The Last Love Note

by Emma Grey

I have a physical ache in my chest, as if my heart is clinically breaking. That’s an actual thing that I read about. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Broken heart syndrome. It happens to a lot of widows. Widows. Old women in black, wailing. Gray-haired ladies on their own at the nursing home. Women from the two world wars. Not me. Not at thirty-eight. Not with a three-year-old.

“I’m just getting you some Tylenol,” he explains. “For the broken heart.” Oh, yes. Why didn’t I think of that? “Grief is a physical thing as well,” he says from the kitchen. “Painkillers can help with the impact on your body.”

A kaleidoscope of images from my life with Cam flashes through my mind the way it’s supposed to just before you die. Not before someone new kisses you. But when Hugh’s mouth finally touches mine, the images disappear. Warmth floods through me and he sighs as if this is something he’s wanted to do for a very long time. Centuries, maybe. And I panic. Where have the images gone of Cam? Have I lost them? “You with me, Kate?” Hugh

“The time to push you away was right at the start, Kate. It’s been overtaken by events.” So many events. Each of them awful. Can you base a relationship on suffering and support?

“You need the beach.” “Yes. And to quit my job—no offense, Hugh—and let the equity from the house support me for a bit while I rent and write my book. Without the book, I don’t think I can truly move forward with my life.”

I don’t know how anyone processes grief without expressing it in words.

“What if the secret you’re keeping suffocates us?” “I don’t know what to do about that,” he confesses. “I don’t know how we can take this to the next step, Kate, for so many reasons. I only know I want to.” This has crept up on me. Looking back now, I can see all the signs I missed.

This long? It’s only four years since Cam got sick. Three years since we last had any semblance of togetherness. Two years since he died. I’m still so caught up in my marriage, I wasn’t looking for this. And for Hugh to have been in plain sight all this time …

“The second we found out the flights were grounded we leaped into action. There really is only so much unresolved sexual tension the rest of us can tiptoe around, Katherine. And who could have predicted the collateral impact for Grace? Ooh, it is thrilling!” What collateral impact? Is this about Justin? Mum’s going full Mrs. Bennet about both of us. “Hugh is my best friend,” I say. It’s news to me. And would be news to Grace, not that I’d ever tell her. He can’t replace her, of course, but he’s seen me through so much of the big stuff, right up close, it’s unexpectedly obvious that’s exactly what he is: my best and closest friend. When I try to imagine the last four years without him, I can’t fathom how I’d have survived a single day.

One day, I found one that said THE BOY’S NAME IS CHARLIE and it utterly destroyed me.

The last thoughts he put enough weight on to want to record. Maybe it was the writer in me, but they seemed important.

like I was living in some sort of real-life P.S. I Love You.

I’d trade all the riches that await us overseas for just one more minute to say a proper goodbye. The people who lose their person in an instant say they wish for that. But sometimes you miss out on it after a long illness too. You’re never really sure when something is about to pass you by. There’s so much focus in grief on getting through all the “firsts.” First birthday without the person. First Christmas. First day of a new year they’ll never share with you. Before that, though, there’s a series of “lasts.” And by the time you’re aware of them, you’ve missed them. Things fade beyond comprehension. It’s too late for the words you’ve been saving.

Turning up the lights. I remember the advice of a good friend just after Cam had died. She’d lost her baby daughter and had decided Georgie’s short life would turn the lights up in her family’s life, not down. It’s only now that her advice is sinking in. It’s not Cam pulling the strings. It’s not Hugh. It’s me. Every choice I make either brightens our lives or darkens them. I remember the night Cam died, and my first observation being the extent to which I was still here. Alive. Breathing. This is not a fork in the road, I realize. It’s just the road. There’s no Story A and Story B. There’s one, imperfect, meandering direction.

It’s freezing cold and we stand in the garden of the hotel, entranced as iridescent greens and purples dance quickly and silently across the sky. No one second is the same. The patterns shape-shift and, in this moment, my heart is fuller than it’s ever been. As I glance down at Charlie, I can see the lights reflected in his wide eyes. He can barely believe what he’s seeing, and I love that I’m sharing this with him.

immeasurably glad I am that I made this happen. Put myself first. Prioritized this dream over all the others. At least this once.

I take out the bucket list from my bag, and a pen. I cross off number one on the list: See the Northern Lights. While I’m at it, I cross off See a Broadway show and Gondola in Venice, Christmas Market in Prague, and Solo trip overseas. Charlie’s with me, of course, but I don’t think a five-year-old counts. The farther down the list I go, the more I realize I’ve done. Write a book is still there, but that’s underway. Live by the beach—of course. I still haven’t found a house, but that will happen at some point.

“I want to see more lights,” Charlie protests, while the attendant finds the information I need. “Charlie, there’s been a second solar flare. If we’re lucky, we’ll see the Borealis and the Australis in one week! The Southern version is just as gorgeous—or maybe even more beautiful. Pink, purple, green, and gold. If we miss it this time, I promise we’ll go chasing it together, as long as it takes us.”

I am his leader now. Two parents rolled into one. I think back to the flailing mother Charlie can’t remember from when he was a baby and realize how far I’ve come. I’m still making mistakes by the bucketload. Still in the dark about a lot of things, and I can’t begin to describe how much I’m still dreading the teenage years, but there’s a new confidence now. After you’ve been through the worst, you can handle anything the world throws at you. Hopefully even a logistical arrangement as complicated as the one I’m attempting to pull off.

I am, I think. Wild about Hugh. The fact that he would even take the time to seriously consider doing what Cam asked of him speaks volumes about his principles. As does the fact that he couldn’t go through with it. Not helping Cam, potentially making things easier for me in a way that he thoroughly understood through his own loss, nearly destroyed him. Particularly if, as seems obvious now in retrospect, he was in love with me. Not telling me eventually meant losing me, even though every step of his conduct paints him in the very brightest light.

Charlie, who has a shot now at having a mum who’s not only finding her feet but finding long-term happiness, just as his dad wanted for us.

If I focus, I’ll have the first section of my book finished by the time we land. It’s not great, but the bones of it are there. Something to work with, anyway, and plenty of ideas. It has been cathartic getting it out of my brain and onto the page over the last few months. I’ve been sending it to Grace, chapter by chapter, and she’s been encouraging. But then, she always is. I wanted to write about grief, but it’s landing on the page as so much more than that. Maybe because, even in loss, there’s so much more to life.

“To keep you focused?” I ask, unable to believe any of this is real. “To keep me hopeful. I didn’t want to interrupt your plans. I knew you had to take this trip, and why, but as soon as you left, I was just … bereft. Told myself it should be impossible to grieve this much for a woman who is still alive.”

“It is what it is,” he says. He’s right. It’s a mash-up of inconceivable devastation and unbelievable wonder. A clash of two almost overpowering tragedies, through which hope has been pushing up quietly, tenaciously, all this time. Fighting for light. Needing just the right amount of spine-tingling courage to tip the future in a new direction.

Time is warping again now, but in reverse. Everything Hugh and I have been through is being swept, suddenly, into a glorious whirlwind of all we can be. This precious second chance.

realized there was a fate even worse than your death.” “Separate lives,” I answer for him. I’m crying now. Partly

Then he smiles. That broad, rare, generous, gorgeous smile that turns me inside out whenever it’s aimed in my direction. I love this man. Somehow with all my heart. The same heart that will also beat for Cam with an unstoppable rhythm until the day I die. For once, I won’t overthink the mystery.

I never take it for granted, living at a place where I can capture sunrises and sunsets on a deserted beach, and the aurora whenever it’s visible. The Tasmanian wilderness is so conducive to writing. I’ve just finished my third book. Contemporary romance is apparently my place in the writing world, not literary fiction, as Cam probably suspected all along.

Once I let go of trying to write something “impressive” and started just writing from the heart, words poured onto pages as if they’d been queued in my mind for decades.

“Knew it,” Charlie says. “She can’t stand missing out on anything!” We hear her before we can see her, and then two figures hove into sight on the beach, one tall, one tiny. She races up to us and throws her arms around my leg, begging to be lifted up to see the ’rora through the camera’s viewfinder. “Camryn Genevieve! You’re meant to be in bed!” I say. Hugh shrugs and smiles. “What can you do? Aurora-chaser like Mum and big brother.”

Our lives aren’t perfect, even under the southern lights. You can’t bring together two adults and a child with shattering grief as a backstory and expect a smooth ride. We still make mistakes. We have rows. Hugh’s new role with the University of Tasmania still gets stressful. I still write first drafts that convince me I have no idea what I’m doing, even several published books in. But there’s something about Camryn. She took three broken people and stitched us together as a family. She’s one of the golden threads running through each of our lives. Hope, in human form.

And, of course, the result was just the miracle Hugh always deserved, so now we’re officially a complex family of five, and I have a stepgrandchild on the way at forty-four and couldn’t be more there for it.

He’s a little bit older and a little bit grayer than when we first met eight years ago, and so am I, but we know that every extra year is a privilege denied to the two we’ll always love.

The tears are free-flowing now, all around. It’s not just Charlie’s unexpected request and everything it means to Hugh. It’s the fact that he’s building such an accurate understanding of the incredible man his father was.

The four of us stand together now, awestruck by the colors turning up the light in the darkness. And when I finally take a moment to glance from the aurora to my little plan B family, I’m overcome with a strong sense of Cam’s nearness. I’ve learned that love outlives death. It holds steady through despair. It won’t fade, even as time elapses and distance increases and your world shifts.

When my husband died from a heart attack in 2016, I wrote his eulogy in disjointed notes on my phone at three a.m. The task felt bigger than language itself. These acknowledgments seem almost as difficult because it’s not just about the book. It’s about everything that happened in the seven years leading up to it, and I’d need another ninety thousand words to adequately express my gratitude for the outpouring of support we received. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who held us in your arms during our tragedy. You saved us.

Writing a deeply personal story and sharing it with the world is daunting. While much of Kate’s experience is not my own (I have not found my Hugh), the grief is mine.

Trevor, Elena, and Liza, thank you for your compassionate welcome into the club none of us wanted to join. Ann, thank you for lending me one of your heartbreaking stories; Megan, thank you for all of our chats about widowhood over the years. I have too many widowed friends to mention individually, but I love and admire you all.

To my beloved parents, Barrie and Claire, who have a cameo in the book as their amazing selves, since the moment you taught me to read, you’ve supported every step. This story is a tribute to your love as well, and to Dad’s endless and unfathomably patient care of Mum through dementia.

Hannah and Sophie, since you were little you’ve watched me work for this dream. Now that you’re adults, I love sharing it with you as it unfolds. The way you responded as teenagers when our world shattered is the most impressive thing I’ve ever witnessed, and your resilience since has been inspiring.

Jeff, I needed to create two heroes in an attempt to capture the extent of my love for you, and even then it was impossible. You will always be more than Cam and Hugh combined. You said to “be brilliant.” You said to go out into the world and get on with life. You could never have known how hard that would be without you, and how fervently I wish I didn’t have the experience to have written this novel, but I hope, wherever you are, it makes you proud. You are in every word. I will always keep the light on for you. x