I stood by the front window in a simple blue dress, and I watched a young high-school senior break into a brilliant smile as an elderly volunteer tailor knelt to adjust the hem of her donated prom dress, and I felt something in my own long grief settle, and quiet, and heal.

I reached down and touched the silver soda-can pull tab, which I had kept, and had crafted into a permanent pendant on a thin gold chain around my neck, so that Julian’s placeholder for a promise would rest against my heart for the rest of my life.

I had married a stranger in a hospital room, once, so that he would not die alone.

It had been, I thought at the time, a small kindness, the last I could offer a forgotten man.