Love’s New Address

Sleep was impossible. Every thought spiraled back to that one impossible coincidence. Claire’s scar. Emma’s donation.

By dawn, I was at the diner again. Mike slid into the booth, two coffees in hand.
“You look like death reheated,” he said.

“She had a heart transplant,” I told him. “Same hospital. Same time Emma’s heart was donated.”

His grin faded. “Jack… that’s not something you chase.”

“I’m not chasing,” I said quietly. “I’m remembering.”

At the hospital, privacy laws stopped me cold — until a nurse slipped me a sealed envelope, addressed in handwriting I knew by heart.

Emma’s handwriting.

“Jack,
If you’re reading this, it means you survived.
Don’t let your heart stop loving. Love doesn’t die — it just changes its address.”

I sat in the parking lot for an hour, the world spinning between grief and grace.

A month later, I asked Claire to meet me on the quiet road where Emma’s accident happened. I brought a small sapling — Emma’s dream was to plant one, something living where life had once stopped.

As we dug into the cold soil, Claire looked at me, eyes shimmering.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she said softly, “but it feels like… I’ve known you longer than I should.”

I reached for her hand — the hand that beat with a rhythm once familiar.
“Maybe love doesn’t end,” I whispered. “Maybe it just finds another way to stay.”

Under the Missouri sky, we planted that sapling — two people bound by loss, by chance, by the same heartbeat — watching new life take root where everything once fell apart.