For a short time, her death makes you the center of so many lives.

And then . . . it trickles off. There are children to be cared for, homes to be cleaned, food to be prepared. The coworkers still have jobs to do. The friends start getting on with their lives.

The stopped clocks start ticking once more.

Two months and one week after Lauren died, that first day came for Josh. The day when no one called, texted, emailed, dropped by. Not Jen, not Ben, not Donna, not Sarah, not his mother, not Darius, not Bruce the Mighty and Beneficent, not a random former classmate who’d just heard the news.

The first day of his life when his widowed state went unheralded by anyone.

It was obscene. Message received, loud and clear. The world was adjusting to Lauren’s absence. Oh, he knew Donna and Jen would never get over her, would think of her every day. But Jen had a husband and two kids. Donna had a living daughter and two grandchildren. They both worked. They had places to go. His own mother ran an entire hospital lab, viewed Sumi and Ben as her siblings, belonged to four book clubs and volunteered through her church. But you think she might have called her only child just to check in. A fucking text, maybe, Mom?

No. Nothing.

Josh waited all day in a state of furious, silent martyrdom, hating himself, hating everyone else. Took the dog for a run. Spoke to no one. Checked his phone every ten minutes, then every five, then restarted it in case it had a glitch.

Still nothing.

He could, of course, reach out to someone. Ben would go for a walk with him; all he had to do was ask, and they’d be at the Botanical Center or driving to Boston. It would be better than this ridiculous, pointless anger. But this was a test. A test of them, a test of him.

Everyone failed.

By 8:37 p.m., he hated them all.

Fury was creeping into his head like a disease. A red-out was coming.

The first time it happened, he was six, and the school bully—Sam, who was bigger and stronger than any kid in class—had thrown Caitlin’s eyeglasses across the cafeteria. Caitlin was a special needs girl and Josh’s friend. Joshua didn’t remember anything about what happened until he was in the principal’s office with his mother, being told that he’d tackled Sam. Josh asked why there was blood on his shirt and why his eye was hurting; it was because Sam had punched him in the face. Josh had hit back, splitting Sam’s lip. Both boys had been suspended for a week, but Stephanie took him out for ice cream that afternoon, and when he came back to school, Caitlin handed him a card with her painstaking printing: Thanks for sticking up for me.