He read her letter again, almost able to smell the salty Cape air, see the achingly blue sky. Maybe he should go there; he had rented the house again for this summer back in January, thinking they’d have longer. Wanting Lauren to have another spring and summer by the sea. If he rented it again, she’d have to live longer, too, right?

Hello, bargaining.

He should let someone else use that house. It was a shame to have it empty. Immediately, he felt guilty that this hadn’t occurred to him yet. He texted Asmaa and offered it to her and her fiancé, and asked her to find some Hope Center families who’d like to use it.

The memory of that deck, the sound of the ocean, the seagulls, his wife’s laughter . . . Longing, strong enough to make him shudder, hit him like a wave.

Pebbles put her head on his knee. “I have to go to the mall,” he said. It felt like he’d be journeying to hell.

An hour later, he was proven right. The mall was hell. Teenagers, families, people rushing . . . the place was mobbed. He was jostled, carried along by throngs of consumers, jammed by the great unwashed.

Didn’t children have bedtimes anymore? Didn’t people want to be outside on this beautiful May night?

“Would you like to try this amazing anti-aging cream?” asked a man, leaping out from a kiosk with a sample in his hand.

“I’m thirty years old,” Josh said.

“Never too soon to start! Maybe bring some home to your wife?”

Josh jolted to a stop. “My wife?”

The man pointed at his left hand. “Or husband. Sorry.”

Ah. Yes, he still wore his wedding ring. He kept going without answering the man, got stuck behind a cluster of girls all talking loudly in clichéd phrases.

“OMG, I stan him!”

“Yeah, no thanks!”

“She’s the GOAT!”

They jolted to a halt outside a cheap-looking clothing store, and he almost ran into them. “Excuse me,” he hissed, walking around them, inexplicably furious.

“Super sorry, mister!” one of them yelled, and they all cackled.

“What his problem?”

“Okay, boomer!”

Jesus Christ. He was not a boomer. He pictured tossing them to the side like the Incredible Hulk, flinging them out of his way. Then, because Lauren wouldn’t have approved—in fact, Lauren had probably been like these girls, hair-stroking and in love with herself—he pictured them simply in jail instead. Still too mean. Fine. In a room without internet, makeup or hair products.

Speaking of hair, up ahead was a place called Tanglzz. Such a Rhode Island name. His mother had told him he needed a haircut and had offered to do it—he hadn’t had one since Lauren died, and it was shaggy—but given the bowl haircuts he’d sported as a child, he passed.

“Do you take walk-ins?” he asked the woman behind the counter.