I sold everything and bought a one-way ticket to reunite with my first love. But fate had other plans. A heart attack mid-flight left me stranded in a town where I had to choose: give up or take the longest road to love.

At 78, I had nothing to lose. Elizabeth’s letter had changed everything. “I’ve been thinking of you,” she wrote. Memories of laughter and whispered dreams resurfaced, urging me forward.

But on the plane, pain gripped my chest. The world blurred. When I woke up, I was in a hospital. “Bozeman General,” a nurse named Lauren told me. “Your heart isn’t as strong as it used to be. No flying for now.”

I should have given up. Instead, I found an unexpected ally in Lauren. She had lost love too, burying herself in work to escape. One morning, she handed me car keys. “You’re not the only one looking for something,” she said.

We drove for hours, hope pushing us forward. When we arrived, the address wasn’t a house—it was a nursing home. Elizabeth wasn’t there. Her sister Susan met me instead. “She passed last year,” she confessed. “She never stopped reading your letters.”

Grief threatened to swallow me, but I wasn’t alone. Lauren had found her own past waiting in that nursing home. And I found something unexpected—a home. I bought Elizabeth’s house and invited Susan and Lauren to stay. Life had rewritten my story, but in the end, love still found a way.