Grief made every day feel gray and endless. Three years without Emma. Three years of coffee gone cold and roads I drove on autopilot.

Then my best friend set me up with Claire. I almost said no. But her laugh was gentle, her eyes steady. Over pie, she pushed back her sleeve—and I saw it. A thin pink scar down her chest.

“Heart surgery,” she said softly. “A transplant. Three years ago.”
My fork slipped. Three years. The same month Emma died. My chest pounded like a warning, or a whisper.

I ran from the diner, then from the fear. At the hospital, a coordinator pressed a small envelope into my hand. “Your wife left this,” she said. The paper smelled like lavender. Emma’s handwriting looped across the page: “If you survived, keep your heart alive. Love doesn’t end—it just changes its address.”

A month later, I called Claire. We met by the country road where endings once lived. I brought a sapling. We planted it together, hands in the same soil, breathing the same cold air.

“I don’t know why,” she whispered, touching her chest, “but this heart feels like it knew you.”
“Then let’s give it a reason to keep beating,” I said.

Maybe love doesn’t vanish. Maybe it simply finds a new way home. What do you think—can a heart remember?