Three years after losing my wife, I never imagined love could find me again. But it did—bringing a truth so extraordinary it shook everything I thought I knew about life, death, and love itself.
Grief has a strange rhythm. It dulls, but it never disappears. My mornings blurred into cold Missouri dawns: black coffee, foggy drives, tires humming on wet asphalt. I worked on engines in the garage, hiding behind noise, because my own life had gone silent. I survived the crash that took Emma, my wife, but surviving didn’t mean living.
At the diner, Barb always shook her head. “Jack, that coffee’s cold,” she’d chide, sliding me a slice of cherry pie. “You look like a ghost who forgot to haunt.”
Then Mike, my oldest friend, sat down beside me. “You gotta start living again. Emma wouldn’t want this.”
“I had Emma. That was living.”
Mike leaned closer. “There’s a woman you should meet. Claire. She runs the animal clinic on Maple. Coffee—no pressure.”
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