. He always felt more present, more at ease with himself and other people when he’d been with his wife. She was the key to his being fully engaged. He remembered to nod as Sarah paused, asked a follow-up question and tried to smile at the right places. He referred to card number two, then three when her answer was brief.

They ordered their dinners; fish for him, steak for her. Card number four.

He hated that everyone looking at them would assume they were on a date. He wished he could somehow communicate that he still loved his wife, that this was her friend, that he was absolutely not interested in her that way.

The food came. He took a bite of trout. It was pretty good. “How’s your steak?” he asked Sarah.

“Good. How’s your fish?”

“Good.”

The conversation was not exactly rapier sharp. How long had they been here? Two hours? Three? He sneaked a look at his watch. Thirty-nine minutes.

Aha! He thought of something to say. “I bought a vase the other day. From Hawaii.”

“Cool. What does it look like?”

“You know. It’s . . . blue. And it has white on it. Like a cresting wave.”

“Sounds pretty.” She cut another piece of meat.

“Yes.” It was gorgeous, in fact. One of a kind, handmade on Kauai, at the same shop where he and Lauren bought a sculpture on their honeymoon.

“You guys brought me a beautiful paperweight from Hawaii.”

“Did we?” Lauren had bought dozens of gifts, it seemed.

“Yes.” Sarah poured herself a second glass of wine. “So about all the shitty things you said to me, Josh.”

“Yes. Still sorry.”

“You know what? Everything was true. About how I was pissy and jealous.” She shook her head, her eyes getting shiny. “Lauren was . . . sparkly. You know? She sparkled.”

“Yes,” Josh said. It was the perfect word for her.

“And . . . well, it wasn’t always easy to be known as ‘Lauren’s friend.’ All through elementary school, and then even more in middle school and high school, I was sort of like this . . . appendage.” She pulled a face, then did her hair swoop, and Josh felt an unexpected little sunburst of affection for her. That hair swoop gesture . . . she did that when she was nervous. Now that he had that information, it wasn’t so annoying.