His hands shook as he opened it. It was one of those overly expensive cards made with tiny swirls of paper, practically a sculpture. Two hearts intertwined, all the colors of the rainbow where the hearts intersected.

Inside there was only one line, in her fat, pretty handwriting.

I will love you forever.

“I love you, too,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.

He was so, so grateful she’d thought ahead, thought of him without her.

But he missed her. He missed her so much that his knees gave out, and he slid to the floor and let his head fall back against the door.

Then Pebbles was there, wagging, licking him, whining, nudging him hard with her herder’s nose. “Okay, okay,” he said, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “Message received.” He was treated to a full face-lick from the dog. “You’re a good girl,” he said, hugging her. “Such a good puppy.”

He went back to the couch, looked at his watch: 1:16 p.m. Just ten hours and forty-four minutes until this endless day was over.

ON FEBRUARY 22, Joshua held a jesa ceremony to honor his wife on the anniversary of her death.

He’d been talking more frequently to Ben since he’d met his biological father. This day needed to be marked, and Ben came through, as ever, with the idea for a jesa, a Korean tradition to honor the dead. It was usually reserved for ancestors, Ben had said, but who cared? He had described the ceremony in great detail, and to Josh, it sounded perfect.

He’d gone to the Kims’ the day before, and his mom took a rare day off to help cook. There were Korean foods and some of Lauren’s non-Korean favorites, all in some kind of order to pay homage to her life.

Now all that food sat in five rows on Josh’s coffee table—the dessert row, which contained chestnuts, pears, apples and persimmons, as well as clementines, which had been Lauren’s favorite fruit, and yakgwa, the honey cookies she had loved. Donna had brought chocolate chip cookies, Lauren’s childhood favorite, and Josh added them as well. The next row held pickled herring (another Lauren favorite), kimchi, shrimp and stuffed clams. Then came the soups—fish, vegetable, chicken noodle. The next row of food contained the sticky chicken she loved, and jeon, the vegetable-imbued pancakes. The final row, farthest from where Josh would sit, contained a bowl mounded with rice and another type of soup—beef turnip, Korea’s traditional soup for the dead, and a bowl of sand.