As I search for the right advice to give you, the waves roll in, stroking the sand as they have for aeons, and I ponder the choice you faced. The sun falls further, consumed by the distant sea, and darkness begins to creep in.

I died. I was nowhere, with no one, feeling nothing. If there is an afterlife, I wasn’t gone long enough to get there. You gave me a second chance and created a new beginning for me, your father, and your brother and sisters. It makes me so sad you’ll never meet them, nor they you. You’d have loved each other so much.

I thought I knew what I’d say to you, but I don’t any more. I don’t even have the frame of reference to think the way you do. You’ve made a choice that would have broken me, and you’ve done it with calm resolve. I think of all the time we spent with Ben, and never once did you give away your secret. I can’t begin to understand what goes through your mind each day. How you’ve suffered.

How did you find the strength?

What you’ve done, the places you must have been, who you are – these are all beyond me. I won’t presume to tell you what to do, because I can hardly understand how you’ve done it.

Instead, I take your hand.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you for everything you gave us. I love you, Elliot.’

‘I love you too, Mum,’ you reply, and you hug me and your father. ‘I love you both.’

My dream, the happiest of endings, is that the three of us never have to make any difficult choices.

We simply hold each other, and stay in that moment forever.

Chapter 62

For many years, I thought Beth blamed me for the loss of our son, and she believed I hated her for the sacrifice he made. Neither of us thought we could measure up to the other’s grief, but over time we learned that wasn’t what we needed. The loss would never be healed, but that shared grief bound us, and although we could never be substitutes for Elliot, we could make life better for each other. So we did. We focused on the good we could do for one another, rather than the ways in which we failed to fill the void left by our son. We worked hard, and slowly we learned there was a life beyond the pain.

We live on the edge of Tasman Bay on South Island in New Zealand, and it’s as close to paradise as I could have ever hoped to get. We watch the sun go down over the hills each evening, and think of our son out there somewhere.

Even as a physicist with decades of scientific training, I used to think of Elliot stuck in a never-ending loop, a cycle of suffering. It wasn’t until I found the letters that I knew about his life with Harri. Now I understand more about the true nature of time, I feel a greater sense of peace with the sacrifice he made. I embrace the block theory of the universe because if time doesn’t pass, if all moments exist simultaneously, my son and his love are out there right now, somewhere in the gathered multitude of moments, watching the sun go down from their own house. Each evening, Beth and I like to raise a glass to the horizon and think of our child doing the same, still alive, still happy, living with Harri in the Elsewhere House.