The Last Love Note

by Emma Grey

It’s a converted fishing shack from the sixties. Rustic, cozy, and extended in sections, with much of it genuinely untouched rather than deliberately retro. Deep velvet couches sit on wooden floorboards beside the freestanding fireplace. Mismatched bookshelves line the walls, crammed with dog-eared copies of Grisham and Christie and Steel. Old boardgames are stacked in frayed boxes with split corners, held together by masking tape. Decks of playing cards wrapped in rubber bands lean against DVDs of Richard Curtis rom-coms, Midsomer Murders, and Yes Minister. Macramé decorations, crafted long before Pinterest made it cool again, hang from pieces of driftwood on the walls. Nothing is “on trend.” It’s as if generations of a big extended family have decorated this house gradually across decades, infusing it in sunscreen and stories, sleep-ins, and growing pains until it is impossible to tell where the family ends and the house begins.