Josh’s face didn’t change. “In that case, definitely yes.”
Thank God. Fortune favors the bold and all that. “Okay. Um . . . Elisabetta, honey, one second.” I pulled her hand free and took out my phone.
“She likes you,” Elisabetta told him. (Awesome wingman, my Elisabetta.)
“I . . . I hope you’re right,” he said to the girl, and my heart, Dad! My heart!
Guess I wasn’t just pretty and shallow anymore.
He was looking at me so . . . so thoroughly, like he could see that bridge, too, and he wanted to cross it, too.
“Your number, sir?” I asked, dousing any cool-girl vibe I might’ve had going.
He gave it, and my fingers shook as I typed it in. Then I held up the phone and took his picture. “So I can remember that shirt,” I said.
He smiled, and a bolt of pure golden light flew across that bridge straight into my soul, and listen to me, Dad, I have never, ever, not even once, had thoughts like this. “Thank you for coming tonight,” I said.
“I was just walking past.”
“Don’t ruin it. Let me think you were stalking me in a not-creepy way for the past few years.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Hush. A girl can dream.” And then . . . back to awkward. “I mean, not that I was dreaming you were . . . and also, obviously, I’m not a girl, I’m a woman. Never mind! Bye.” Then I let Elisabetta pull me away, and I looked over my shoulder.
He was still looking. A very positive sign.
So, Dad, that brings me to the last thing on my list.
Meet the man you’ll marry.
Consider it done, Daddy. Consider it done.
34
Joshua
Month fourteen
April
THE LETTER SAT on his bureau, where he’d put it since Sarah had dropped it off.
Josh, #12.
He still hadn’t read it. Why would he? He could keep this thing going forever if he didn’t open that envelope.
A month ago, Radley had moved into the house in Cranston and was stripping the wallpaper. He sent daily updates and photos, commenting on how the snowdrops had popped up on the lawn, how the daffodils would burst soon. It would be lovely. It already was.
But Josh didn’t have plans to move just yet, because moving . . . that would be the end of the time he’d lived in this apartment with his wife. He suddenly understood why so many folks on the forum had left their houses shrines to their lost spouses. Because it was comforting. Because once he sold this place, he would never be able to come back.
But things were changing whether he wanted them to or not.
The apartment didn’t smell the way it used to. Lauren’s shower gel had turned rancid (damn that organic stuff), and he’d had to throw it away. Her pillow had lost its Lauren smell, no matter how deeply he inhaled. He’d started sleeping in the middle of the bed.
And he had the new job. He was getting acclimated to working with other people, daily updates, action points, Zoom meetings (God bless the mute and video cut buttons). Frank the Realtor had rented out a floor of office space for Josh’s new team in the Hanley Building. He took his new engineer out for dinner; Erika had worked in Singapore but grew up on the East Coast, and she was thrilled to be back near her family. He hired a whiz kid—Mateo Cano—out of the same MIT program he’d been in, and he’d start in June. As for his administrative assistant, he offered the job to Cookie Goldberg.
“I live on Long Island,” she said in her gravelly voice. “What do you think, I’m gonna move for you?”
“I was hoping,” he said.
“I have nine grandchildren within two blocks.”
“So you tell me.”
“I guess this is the end of the road, then,” she said, and for some reason, though he had only met her in person at Lauren’s funeral, his throat tightened.
“Thank you for everything,” he said, clearing his throat.
“You bet.” And then she hung up, as unsentimental as ever. He sent her a severance check of $25,000 and the note Take the grandkids to a national park on me.
Cammie, his favorite working girl, recommended someone for the job, and so Josh was now in charge of three people—Erika, Mateo and Andrea, who was in her fifties and immediately became the mother of the group, reminding people to drink water and go home on time. She went on coffee runs and bought art and plants and miscellaneous stuff for the offices to “sex it up in here.” Within weeks, Josh couldn’t remember how he’d lived without her.
When their business cards came, he looked at his for a long while.
Lauren would’ve been so proud.
Joshua Park, BFA, ScM, PhD
Vice President and Lead Designer, Biomedical Engineering
Chiron Medical Enterprises
He gave one to his mom, and she put it on the fridge, like it was a drawing he’d made in kindergarten. He also sent one to Christopher M. Zane with a note—Hope you’re doing well. Best, Joshua. Maybe, someday, he’d go to Chicago and meet his half siblings. Maybe.
Being on his own wasn’t what he wanted anymore. It was too lonely. He didn’t want to revert to that dorky, solitary workaholic Lauren had dated. He wanted to be more. Loving her, and losing her, had changed him, and he didn’t want to go backward.
But still, the letter waited. He found ways to pretend it wasn’t there.
He had a life these days, sort of, even if it had started as a substitute for Lauren. He was a regular at the Eddy, though their ever-changing staff never could remember his name. He and Jen met there every other Wednesday for lunch, and sometimes Darius would join them. Radley and he still went there often, and since it was close to the office, he started taking his staff there, too.
He was heading up the robotics team at the Hope Center, which meant they would crush all other teams. He got his purple belt and graduated to be with the nine-year-olds. He visited the house in Cranston, which Radley was itching to name, and ripped out the kitchen countertops and took a sledgehammer to the hideous lime-green master bathroom. Radley had already furnished the office above the garage in anticipation of having his practice there.
The cherry blossoms burst forth, thrilling old gray Providence with color and beauty. Sarah went on a dating hiatus per Radley’s suggestion.
The letter waited.