Every morning, Darren Flanagan makes two cups of coffee. One for himself. One for his wife Rachel—who died six months ago. At fifty-five, Darren should be planning retirement with the woman he's loved for thirty-eight years. Instead, he's mechanically going through the motions of existence in a house that echoes with her absence. Her reading glasses still sit on the end table. Her Sunday school Bible rests beside her favorite chair. And in the basement, a locked gun cabinet whispers his name in the darkest hours. Then he finds the sticky notes. Yellow squares with Rachel's handwriting, hidden everywhere throughout the house. Remember to buy milk. You are braver than you believe. Don't follow me yet. I love you. Messages she left before her sudden death, a trail of breadcrumbs leading him back toward life when all he wants is to follow her into the dark. But Rachel won't let him go quietly. Neither will his relentless sister Colleen, who steals the gun cabinet key and refuses to watch her brother give up. Or Dr. Okonkwo, his therapist, who sees through every deflection. Or his Marine Corps lads, who show up at the pub and understand that sometimes presence speaks louder than words. As Darren stumbles between devastating grief and luminous memories, Rachel singing off-key in the shower, Sunday coffee on the porch, the terrible day they buried their stillborn daughter Grace, he's pulled toward an impossible question: How do you keep living when the person who made life worth living is gone? Moving between past and present, joy and devastation, Grace Notes of Her Laughter is an achingly intimate portrait of a widower standing at the edge between life and death. Through sticky notes and therapy sessions, grief support groups and late-night calls, Marine brotherhood and acts of unexpected kindness, Darren must learn the brutal truth: grief doesn't end, you just learn to carry it differently.