After the kids went to bed, he spent the rest of his evenings alone. Though he seemed to know most everyone in town, he had few real friends. The couples that he and Carly sometimes visited for barbecues or dinners had slowly but surely drifted away. Part of that was his own fault — working at the store and raising his kids took most of his time — but sometimes he got the sense that he made them uncomfortable, as if reminding them that life was unpredictable and scary and that things could go bad in an instant.

It was a wearying and sometimes isolating lifestyle, but he remained focused on Josh and Kristen. Though less frequent than it once had been, both of them had been prone to nightmares with Carly gone. When they woke in the middle of the night, sobbing inconsolably, he would hold them in his arms and whisper that everything was going to be all right, until they were finally able to fall back asleep. Early on, all of them had seen a counselor; the kids had drawn pictures and talked about their feelings. It hadn’t seemed to help as much as he’d hoped it would. Their nightmares continued for almost a year. Once in a while, when he colored with Kristen or fished with Josh, they’d grow quiet and he knew they were missing their mom. Kristen sometimes said as much in a babyish, trembling voice, while tears ran down her cheeks. When that happened, he was sure he could hear his heart breaking, because he knew there was nothing he could do or say to make things any better. The counselor had assured him that kids were resilient and that as long as they knew they were loved, the nightmares would eventually stop and the tears would become less frequent. Time proved the counselor right, but now Alex faced another form of loss, one that left him equally heartbroken. The kids were getting better, he knew, because their memories of their mom were slowly but surely fading away. They’d been so young when they’d lost her — four and three — and it meant that the day would come when their mother would become more an idea than a person to them. It was inevitable, of course, but somehow it didn’t seem right to Alex that they would never remember the sound of Carly’s laughter, or the tender way she’d held them as infants, or know how deeply she’d once loved them.