We chat for ten minutes. I play with the engagement ring that has still been on my finger the entire time. It soothes me and reminds me that Dom was here not all that long ago.

Gemma tells me about a beautiful tribute Dominic’s middle school paid to him before they went on summer break. Apparently, he sponsored a kid there and paid for the kid’s lunch for both semesters, and he also volunteered to give the kids a quick first aid course. We both cry, but it’s a cleansing cry. It’s a he-was-such-a-good-human cry.

And he was. Not all the time, no. And not to everyone. But he was.

Please don’t call me perfect, he asked me on the Cape. No one’s perfect.

I ask her if she could give me Joe’s email. I explain that I don’t want to burden him, but I want to show him something. She gives it to me and sighs. “Dom’s always been so sweet and loving. Seph is so prickly . . . but that only makes me love him harder, you know?”

Yes, lady, I’m tempted to answer. Actually, I do know. Every bone in my body knows.

I promise to visit her and Brad once I’m back in Massachusetts, and we hang up.

I scan my initial sketch for my mother’s grave and send it to Joe, along with the playlist I’ve been listening to while working on it. All Brit bands I think he would appreciate.

Dear Joe,

I think it’s time we invite our muses back. Don’t you think?

—E.

The answer to my question is, apparently, no. Joe never bothers to reply. Not even when I find a place to DoorDash him toad-in-the-hole for his birthday, which I think he would appreciate, as a fellow Anglophile.

The next day, I send him another email. This time with old-school sketches I did long ago. The ones Dad sent me in the box all those months ago. The box I now know was meant to prompt me to come back home, not taunt me about my sins.

I add a few quotes I think would speak to him. Quotes about creativity and the muse. By William S. Burroughs, Stephen King, and Maya Angelou. This time, I don’t write him anything more.

I’m not counting on him to get back in touch because he misses me. We’ve both shown admirable self-restraint in that department before. I’m counting on him to do so because he wants his creative mojo back.

After the third email I send him, I start feeling like a con man trying to convince him that I’m an African prince whose family got tragically killed in a helicopter accident and needs him to give me his bank account details so I can transfer all my millions into it, but I keep pushing through.