“Do you want me to wait with you?” Duffy’s owner asked.
“No.” God no. “You keep at it. Thank you.”
“No worries! Sorry to leave you. It’s just that my brother’s waiting for me at the finish line.”
“Have fun,” he said, and she was gone. Good stride, nice muscles in her legs. People were pretty decent, if you gave them a chance. He needed to remember that more.
Josh was given an electrolyte drink, made to sit with an ice pack on his head, then released with a warning from the surly medic. Josh thanked the person who’d loaned him the chair (another nice, decent person), then cut across a block to get to the finish line back on PC’s campus.
“There you are!” Jen exclaimed. “Everything okay? We heard someone fainted!”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just took it slow. The heat, you know?”
Sarah raised an eyebrow. It seemed to be a thing of hers.
His mom, Ben, Sumi and Donna appeared; Donna had called his mother, they said, and the Kims tagged along, too. The Kims were lugging coolers and two picnic baskets, never ones to skimp on food. They found a spot under a tree and ate, and Josh felt significantly better. Octavia, who finally had learned to walk, toddled around, anointing everyone with drooly kisses and buttercups. In the distance, the white-robed priests strolled the campus, and Pebbles ran off to intercept a Frisbee.
“You doing all right, son?” Ben asked, sitting next to him.
“Yeah.”
“Missing your wife, of course.”
Josh nodded. Ben put his arm around his shoulders.
“She was a flower,” the older man said.
“She was a whole field of flowers,” he said, and Ben nodded.
Neither said anything else, and Josh was grateful for the silence and the company. Ben was the only one who could pull that off. Silence was good. Silence let him imagine his wife here, playing with the kids, chasing them around, giving piggyback rides. Well, of course she’d been too weak for that. But in his mind, she was healthy, and the kids begged for more, and she’d chase them and roar and swoop them up in her arms until she flopped down on the grass next to him. She’d put her head in his lap, maybe, and he would feel real again. Not this fake version of himself, the ghost of Lauren’s husband.
But once, he had been Lauren’s husband. He was proud of that. The two feelings would have to make peace.
“I should get going,” he said. He stood up, helped Ben to his feet and gave him a brief hug.
He was the first to leave, but the urge to get home was strong. He stood up, fist-bumped Sebastian and then Octavia and steeled himself for the goodbye rounds.
“I left something under your door,” Sarah said. “I would’ve brought it if I’d known you were coming.” The eyebrow lifted again.
A letter. A Lauren letter. God, he needed that today. So much.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll text you about getting together.”
He said his goodbyes and headed out. As he walked away, he felt his shoulders drop and the tension leave his legs.
Peopling was hard. It was worth it about half the time, but it took a lot out of him. Pebbles seemed to agree, because she curled up in a ball in the back seat of the car on the way home.
The letter was waiting when he got there.
Josh, #5
This time, he didn’t wait. He tore it open right there in the foyer, despite that fact that his shirt was salty with dried sweat. He was desperate to hear her words.
Dear Joshua Park,
I love you. I love you! I love you so much. I love that you’re half-Swedish. I love that you look nothing like a Swede, not because I have anything against blond hair and blue eyes, but because it’s just cool that you’re a black-haired boy. I love your arms. I love your talented hands. I love that Mrs. Kim taught you to cook. I love how smart you are, even when you tune me out because you’re in your mind palace. I love that you never know what day it is. I love you. You are the best husband in the entire world. No. The entire planetary system, and hell yes, I’m including Pluto on that list.
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.