Harold never imagined love would find him again in the quiet, ordinary years of his late sixties. He had lived a full life already—marriage, children, loss, long stretches of solitude marked by morning coffee and evenings in an armchair that remembered the shape of him. After his wife passed, he convinced himself romance was behind him. Whatever spark remained had dimmed, tucked away beneath grief, routine, and the slow erosion of confidence that creeps in when a man believes his best chapters are over.
