Tom Whitfield walks thirty-seven steps to his mailbox every day at four o'clock. The mail comes at two-thirty. He doesn't know why he waits. Routine is the scaffolding grief leaves behind when it takes everything else.

Grace died in March. Pancreatic cancer. A cough in September, a diagnosis, and six months later Tom was standing in a parking lot after the funeral telling his brother Dan exactly where he could put his "better place."

They'd been married thirty years. They'd planned to go to Europe for as long as he could remember. Six weeks, starting in Lisbon, working north. Maps spread across the kitchen table on Sunday evenings with a bottle of wine. They never went. Kids. Mortgage. Economy. Timing. Always next year.

Six months after the funeral, a letter arrived. Grace's handwriting. Postmarked from Lisbon.

She describ ...