He nodded, remembered to smile, and for a few minutes, he let himself picture being the type of guy who could live on the other side of the planet, who could walk cheerfully into a glass office and have two administrative assistants and a gaggle of engineers to do the mundane parts of his job.

“Fly out, on us,” Alex said. “Have a look around. Bring your—hell, I don’t know if you’re even married.”

The question was like a baseball bat to the head.

Answer, he told himself.

The pause was going on too long.

“I’m not,” he said.

Naomi said, “That wedding ring is just to scare off any interested parties, then?”

They didn’t know. They didn’t know. If he told them now, he’d see their expressions change from interest to pity, or shock or compassion. “It’s a cultural thing,” he lied.

“Another one of the great things about Singapore is how multicultural it is,” Alex said, and Joshua was off the hook as the pair extolled the benefits of the city-state.

When the conference ended the next afternoon, Josh was exhausted from all that time with other people. But he didn’t want to go home just yet. The idea of going back now, in late October when the leaves had fallen in a heavy rain and windstorm and the city would be gray and dark . . . He decided to be spontaneous and stay.

Cookie Goldberg, his virtual assistant, switched his flight and booked him for another two days at the hotel. Then Josh texted Jen, Donna and his mom. Jen responded by saying that they might have to keep Pebbles forever, because Sebastian was so in love with her. She texted a picture of the boy, sound asleep, Pebbles sleeping next to him, her head on his pillow. Sweet.

Aside from a similar conference a few years ago, during which he’d never left the hotel, he hadn’t been to San Francisco, not properly. A little sightseeing would kill some time. Had Lauren ever been here? He didn’t think so.

So no memories, then. For now, he could be a guy who wasn’t married, wasn’t widowed. He could just be a normal person.

San Francisco was balmy, beautiful and overly gentrified. So many homeless people, so many new glossy, sleek apartment buildings to house the wealthy. He considered designing a pop-up shelter that could be folded and moved, but ten seconds on Google showed him it had already been done by a plethora of architects. He went to Japantown and Haight-Ashbury. Bought some gifts for the family. In Lower Pacific Heights, he stared for half an hour into a window of an aquarium store that had mystically beautiful tanks, filled with living plants and exotic fish, then ordered one to be shipped to Sebastian for a Christmas gift.