“Shit, sorry,” he says, unhooking it from his mint-green scrubs. “Oh, damn.”

“What?” I ask.

“They moved our staff lunch up by an hour. It was supposed to be at one. Now it’s at noon. We’re doing some summer potluck thing in the courtyard at Cedars with the folks from Internal Medicine. I just brought a loaf of bread, though. Who has the time to make deviled eggs? Anyway, do you mind if we cut this short? I promise we will talk more about it later, but I’ve got to get you back to Studio City and me to Cedars all in the next half hour.”

Those travel times are impossible and he knows it.

“Don’t worry about me, Brian. I can Uber back to my place. I want to spend some time here checking out the grounds.”

That’s a lie. In fact, there’s no place I want to be less than here, except contained in a car with a man who basically bought a plot of land for my dead husband. And here I was thinking his surprise was a picnic for two.

“You sure I can’t drive you? I feel really bad. Didn’t mean to stick you with an Uber bill. Actually, I think I might have a promo code for Lyft in my email. That’s usually cheaper. Here, I’ll send it to you?”

He fumbles for his phone.

“No, Brian, it’s totally fine. Casey’s work is somewhere over here, too. I’d love to pop in and say hi to her. I feel like I haven’t seen her in a couple days.”

Again, I’m lying. I have no idea where Casey’s work is and connecting with her right now is not a priority at all, but I’m in need of a clean break, not lingering conversation on the semantics of rideshare providers.

“Okay, well, thanks for being spontaneous today. Text you later, okay?”

He steps toward me for a hug and plants a kiss on my cheek before hopping back into his car and pulling away from the construction site with two quick honks of his horn and a wave. I wave back.

Does he really think this place is a solution? Is it a solution? After all, it is—or will be, rather—a fireproof place that’s centrally located to all who loved Decker. Short of having to hang on to the urn until construction is over, doesn’t that check a lot of the boxes? Could rehoming the urn really be this easy?

I pull out my phone to open my Uber app. But when I press the home screen button, it’s on the last thing I had open, which was Facebook. I admit that earlier this morning, before Brian picked me up, I was sitting in bed, petting Leno, looking—no, staring—at the photo he posted of us. There’s just something that draws me to him. There’s something that draws everyone to him, though. Just ask Alexis from the farmers’ market. Or Bella from Internal Medicine. Which reminds me, he’s off to the hospital right now, where he’s going to mix and mingle with some cute nurse he has, or had—who knows—feelings for and sees every day at work. Then after the potluck, a drove of hot soccer moms will bring their bruised-up kids through his doors, fake like they actually think it’s a hairline fracture, just to see Brian’s megawatt smile.