The punching bag had done the trick. He was so tired, he had to take the elevator up the two floors to his apartment. He showered, the hot water stinging his hands. When he was done, he went into their room, closing the door so Pebbles wouldn’t come in and mess up the bed.

Last week, he’d awakened already knowing she was gone. He didn’t reach out for her. That in itself ripped his heart apart all over again. Two months and one week was all it took for his muscles and instinct to adjust. Reaching for her had been his habit in marriage; now, marriage was over, and his stupid body recognized that.

He had stopped checking her side of the bed in the middle of the night. Stopped wondering if she was already up. He didn’t call her name. He didn’t check his watch, wondering if it was time for her meds or a walk or some breathing exercises. He didn’t accidentally reach for two plates at dinnertime, whenever that was, and when he realized he didn’t, he deliberately set out two plates, because the acceptance of her absence was worse than the forgetting of her death.

She was dead. It was a fact now, and that was more awful than walking into a room and wondering where she was. He shouldn’t get used to this. It was grotesque to even consider.

And now, today. May first, the day he had proposed to her four years ago. He’d gotten down on one knee as the crab apple blossoms rained down gently all around them, and asked Lauren Rose Carlisle to be his wife.

He went to her bureau and opened her jewelry box, where he’d put her engagement and wedding rings at some point. He didn’t have a clear memory of that, but here they were. He’d give them to Octavia someday, he supposed. Or to Sebastian, for his future wife. Or he could throw them in the fucking ocean, at the beach on Cape Cod, where they’d had so many beautiful days and nights. Maybe he’d just walk into the ocean himself with the rings in one hand, his pockets loaded with rocks to weigh him down. Maybe a passing great white shark would eat him, and he could be dead, then, too.

Two ghosts drifted around their apartment—Lauren, and the Josh who had been her husband, so much more than this empty bag of bones.