They were both shaking.

No words. Not then. Neither one of them was crying. Not then. Not yet.

The truth sat in the room with them, dark and heavy, waiting to be let into their lives, their bed.

She would die young. Josh would be widowed.

She was not going to get better.

She had a terminal disease.

She had really wanted a baby instead.

23

Joshua

Month eight, letter number eight

October

Dear Josh,

I hope you’re doing well, sweetheart. Eight months is a long time. I hope you’re feeling happier and more energized these days.

 So this month’s task is pretty straightforward. Do something for your professional career, and try something you’ve been scared of doing.

 You’ve got this. I believe in you.

 Love, Lauren

Well. That was a pretty crappy letter, if he was being honest. He’d gotten changed and poured a half glass of wine for this? He stalked around, his bare feet silent. Pebbles lay asleep on the couch, oblivious to his mood.

“A shitty letter, Lauren,” he said out loud. “Sorry, was I taking too much of your time?” Was she too busy to write more than a few sentences? Was he getting to be too much of a responsibility, and she only had a few Chicken Soup for the Soul platitudes to toss his way?

Rage swept through him, red and tarry, blotting out everything else, and before he could switch gears, before he could call his mom or Ben, before he could get to the gym and hit the heavy bag, before the quick brown fox could jump over anything, the red tar was everywhere and he was drowning in it. A far-off, still-calm part of his brain guided him to the cabinets. He heard a smashing noise and more yelling, and there was pain in his foot, a distant pain, and then he slipped and his head thunked against the floor and he was out.

* * *

HE WOKE UP to Pebbles licking his face. Her breath was awful. “Hi, puppy,” he said, and his throat was sore and scratchy. Also, something was sticking into his back.

He was lying on the kitchen floor.

He sat up, wincing, and felt the back of his head. A good-sized lump was there. And there were shards of porcelain everywhere.

Polka-dotted porcelain.

He picked up a piece and looked at it. Lauren’s coffee cup. She’d used it every morning. Actually, she’d bought four of them, because, she’d said, they’d be everyone’s favorite. And they had been. Even his mother had liked them, and she wasn’t a person who cared a whole lot about mugs. He remembered a weekend morning when Lauren had had her “three moms” over for coffee cake, and they’d all drunk from these mugs.

From the look of the mess on the floor, he’d broken each one. Yep. Four little handles scattered amid the ironically cheerful destruction.

There was a knock on his door. He went to it, limping slightly, and opened it. Creepy Charlotte.

“Hey, I heard some noise. You okay?” She looked him up and down. “You’re bleeding, you know.”

“Stop stalking me, Charlotte.”

For a second, he wondered if Gertie the Medium had meant Charlotte, but if so, he would take that $500 back, thank you very much. He closed the door in her face, went back to the kitchen and surveyed the mess.

Nice job, asshole.

If Pebbles stepped on the broken mugs, she might cut her paw. He put her in the guest room to keep her safe, though she gave him a disappointed look. “Sorry, honey. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The cut on the bottom of his foot was fairly deep. He cleaned it out with hydrogen peroxide, welcoming the burn as punishment, and wrapped it in gauze. Then he cleaned up the kitchen and bloody footprints.

No more of Lauren’s mugs to taunt him from the cupboard each day, and a new scratch in the floor from his rage.

He’d had more red-outs in the past few years than he had in the rest of his life combined. Now that the rage had passed, he felt ashamed. Lauren had been busy just staying alive, and so what if her note was short? He was a shitty and ungrateful husband—widower—for not being more appreciative of these letters, even if this one wasn’t his favorite. She’d been busy trying to live.

Josh sighed, got Pebbles and went up to the garden, careful to avoid looking over. Instead, he looked up at the sky. Almost sunset now. October’s days were notably shorter, and Josh was relieved. August had been wretchedly hot, the weather and humidity seeming to suck the color and life from everything and replace it with sepia-toned pollution or bland, not-quite-real air from the AC.

After seeing Gertie, he’d fallen into a funk. He wanted to feel completely different after the visit—my wife is in heaven and she sees me!—but it didn’t bring Lauren back. Was there a heaven? Maybe? He hoped so, for her sake.

But his problem wasn’t the afterlife. It was the here and now. He skipped karate classes, not wanting to bring his gloom to the little kids, and emailed Asmaa, saying he had a big project to finish, so he couldn’t help out at the center as much this month. She wrote back kindly, saying to take his time, and they’d be happy to see him whenever he could make it in.

It seemed so long ago that he’d been a married man. That his wife and he had sat in the rooftop garden, or at the Cape house, or downstairs, the two of them made safe by love.

Do something for his professional life, and try something he was afraid of.

He sighed. Pebbles jumped up next to him and put her head on his leg, and he petted her silky head, grateful for the perfect forgiveness of a dog.

Each year, Johnson & Johnson sponsored a giant medical device conference, and he’d gone every year since he was twenty, except for last year, when he was afraid to leave his wife. He could go again; he’d been thinking of it himself, more for a change of scenery than anything else. It was next week, so that would take care of Lauren’s request for this month. But it didn’t have the kismet feeling the volunteering letter had . . . the feeling that they were still in sync somehow, that she’d been able to read his mind.