Nora felt a strange heaviness after hearing about Elaine’s uncle and aunt. It wasn’t guilt—it was the unsettling idea of two people who couldn’t share life but chose to share death that lingered in her mind.

People had been romanticizing dying for love since 'Romeo and Juliet', but Nora wasn’t buying it. To her, true love wasn’t about leaving the world together—it was about staying, enduring, and growing old side by side.

When she’d never experienced ...