On the tall bureau is a handmade wooden tray, on which is a clutch of my favorite essential oils and a small diffuser. He made fun of me for my weird obsession with essential oils, but they just make things homey for me. Scent is a vital element of home, and I just love a diffuser gently bubbling with some thieves’ oil, or an orange peel cinnamon.

On the vanity, a Jonathan Adler candle, another of my favorites. In the drawers, my favorite brands of makeup. Eye shadows, foundations, lip gloss and lipstick and lip stain, lip pencils, eyes pencils, contouring sponges, everything you’d find in my makeup kit back home, is here.

In the bathroom, there is more of everything me. In the medicine cabinet is my favorite mouthwash, face wash, hand lotion, body butter, moisturizer, razor, shaving cream, everything. Even the damn towels folded on a floating shelf over the toilet are my favorite kind, the thick, soft, enormous bath sheets. My shampoos and conditioners and everything, it’s all here.

It hits me, there, in the bathroom.

Adrian just knew me.

I’ll never find that again. No one could ever know me the way he did. He knew every single thing there was to know about me, from my absurd but paralyzing fear of wasps to my deep, abiding, passionate love affair with mint chocolate chip ice cream. My most embarrassing moments, he knew—including that mortifying wardrobe malfunction in high school, every teenager’s worst nightmare come true, when my skirt literally fell off in the middle of an end-of-the-year speech in front of the entire school, leaving me in front of a microphone stand in my white granny panties, complete with visible maxi pad. Oh yeah. That bad. He knew about it. He knew my sexual peccadilloes, my hatred of lima beans, my obsession with New Kids on the Block, my “celebrity hall pass” list that consisted exclusively of Justin Timberlake and Hugh Jackman.

He knew it all.

He knew my makeup.

I fall to the floor in the bathroom, sobbing. I have a tube of lotion still clutched in one hand; the subway tile under me is cold and hard. I cry harder than I have since right after he died.

God, I miss you, Adrian.

I miss you so fucking bad.

This cabin is a love letter from Adrian. It said everything that language could not possibly begin to express. His intimate knowledge of everything I am as a person, as a woman. It’s him telling me, I know you, Nadia. I know you, and I love you. This is my gift to you.

I sob on the floor for a long, long time. Missing him. Hating him for leaving. Hating the world for taking him. Hating myself for needing him so badly I can’t figure out how to exist without him.