Austin Grant still strolled through it each Sunday after church, though he’d been doing it alone for over a year. Hampstead Heath had been their favorite spot on Earth, a gigantic park plopped atop a hill over London where he’d proposed to Allison over three decades ago.

They’d gotten married on a spectacular spring afternoon when the purple lilacs, pink hydrangeas, and blush roses were in full bloom. He’d been amazed she’d agreed to take him as her husband after a one-month courtship. Grant had been certain her late father wouldn’t hand his only daughter to a man with no prospects. Miraculously, Allison saw enough in Grant to accept his proposal and had subsequently cheered him on from a front-row seat through his entire career.

A career that was almost over.

Walking down the manicured path on this blustery December day, Grant kicked himself for not heeding Allison’s suggestions to pack it in five years earlier.

When had he finally let her show him the brochure? The month before she took ill? The small house in Todi—an hour’s drive northeast of Rome where vineyards flourished and life slowed down to a blessed crawl. “We’ll rent it for a summer,” Allison had said. “You’ll see if you can stand it. Reading a book, taking an afternoon nap; Lord knows—maybe even a drink before dinner.”

Grant had been dubious—he took his two weeks a year like clockwork and drove Allison crazy calling work every day while they were supposedly on holiday. More than once they had scrapped a trip altogether because he couldn’t tear himself away and would promise to make up for those lost days.

“Makeup” days gone forever when she had taken ill and never recovered.

Highgate Cemetery had been the obvious choice for Allison’s final resting place. It had broken his heart when she had told him that it would be a place she knew Grant wouldn’t mind visiting her until the time came for him to lie down beside her. Indeed, this was the only place where he could find peace, on the cast-iron bench that, just one year after Grant had donated it to honor Allison’s passing, already sported a coat of rust from the pervasive London dampness.

He placed a bouquet of her favorite blush roses on the plot, as he did every Sunday. Hard to find in the winter, Grant was determined his love would always have the same flowers that had surrounded them on their wedding day. He had an arrangement with a florist on the High Street; if the proprietor carried them year-round, Grant could arrange for the steep parking permit in front of the man’s shop to be waived. It was one of the few job perks left for Grant.

ALLISON REBECCA GRANT; Beloved Daughter, Wife, and Mother.