Being a widower is not what Harry expected it to be like. Instead of quietly grieving, he finds himself madly busy and unsettled. Suddenly he is a single parent tending to his children's problems, never mind that they are grown. In addition to offering their condolences, unattached women are offering themselves, too. A young female he barely knows moves in with him, scandalizing the neighbors. And then come the shocking revelations about his marriage. Meanwhile, his best friend's widow is also suffering and coping and behaving eccentrically. She has buried her husband (his ashes) in the backyard, and has taken to wearing his clothes, which still bear his scent. "We may be normal," she says to Harry, "but we're not right."

Harry is deeply affected, too. He even misses things about his wife that annoyed him. Their marriage vows were wrong, he realizes. Even though they are parted, they remain very much bound by history and love, cosmically and completely, in defiance of time and in spite of everything.