The shock did not end with the doctor’s words; it deepened in the quiet tasks that followed. Returning deposits for a honeymoon never taken. Calling vendors to explain why the flowers meant for a bridal suite would instead be laid on a coffin. The same guest list was summoned again days later, not to clink glasses, but to clutch tissues and each other as they filed into a church draped in black instead of white.

Julian moved through it all like a ghost in his own life, his wedding band a cruel weight on his finger. The photos, the gifts, the monogrammed items bearing two intertwined initials became unbearable relics. Family and friends tried to offer meaning, but some tragedies refuse to be shaped into lessons. In the end, what remained was not a moral, only a brutal truth: love does not guarantee time. It only makes the loss of it unimaginably, exquisitely real.