The bell above the coffee shop door gave a bright little jingle that did not match the way my stomach was collapsing.

I’d walked into Lake View Coffee like a man walking into a dentist appointment he couldn’t cancel, already rehearsing the polite exit. I’d even chosen the table closest to the door, a tactical retreat point. My hands were wrapped around a paper cup I hadn’t ordered because holding something kept them from shaking.

And then the barista called, “Elise?”

A woman looked up from the line, flinching like she’d been caught doing something forbidden, and for a second I felt the urge to stand and leave so hard it was almost physical. Not because she was late, or because she didn’t look like the kind of woman you see in dating app ads. It was because she looked tired in a way I recognized.

The kind of tired that lives under the skin.

She pushed through the crowd with quick, apologetic steps, scrubs peeking out from under a long cardigan. Brown hair was twisted into a bun that had given up and started shedding loose strands around her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed, not from crying but from the long, disciplined refusal to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she said before she even sat down. “I’m twenty minutes late. A patient’s family needed… extra time.”

She dropped into the chair across from me, palms flattening on the table as if she needed to make sure it was real.

“I just watched a man die holding his wife’s hand after sixty years of marriage,” she added, and her voice cracked on the word hand. “And now I’m here pretending I know how to do this. I’m sorry. I’m a hospice nurse and I’m not good at nurse pretending anymore.”

The script in my head, the one that went Nice to meet you, sorry my neighbor tricked us, I have to go, disintegrated. In its place, something raw and honest rose up like a bruise.

Because only one kind of person says something like that on a first date.

Only someone who has run out of room for small lies.

The sunlight through the window caught the loose hairs escaping her bun, outlining her like a tired halo. Somewhere behind her, the espresso machine hissed and steamed, busy with other people’s normal lives. Outside, the lake sat calm and blue as if it had never swallowed anyone’s last breath.

I cleared my throat, and my voice came out rough.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “About your patient.”

Elise blinked, her expression shifting like she hadn’t expected anything real from me either.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “It never gets easier watching people say goodbye.”

I should have stayed in safe territory. Weather. Traffic. Dumplings. The furniture job my neighbor had used as bait.

But honesty is contagious, and Elise had already coughed it right into my face.

“My fiancée died,” I heard myself say.

The words landed between us like a dropped plate.

Her hands tightened around her cup, knuckles whitening.

“Three years ago,” I added, because once you start bleeding you either stop or you don’t. “Car accident. On our wedding day.”

Elise’s eyes went wide, not with pity, but with recognition. The kind that says, I know this language. I’ve heard it in hospital hallways and empty houses.

“Oh God,” she breathed. “Zane… I’m so sorry.”

The way she said my name made my throat close up. Nobody said it like it mattered anymore. Most people avoided Sarah’s name altogether, like grief was a stain and they didn’t want it on their clothes.

Elise didn’t look away.

“I’m divorced,” she said quietly, as if offering her own scar in exchange. “Fifteen years. He left me for someone younger. Told me I was too serious, too sad, always around death.” Her voice faltered. “He made me feel like loving me was exhausting.”

Silence stretched, heavy but not hostile. Just… true.

Elise forced a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“So,” she said, exhaling like she was stepping off a ledge, “here we are. Two people who probably shouldn’t be on a date, set up by a neighbor who apparently thinks we need saving.”

A short laugh escaped me before I could stop it. It surprised both of us.

“Mrs. Chen has a hell of a sense of humor,” I said.

Elise’s smile widened by a fraction.

“She told me you were stubborn and quiet,” Elise said. “And that you needed someone who wouldn’t let you hide.”

My chest did a strange, unwanted skip.

“She said that?”

“She said a lot of things.” Elise’s gaze flicked down, then back up. “She made me promise I’d show up even though I told her I wasn’t ready. She said you’d understand what it feels like to feel broken.”

The air thickened. Outside, a couple walked past the window sharing a pastry, laughing like the world wasn’t a fragile thing.

Inside, it was just me and Elise and the truth.

“I don’t know if I’m broken,” I said slowly. “Or if I’m just… stuck.”

Elise nodded like she understood perfectly.

“I think stuck and broken feel the same most days.”

For a moment, neither of us drank our coffee. We just sat there, hands hovering close to comfort but not brave enough to take it.

Then Elise reached across the table and placed her hand on mine.

Her fingers were warm, slightly rough from work, and the touch sent a jolt through me that felt like a door cracking open in a house I’d boarded shut.

“Thank you for being honest,” she said softly. “Most people lie on first dates.”

I stared at our hands and realized I hadn’t let anyone touch me like that in three years. Not in a way that meant something.

“This doesn’t feel like a first date,” I admitted.

“It feels like…” Elise hesitated, then pulled her hand back as if she didn’t trust herself. “Something else.”

“Mrs. Chen told me you needed furniture work,” I said, trying to find the thread back to normal.

Elise huffed a laugh, and it was the first real laugh I’d heard from her, soft and genuine.

“I don’t need furniture work, Zane.” Her expression sobered. “I’m her hospice nurse. I’ve been taking care of her for three months.”

The world tilted.

I stared at Elise, my brain scrambling to catch up like a dog chasing a car it never meant to catch.

“You’re… Mrs. Chen’s nurse?”

Elise nodded, and sadness moved across her face like a shadow passing over water.

“She has stage four pancreatic cancer,” she said. “Four to six months, maybe less. She didn’t want you to know yet.” Elise swallowed. “But she made me promise to meet you. She said if she was going to leave this world, she wanted to fix one thing first.”

My hands went cold.

Mrs. Chen. The 76-year-old woman next door who’d been leaving dumplings at my door for months. Who’d scolded me for chopping wood too late at night. Who’d called my cabin a “sad little bunker” and my beard a “grief curtain.” Who’d watched me from her porch with sharp eyes that never missed a thing.

She was dying.

And she’d spent her last months playing matchmaker.

“She’s dying,” I repeated, the words tasting bitter. “And this was her idea of help.”

Elise’s eyes filled with tears.

“She loves you, Zane,” she said. “She talks about you all the time. She says you’re wasting your life hiding in that cabin, and she can’t stand the thought of leaving you alone.”

Something in my chest clenched so hard it felt like a hand squeezing my ribs.

I stood up so fast my chair screeched against the floor.

“I need air.”

Elise pushed up too, grabbing her bag. “Zane, wait.”

But I was already walking toward the door, shoving it open, stepping into the cool afternoon air that smelled like lake water and pine.

My heart pounded in my ears, and I couldn’t tell if I was angry or terrified or something else entirely.

Elise followed, her footsteps quick behind me.

“Zane,” she called. “Please.”

I stopped on the sidewalk, hands buried in my pockets, staring at the lake stretching out calm and indifferent.

“She’s dying,” I said again, as if repeating it would change the math. “And she used her last months to trick us.”

“She used her last months,” Elise corrected gently, stepping beside me, “to give you a chance at living again.”

I turned to look at her. This woman I’d met less than an hour ago, who somehow felt like she understood me better than people who’d known me for years.

“What if I don’t want to live again?” The words broke on their way out. “What if staying stuck is easier?”

Elise’s hand hovered near my arm, then landed there, warm even through my flannel.

“Then you stay stuck,” she said quietly. “And I stay exhausted and sad and convinced I’m too much for anyone to love.” Her eyes shone. “And Mrs. Chen dies knowing she tried, but couldn’t save either of us.”

Her words hit like a punch to the gut because they were cruelly fair.

I looked at her and saw the same fear in her eyes that lived in my chest every day: the fear of trying again, the fear of losing again, the fear that maybe we didn’t deserve anything soft anymore.

But underneath that fear, something small and stubborn flickered.

Hope.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted.

Elise’s fingers tightened gently on my arm.

“Neither do I,” she said. “But I’m here.”

We stood there while the sun began its slow descent toward the mountains. Two people shoved together by a dying woman’s last wish.

And for the first time in three years, I felt something other than numb.

I felt terrified.

Which, oddly enough, felt like the beginning of something real.

Three days earlier, Mrs. Chen had cornered me in my driveway with a container of dumplings like it was a bribe and a weapon at the same time.

“Zane,” she’d said, gripping my forearm with surprising strength for someone so frail. She had that look in her eye, the one that said she was about to meddle whether I liked it or not. “I need you to meet someone. A woman.”

I’d tried to step back, but she stepped forward. Mrs. Chen was small, but she had the moral authority of an army general.

“She needs furniture work,” she continued. “But she’s difficult. Older. Probably won’t hire you.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do it as a favor to me.”

I should have known. I should have seen through the thin excuse. Mrs. Chen had been leaving dumplings at my door for months, and every dumpling came with a lecture: about not working too late, about not letting the dog eat squirrel poop, about the fact that “a man needs people or he turns into a haunted house.”

But Mrs. Chen had a way of making you feel like you owed her something just for existing.

So I agreed.

Because saying no to Mrs. Chen felt like kicking a grandmother.

And because, in a quiet part of my brain, I suspected she was right about the haunted house part.

I’d built my life like a fortress: a small cabin just outside town, tucked near the pines with the lake visible through the trees. My dog, Harley. My workshop. My tools lined up like soldiers. Order. Silence. Safety.

Grief likes fortresses.

Grief likes routines that don’t require you to be touched.

After Sarah died, the world became a place full of sudden, sharp edges. So I learned to move carefully. I learned to keep people at arm’s length. I learned to live in a way that prevented surprises.

Mrs. Chen, unfortunately, did not believe in preventing surprises.

That night after the coffee shop, I didn’t go home right away.

Elise and I walked along the lake trail until the sunlight bled out behind the mountains and the air turned sharp.

We didn’t talk much at first. Just the crunch of gravel under our shoes and the soft lap of water against shore. The kind of quiet that isn’t empty. The kind that lets you hear what’s inside you.

Harley would have loved this, I thought, and then immediately wondered why I was imagining bringing my dog on walks with a woman I’d met an hour ago.

But that was what Elise did. She made me think about futures I’d stopped imagining.

When we finally sat on a weathered bench overlooking the water, Elise pulled her cardigan tighter.

“I go see Mrs. Chen three times a week,” she said. “Sometimes more.” She stared at the lake like it could offer answers. “And every time, she asks me if I’ve met you yet. If I’ve given you a chance.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked. “Why show up to the date knowing what it really was?”

Elise turned, and her eyes were glossy.

“Because she begged me to,” she said. “She said you’d run if you knew she was sick. She wanted us to meet as just two people first. Not as her nurse and her neighbor.” Elise swallowed. “Just Zane and Elise.”

That sounded exactly like Mrs. Chen. Manipulative and loving in equal measure.

“She’s right,” I admitted. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.”

“I know,” Elise whispered. “That’s why I agreed to lie.” She looked down at her hands. “But sitting across from you… hearing about Sarah… I couldn’t keep pretending. You deserve the truth.”

Without thinking, I reached over and took her hand, lacing my fingers through hers.

Her hand was cold from the evening air. I rubbed my thumb across her knuckles, trying to warm her, or maybe trying to convince myself I could.

“What else did Mrs. Chen tell you about me?” I asked.

Elise’s mouth curved into a sad smile.

“She said you’re the kindest man she’s ever known,” Elise said. “That you fixed her porch railing without being asked. That you shovel her walkway every time it snows. That you sit with her sometimes and don’t make her feel like a burden.”

I had to look away because those words hurt in the way praise hurts when you don’t believe you deserve it.

“She said you have a good heart,” Elise continued, voice soft, “but it’s locked up so tight she’s afraid you’ll die with it still closed.”

The truth of it sliced cleanly.

“I don’t know how to unlock it,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to stop being afraid.”

Elise squeezed my hand.

“Maybe you don’t have to stop being afraid,” she said. “Maybe you just have to try anyway.”

When I walked her to her car, I didn’t want to let go of her hand.

“Can I see you again?” I asked. “Not because Mrs. Chen wants us to. Because I do.”

Elise looked up at me with exhausted eyes that somehow held steadiness.

“Yes,” she said. Then her face tightened. “But you need to know something.”

“What?”

“Mrs. Chen’s condition is going to get worse,” Elise said. “And when it does, I’ll be there until the end.” She swallowed. “If you and I try… you’re going to watch me walk into grief over and over. You’re going to smell hospitals on my clothes. Some days you’re going to see death in my eyes.”

Her honesty didn’t scare me away. It scared me into respect.

“Can you handle that?” she asked.

I thought about the accident. About rain on asphalt. About the moment everything became before and after.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I want to try.”

Elise’s hand rose to my face, her palm warm against my cheek.

“Then we’ll try together,” she whispered.

Her kiss was soft, barely a brush of lips.

But it felt like a promise.

Trying looked less like fireworks and more like small, stubborn acts.

Elise came to my cabin on her day off and sat on my porch with Harley leaning against her legs like he’d known her his whole life. She watched me sand a piece of maple, her eyes tracking my hands.

“You’re gentle with wood,” she said.

“I’m trying to be,” I answered, and realized I meant it about more than wood.

I went with Elise to the hospice center one evening to help with a memory project. Families wanted small wooden boxes for letters and photos, something to hold what couldn’t be held anymore. Elise had mentioned it casually, like it didn’t matter, and I’d heard myself say, “I can make those.”

The hospice smelled like clean sheets and antiseptic and soft surrender. The first time I walked in, my pulse spiked. My vision narrowed. Rain and headlights flashed behind my eyes.

Elise noticed. She didn’t touch me, didn’t corner me, just stood near enough to be a steady point.

“Breathe,” she murmured. “In for four. Out for six.”

I did, and the world came back into focus.

That was the thing about Elise. She didn’t force doors open. She stood beside you while you found the handle.

Mrs. Chen, meanwhile, acted like she was directing a play and we were finally hitting our marks.

She’d sit in her recliner wrapped in blankets, watching us with those sharp eyes.

“Too much talking,” she’d scold if Elise and I got tense. “Go eat. Go walk. Go be human.”

One afternoon, I brought Mrs. Chen a small jewelry box I’d carved from cherry wood, cherry blossoms etched into the lid because she’d once told me her husband planted cherry trees for her when they first moved to America.

She ran her fingers over the carving, eyes shining.

“See?” she said to Elise, as if I wasn’t there. “He has love in his hands. He just forgets.”

Elise laughed, then looked at me like I was something precious and breakable.

In the quiet hours after Elise left my cabin, I caught myself doing unfamiliar things: cleaning the kitchen twice, checking my phone, standing at the window like a man waiting for a ship he swore he didn’t need.

Grief is jealous. It doesn’t like sharing space.

It tried to pull me back into old patterns. Into silence. Into the safe numbness of routine.

But something had shifted. A crack in the fortress wall.

And through that crack, warmth started to leak in.

Two weeks later, the first real fight happened.

Not because of jealousy. Not because of money. Because of fear.

Mrs. Chen had a bad day. The kind that turned her skin waxy and her voice thin. Elise stayed late, and when she finally called me, her voice sounded like it was carrying something heavy.

“She’s declining faster,” Elise said. “Her pain is worse. She’s talking less.”

I heard the words, but what I felt was the old panic rising, clawing at my throat.

“I can’t,” I said, and hated myself for it as soon as it left my mouth. “I can’t watch this.”

There was a pause. Then Elise’s voice went very quiet.

“I watch it,” she said. “Every day.”

“I know,” I snapped, too sharp. “That’s my point. This is your whole life. Death. Endings. I can’t build something with someone who lives in a hallway between people and goodbyes.”

Silence.

Then Elise said, “Do you hear yourself?”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to scrub away the panic.

“I’m trying to protect myself,” I muttered.

Elise exhaled, shaky.

“You’re trying to avoid,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

I flinched like she’d slapped me.

“You don’t get to judge how I grieve,” I said, voice rising. “You weren’t there.”

The instant the words left my mouth, I regretted them. Elise’s breath hitched.

“You’re right,” she whispered. “I wasn’t.” Another pause, heavier. “But I know what it looks like when someone decides they’re safer half-alive.”

My throat tightened.

“I can’t do this tonight,” I said, and hung up before she could answer.

I drove to the edge of the lake and sat in my truck, gripping the steering wheel until my hands hurt. The water stared back, indifferent. The sky was turning the color of bruises.

I told myself I was protecting what was left of me.

But somewhere in the dark, I heard Mrs. Chen’s voice like a scolding prayer:

A man needs people or he turns into a haunted house.

That night, a storm rolled in.

Rain on the roof. Wind worrying the trees. The kind of night that makes old memories crawl out of closets.

I was halfway through convincing myself I didn’t need anyone when my phone rang again.

Elise.

I almost didn’t answer.

Then I imagined Mrs. Chen alone, her dumplings uneaten, her sharp eyes finally closing, and my thumb moved on its own.

“Elise?”

Her voice was thin with urgency.

“She’s asking for you,” Elise said. “She’s… she’s fading in and out. But she keeps saying your name. Please, Zane.”

My chest tightened so hard it hurt.

“I can’t drive in this,” I blurted, because rain had become a weapon in my mind.

“Zane,” Elise said, and her voice softened. “I’m scared too. But she needs you. And… I need you.”

The last sentence landed like a hand on my back, steadying me.

I swallowed. Taste of metal. Taste of fear.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m coming.”

The drive to Mrs. Chen’s house took ten minutes, but it felt like crossing an ocean.

Wipers thumped. Headlights smeared into watery streaks. My hands clamped the steering wheel until my knuckles ached.

For a moment, the road blurred into the memory of another road. Another storm. Another set of headlights.

Sarah laughing in the passenger seat, veil tucked into her bag, telling me the rain was good luck, that the universe couldn’t possibly be cruel enough to ruin a day like ours.

Then the flash. The sound. The moment reality split.

I gritted my teeth and forced air into my lungs.

In for four. Out for six.

By the time I pulled into Mrs. Chen’s driveway, my shirt was damp with sweat and rain. I ran up the steps like I could outrun time.

Elise opened the door before I knocked. Her face was pale, eyes rimmed with exhaustion and something worse.

Relief.

She stepped aside, and I walked into a house that smelled like ginger tea and medicine and fading warmth.

Mrs. Chen lay in a hospital bed set up in her living room. The lamp beside her cast soft light over her face, making her look smaller than she ever had.

But when she saw me, her eyes sharpened.

“About time,” she rasped, and even dying she still managed to sound annoyed. “You always dramatic.”

A laugh choked out of me, half sob, half relief.

I moved to her bedside, taking her hand carefully. Her skin was thin and cool, but her grip still had that stubborn squeeze.

Elise stood on the other side, taking her other hand. For a moment, it was a triangle of hands, a small human bridge over a dark river.

Mrs. Chen’s gaze flicked to Elise, then to me.

“You fought,” she said, as if commenting on the weather.

Elise’s mouth tightened. “He’s scared.”

“So are you,” Mrs. Chen said. Then she turned her eyes on me, sharper than any pain medication. “Zane, you think fear makes you special? Everyone afraid. The question is what you do while afraid.”

I swallowed hard.

Mrs. Chen’s breath wheezed, then steadied.

“I have secret,” she said, voice thinning. “Two secrets.”

My stomach dropped.

She squeezed my hand.

“I knew you before dumplings,” she said.

I frowned. “What?”

Mrs. Chen’s eyes glimmered, and for a second I saw something far away in them.

“The hospital,” she whispered. “Three years ago. Rain night.”

My heart stuttered.

“I was there,” she continued. “My husband had stroke. I sat in waiting room. I heard a sound…” Her voice shook. “A man making animal sound. Not human. You.”

The room tilted.

I remembered the hospital. The hallway. My throat shredded from screaming Sarah’s name. The way nurses tried to move me and I couldn’t let go of the idea that if I held tight enough, she’d come back.

Mrs. Chen’s eyes shone with tears now.

“I saw you,” she said. “Young man with suit soaked. Hands covered in blood that wasn’t yours. You looked like you died but still walking.”

My chest constricted.

“I didn’t know it was you when you moved next door,” Mrs. Chen admitted. “But then I saw your face. Same face. Same eyes. I thought… life is funny.” A thin smile. “So I make dumplings. I watch you. I see you building prison in woods.”

My throat closed.

Elise’s hand tightened on Mrs. Chen’s.

Mrs. Chen turned her gaze to Elise.

“And you,” she rasped. “You were nurse that night.”

Elise froze.

The air in the room went electric.

I turned slowly to look at her. Elise’s eyes filled, and her lips parted as if the words hurt.

“I… I worked ER then,” Elise whispered. “Before hospice.”

My heartbeat pounded in my ears.

“Elise,” I said, voice rough. “Were you there? When Sarah…”

Elise nodded, tears spilling now.

“I didn’t recognize you in the coffee shop,” she said, voice cracking. “Not at first. You were older. Beard. Different.” She swallowed hard. “But when you said… wedding day… and I looked at your hands… I remembered your ring tan. I remembered the way you looked at the doors like you were waiting for someone to walk back through them.”

I stared at her as if she’d turned into a ghost and a miracle at the same time.

“I was the nurse who tried to get you to drink water,” Elise whispered. “You wouldn’t. You kept saying her name like it was the only thing holding you together.”

I couldn’t breathe.

All this time, Elise had been carrying a version of my worst day in her own memory. And Mrs. Chen had been carrying it too.

Mrs. Chen squeezed both our hands, dragging us back to her bed, to the present.

“See?” she rasped. “Circle. Life make circle.”

Tears blurred my vision.

“I didn’t save her,” I choked out. “I couldn’t—”

Mrs. Chen’s grip tightened, startlingly strong.

“Stop,” she snapped, and even on her deathbed she was still capable of ordering the universe. “You loved her. You showed up. You held on. That is not nothing.”

Elise’s voice broke.

“You’re not guilty because you lived,” she said to me. “But you’ve been punishing yourself like you are.”

My chest felt like it was splitting open, but something inside that split felt like relief.

Mrs. Chen’s breathing grew shallow. Her eyelids fluttered.

“I do not have much time,” she whispered. “So I say this now. I watched my husband die. I wanted to die too.” Her eyes found mine. “But then I saw you in hospital hallway. And I thought… if I die, this boy will die too, just slower.”

A sob tore from my throat.

Mrs. Chen looked at our joined hands with a faint smile.

“So I planned,” she whispered. “I ask hospice to send nurse with strong heart. Elise has strong heart, but tired.” She coughed, winced. “I give you each other. Last gift.”

Elise bent and pressed her forehead to Mrs. Chen’s hand, crying openly.

“I don’t deserve you,” Elise whispered.

Mrs. Chen huffed weakly. “Of course you deserve. I choose you.”

She shifted her gaze to me, eyes fierce even as her body failed.

“Zane,” she said, “open your heart before it rot closed.”

My lips trembled.

“I’m trying,” I whispered.

Mrs. Chen’s eyes softened.

“Good,” she breathed. “Promise me.”

“Anything,” I choked out.

“Take care of each other,” she said. “Do not waste this.”

Elise and I looked at each other over Mrs. Chen’s bed. In Elise’s tear-streaked face, I saw my future: scary, uncertain, and suddenly possible.

“We promise,” Elise whispered.

“I promise,” I echoed, voice shaking. “I promise.”

Mrs. Chen exhaled like a candle flickering in wind.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Then I can rest.”

She died just before dawn, with Elise holding one hand and me holding the other, rain still tapping at the windows like a quiet applause from the sky.

And for the first time in three years, I let myself say Sarah’s name out loud without collapsing.

“Goodbye,” I whispered into the soft morning light. “I’m still here.”

At the funeral, the town showed up in the way small towns do when someone has fed them, scolded them, and loved them into better behavior. There were dumplings. There were tears. There was laughter, because Mrs. Chen would have haunted us all if we’d made it too gloomy.

Afterward, Elise and I sat on my porch with Harley’s head on Elise’s knee, holding two envelopes Mrs. Chen had made us promise not to open until she was gone.

My hands shook as I broke the seal.

Inside, her handwriting wobbled, thin but stubborn.

Zane, her letter read. You think love is a trap because it hurt you. But love is not the crash. Love is the hands that reach for you after. Do not confuse pain with proof that living is bad. Pain is proof you tried.

Elise’s letter said:

Elise, you live around death so much you forget you are allowed joy. You are not “too much.” You are exactly enough. Let someone hold your hand for once. Let yourself be saved a little too.

At the bottom of both letters, the same line:

Love is worth the risk. Always. Especially when it scares you.

Elise pressed her fingers to her mouth, tears spilling. I pulled her close, and she didn’t flinch away from my grief. She fit into it like she’d been trained for this kind of weather, like she knew storms didn’t last forever.

We sat there a long time, watching the lake, listening to the trees.

And I realized something quiet and terrifying:

Mrs. Chen had been right.

My fortress wasn’t protecting me. It was burying me.

Six months later, Elise moved into my cabin.

Not in a dramatic sweeping-romance way. In a practical way: one box at a time, one drawer at a time, one toothbrush next to mine like a small flag planted in a new country.

Harley adored her immediately, which I took as a cosmic recommendation letter.

Some days were still hard. Elise would come home smelling like antiseptic and sorrow, eyes heavy with other people’s grief. Some nights I’d wake sweating from dreams of rain and headlights.

But we learned each other’s survival languages.

When Elise needed quiet, I made tea and sat beside her without forcing words.

When I started to retreat, Elise took my hand and said, “Stay with me,” and the simplicity of it kept me from disappearing.

We planted a small cherry blossom tree in Mrs. Chen’s yard the first spring after she died. I carved a wooden sign to place beside it:

MRS. CHEN’S CHERRY TREE
LOVE DOESN’T WAIT FOR PERMISSION

The tree looked fragile at first. A thin trunk. Bare branches.

But it rooted anyway.

That felt like the most honest thing I’d ever seen.

Last spring, Elise and I got married under the pines by the lake. She wore cherry blossoms in her hair. I wore a small piece of cherry wood in my pocket, carved into the shape of a dumpling, because I knew Mrs. Chen would’ve laughed at that.

When we said our vows, the wind moved through the trees like a soft, approving sigh.

Sometimes, when the world is quiet, I still half expect a knock on my door and Mrs. Chen’s voice yelling, “Zane! You eat! You live!”

And I think about the day I almost walked out of Lake View Coffee.

The day I thought I was being tricked into a joke date.

The day I didn’t know my dying neighbor was handing me a key.

Not just to someone else’s heart.

To my own.

THE END