The announcement came on a soft, pale May morning—birdsong, bluebells, and all. The sort of day that might've once been marked by a heartbreak, but not this time.
Chris and Amanda were standing in Helena's hospital room when they said it, as if that room, heavy with the weight of real love and slow goodbyes, was the only place fitting for something so sincere.
Amanda held Helena's hand in hers, her voice soft but triumphant.
"Of course," she said, eyes twinkling through the tears, "he quoted Orlando Bloom when he proposed."
Helena, pale but lucid, gave a hoarse laugh. "Which film?"
Chris blushed deeply, fiddling with the small silver cross around his neck. "Kingdom of Heaven," he mumbled.
Amanda smirked. "The one where he plays a blacksmith who becomes a knight. Obviously."
Beth gave a tiny laugh from her chair, folding her arms. Jefrey raised an eyebrow, looking over from the window.
Chris straightened, trying to defend his honor. "It was romantic! It was about faith and perseverance and... and war, but the noble kind."
Amanda cut in, smiling affectionately. "He said, 'What man is a man who does not make the world better?' and then he held up the ring."
Helena squeezed Amanda's hand faintly. "I always thought one of you would end up together."
"And not me," Chris joked quickly, "with a Legolas lookalike in clerical robes."
Beth smiled again, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. Still, she leaned over to hug Amanda, holding her tightly. Chris looked dazed, happy, uncertain all at once.
Even Jefrey smiled. "I'm glad," he said quietly.
And in that strange little hospital room—surrounded by beeping monitors, wilting flowers, and the scent of antiseptic—love found a way to bloom. Quiet. Real. Undeniable.
The kind that didn't need a soundtrack, or a red carpet, or a Burberry sweater.
Just a promise, whispered beside a hospital bed, and meant.
In the dream, the paper felt real beneath her fingers — textured, thick, faintly yellowed like a forgotten letter never meant to be sent.
The handwriting was neat, almost precise, but with a slightly hurried slope — like someone trying to write carefully while their emotions raced ahead.
The words blurred and shimmered as if dipped in memory:
To Leon,
You were hot stuff back then — extremely slender.
Folks couldn't keep their eyes off you, and you knew it.
You had wit too, that quicksilver charm that drew people close.
Half the city had a crush on you.
And you?
You had girlfriends like collector's items — tall, glossy, straight off the runway.
Each one prettier than the last, and none of them stuck around long.
Beth's dream-self hovered over the page, her heart slow, still. There was no signature. No more lines. Just that voice, too honest to be cruel, too tired to be sentimental.
And yet, in the stillness of sleep, she knew: it was her own handwriting.
She was writing to the version of Leon that had once existed to her — mythic, magnetic, unreachable. A boy so dazzling he didn't need to stay.
But she had stayed.
She had stayed through hospital rooms, through heartbreak, through grief and grown-up mornings.
And now she was reading the goodbye she never got to say out loud.
In her dream, the light outside the window was soft — that strange hour where dawn and memory blur.
She folded the letter.
Left it there, on the table in her mind.
And woke up with tears on her pillow… but not sadness in her chest.
Helena passed away quietly in June, on a day when the world outside was too bright for grief.
The hospital window was cracked open slightly; a warm breeze fluttered the corner of the curtain as the machines, one by one, were turned off. Amanda was there, holding her mother's hand. Chris stood behind her, silent, eyes red-rimmed. Beth sat on the other side, not crying yet — just watching, as if willing herself to memorize the last shape of Helena's face.
Jefrey came in later, just after it happened, the stillness of the room telling him everything before a word was spoken. He only nodded once, jaw tight, eyes wet.
They didn't wail. They didn't collapse.
They were simply quiet — because sometimes the loudest kind of grief is the one that steals your words.
The funeral was small. No grand eulogies, no orchestras. Just a handful of people who had loved Helena — who knew her as a mother, a friend, a constant presence. Amanda spoke, voice trembling. Beth read a poem. Chris sang a hymn, his voice breaking twice. Jefrey stood by the coffin the whole time, hand resting lightly on its edge.
Afterward, they went back to the house. Her favorite shawl still hung on the back of her chair. Her perfume lingered faintly in the hallway. There were old letters in the drawer by her bed — one of which Beth found folded neatly and addressed in Helena's delicate hand:
"To my girls,
In the end, all that matters is that you loved and were loved in return.
That is your legacy — not who you marry, or what name you carry, but how much of your heart you gave away freely.
I'm proud of you. Be kind to each other. And don't wait too long to forgive."
That night, they lit candles in the garden. No one said much. They didn't need to.
The silence between them was Helena now — calm, steady, full of love.
They returned to Norway in early July.
The air in Reine was crisp, clearer than Beth remembered, though she wondered if grief simply made the world feel sharper. The mountains still stood tall, silent guardians over the sea. Grandma Sophie welcomed them with arms that trembled a little more this year — both from age and from the weight of the news.
They kept it quiet.
There was no great ceremony for Helena. Just a scattering of her ashes at the edge of the fjord, beneath a sky streaked with light at midnight. Amanda carried the small urn, her face unreadable. Chris took her hand when she hesitated near the cliffside. Jefrey and Beth stood a little apart, watching the ashes drift into the wind and water — back to the earth Helena had loved to paint, to photograph, to describe with tired but glowing eyes.
Beth whispered goodbye, though she knew Helena didn't need words anymore.
Afterward, the engagement announcement came almost as a relief — like the first breath after a deep dive.
Amanda held out her hand with the modest diamond, and Grandma Sophie kissed it. "She'd be so proud," Sophie said softly. "She always hoped you'd find someone who made you laugh."
Chris raised a glass, and even managed not to quote Orlando Bloom, though the look on his face said he wanted to.
Jefrey grilled fish on the porch. Beth helped slice cucumbers in the kitchen, her motions automatic, her mind somewhere between the water and the sky. That night, they lit candles again — not for mourning this time, but for something like renewal. Amanda and Chris stood beneath the stars, arms looped around each other, while Jefrey strummed a guitar softly.
Beth walked to the edge of the dock alone. The same dock where, a year ago, she had stood and wondered if love would be enough.
She wasn't wondering anymore.
She wasn't waiting.
The fjord was quiet.
But her heart — her heart was steady.
Beth sat at the edge of the dock, the candlelight from the house flickering behind her, reflected like fireflies on the surface of the fjord. The wind was gentle, and the cold no longer bit — it simply was, like a fact of nature you learned to live with.
And then, the thought came — quiet, but cutting.
He never announced it.
Not once.
Not a headline.
Not a photograph.
She had seen herself through his eyes — or thought she had — in the golden fjord light, in secret walks, in whispered promises over coffee. But there had never been a moment where Leon had looked at the world and said: this is her. This is Beth Gibson. This is the woman I love.
She remembered how careful he had been.
The side entrances. The back stairs. The quiet dates in tucked-away corners of the city. The absence of even a blurry paparazzi photo with her in it. The way he had held Bar's hand in public, but had only taken Beth's in the shadows.
The engagement — theirs — had never made it beyond her small world. No magazine. No press release. No red carpet. No proof.
Only that ring.
That single moment on the Serpentine.
And then the forgetting.
The erasure.
Even now, he was everywhere. On billboards. In songs. In whispers from the girls at school who would never imagine the truth.
Beth pressed her fingers into her palms, hard.
It wasn't bitterness.
It was something quieter. Something that hurt deeper for not being angry.
She stood, brushed her hair from her face, and looked out at the water.
The wind moved past her like memory, and somewhere across the fjord, a gull cried — sharp and solitary.
She said nothing.
Because now, there was nothing left to say.
The snow fell in slow, wide flakes — soft as feathers, catching in Beth's dark hair and melting on Jefrey's coat. The beach, usually grey and wind-lashed in winter, had transformed into something otherworldly. A white hush blanketed the dunes, and the sea glistened like silver under the cloudy sky.
Beth and Jefrey walked hand in hand, their boots crunching through the mix of snow and sand. They didn't speak much. They didn't need to. Their breaths rose in puffs, visible between quiet laughter and the occasional gleeful yelp when one pulled the other into a spin.
Snow spiraled around them as they turned — fast, clumsy, laughing — until the world became a blur of motion and white.
Finally, breathless and dizzy, they collapsed together in the snow, the cold biting through their coats, the surf a distant murmur behind them.
Beth looked at Jefrey.
Jefrey looked at Beth.
There was no hesitation this time.
They leaned into each other, and their lips met in a kiss — not shy, not uncertain, but hungry, full of something that had waited quietly beneath the surface all this time. His hands cradled her face gently, her fingers curled in his collar. It was warm where their mouths met, warmer than any fireplace or blanket.
The wind tugged at them, but they didn't notice.
Not the cold.
Not the sea.
Not the sky.
Only each other.
"I love you," Beth whispered, "Not Leon, but you, only you."
Jefrey froze for a breath — not in disbelief, but in something deeper, something quiet and reverent.
His eyes searched hers, snow still caught in her lashes, her cheeks flushed from wind and honesty.
"You mean that?" he asked softly, his voice barely louder than the wind.
Beth nodded, her voice trembling now:
"I mean it. It's not a substitute. It's not settling. I've walked through the fire, Jefrey. I know what love isn't. And I know what it is now."
He exhaled shakily, cupping her cheek, forehead pressed gently to hers.
"I've loved you for a long time," he said. "I never thought I'd hear you say that. Not like this. Not now."
"And yet," she murmured, smiling through the tears she hadn't realized were falling, "here we are."
Snow continued falling around them, softening the world into silence. And for the first time in a long while, Beth felt whole. Not because she had escaped heartbreak — but because she had survived it.
She leaned into Jefrey's arms.