Sebastian, age four, wailed, inconsolable despite Darius’s best efforts. The kid was just old enough to understand Auntie Lauren was never coming back. Josh envied him. No stiff upper lip there. He was crying the way Josh wanted to: unfettered, anguished, horrified.

“Call if you need anything,” said Creepy Charlotte, her pale blue eyes eerie. She handed him a piece of paper. Her phone number, he assumed. As she moved in to hug him, Josh stuck out his hand at the same time. Awkward. Lauren would’ve fixed it so it would’ve been funny, but it stayed awkward. Charlotte lifted an eyebrow, but Josh wasn’t sure how to interpret that. He took the paper and put it in his pocket, then sat back down, but the paper rankled. It felt like betrayal, so he wadded it up and tossed it under the table with a silent apology to the cleaning staff. Those people, he pictured them saying. Throwing trash on the ground like animals.

He bent over and looked for it. “What are you doing?” his mother hissed.

“Stephanie,” he heard a woman say. “I’m so sorry! She was a lovely girl. Um . . . where’s Joshua?”

The wad was just out of reach. He stretched, heard his chair fall over behind him, grabbed the paper and stood up. Righted the chair. “Hi,” he said to his mother’s friend.

“Joshua, you remember Nina, right? From the lab?”

His mother had worked at Rhode Island Hospital’s lab for thirty years. He didn’t remember this woman. “Yes,” he lied, shaking her hand.

She pulled him in for a hug, and he winced. “So sorry for your loss, honey,” she said.

“Thank you.” He stood there another minute, then turned and went to the bathroom to throw out the paper. He didn’t want Creepy Charlotte’s number, or anyone’s number. He just wanted his wife not to be dead.

The face in the mirror was nearly unrecognizable. He lifted his hand to make sure he was really there. This had to be a dream, right? Groping under a table for a piece of paper, all these people he didn’t quite know . . . next thing would be he wouldn’t have any clothes on, and then he’d wake up next to his wife. He’d hold her close and breathe in the smell of her hair and she’d smile without opening her eyes.

But he was still in the bathroom, looking at the face in the mirror.

Sarah, Lauren’s best friend, was waiting for him when he came out. “You okay?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” Her eyes were wet. She took his hand and squeezed it. “This is a fucking nightmare.”

“Yep.”

“Did you eat anything?”

“Yes,” he said, though he couldn’t remember.

Sarah walked him back to his table. People spoke to him. Some of them cried.