A man I dated for only six months—one year ago—put me in his will without ever telling me. But when I tried to refuse whatever he’d left me, his lawyer said, “If you don’t come, his family gets nothing.”

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I still think about that umbrella sometimes, sitting unused in his car for an entire year after our last real conversation, proof of a love that never actually stopped, even after the phone call that convinced me otherwise for twelve long months.

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Grace and I still talk occasionally now, mostly small updates over text, sometimes coffee when our schedules line up. She told me once, gently, that Foster kept a photo of the two of us on his nightstand through his entire treatment, right up until the end, something none of us had known to mention until considerably after I’d already needed to hear it.