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grandparent yet, and now I’ve lost my fiancé and my mom in short order.
    Maybe the fact that I am just here, present, but not able to feel a damn thing is grief.
    If that’s the case, I’m good with it. I don’t want to feel more pain. And being numb has actually allowed me to be a very good dentist.
    God knows patients are nervous enough coming in as it is. They don’t need me weeping as I drill and fill their teeth.
    • • •
    T he airport is cordoned off when I arrive. The shuttle can’t even get close to the terminal entrance. I pay and grab my bags and join the crowd outside. Police empty the terminal and everyone mills about the parking area while a bomb squad goes through an abandoned backpack found inside.
    A businessman next to me said all flights will be delayed hours, if they even go out tonight. No flight has been allowed to land for the past hour.
    I take this in without comment, watching the swarming police and SWAT team, but not seeing the SWAT team. Rather I see Andrew. I’m back there on that last day.
    I’d gone to the store to get ice cream.
    That’s where I was when he did it.
    The police, his parents, his sisters, his friends, they all wanted to know what had happened that week, that day, in the hours leading up to Andrew’s death.
    Everyone had the same question—had there been a fight? Were you two quarreling?
    No.
    And then immediately the other questions:
Was he unhappy? Had he expressed concerns about the wedding? Were there money problems?
    No, no, and there is always debt and bills after college and dental school, and we had just bought our first home so things were really tight, but not the kind of tight finances that make one want to die, the kind of tight that means one must work, and save, and plan.
    For the record, Andrew and I never fought. You had to know Andrew to understand. He wasn’t argumentative. There wasn’t a mean or petty bone in his body. He was kind and thoughtful. Sweet.
Funny.
    He’d be goofy just to make me laugh.
    He loved to make me laugh. I loved it when he did.
    We were good together. We fit. His mom used to say we were two halves of a whole, and I agreed.
    So why would the love of my life take his own life?
    And just weeks before our wedding?
    I don’t know.
    I’ve spent the past year analyzing the last year we had. I’ve pulled the months apart, examined each week, each day, and I’mstill no closer to an answer. What went wrong? And when did it go wrong? And why did I—of all people—not know?
    I would have done anything for him. I would have been there—
    Hell. I
was
there.
    We lived together. We worked together. We drove to work together. We trained together. Worked out together. We were together pretty much twenty-four seven.
    And it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough . . . not to keep him here, anchored to earth, to life.
    He would have rather died than be with me.
    A muffled boom comes from across the street.
    The bomb squad has blown up the backpack. False alarm. There was nothing inside.
    People around me cheer.
    I’ve been told it’s wrong—selfish, narcissistic—to make Andrew’s death about me, but what else could I do? I was his partner, his lover, his best friend. I was going to be his wife and the mother of his children. If he was so unhappy, why couldn’t he tell me? Why wouldn’t he?
    Why couldn’t he give me a chance to help him? I would have.
    Now all I’m left with is that last day.
    It had been a perfect day.
    We’d just recently moved into our new house. We’d gone for a long run that morning, waking early to beat the desert heat. It was a good run, seven miles, which was a lot for me, but nothing for Andrew, since he was already running marathons. I’d agreed to run my first marathon after our honeymoon so we’d been training together, getting me used to the distance.
    After running we worked on the house, and then walked to Fashion Square where we ate a late lunch—or early dinner, depending on how you’d call