Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas

New York City book editor Katie Wilkinson, Kathleen Rose Perkins, is devastated when her boyfriend, poet Matt Harrison, Johnathon Schaech, abruptly breaks up with her for no apparent reason. He later sends her a diary as a means of explaining why he can’t be with her, and Katie discovers the diary is written by Suzanne, Christina Applegate, who is writing to her newborn son, Nicholas.

Suzanne begins her story in Boston, where she was working as a doctor in a hospital. After she has a heart attack at a young age, her fiancé leaves her, partly because he believes they won’t be able to have children due to her health issues. In an effort to start over, she moves to Martha’s Vineyard and buys a house that she plans to fix up.

Suzanne meets Matt Harrison, a house painter, at a diner and hires him to paint her house. They fall in love and are married, and soon after have a son, Nicholas. When Suzanne becomes pregnant again, she becomes ill with toxemia and is hospitalized, ultimately losing the baby. With Matt’s support, she recovers and writes that she feels lucky to have the life that she does.

Suzanne’s diary entries end suddenly after she writes about having pictures of Nicholas, now almost a year old, taken in a professional studio. Matt takes over writing in the diary and expresses immense grief over the loss of his wife, eventually revealing that Suzanne had a heart attack while driving to pick up the photos of Nicholas and crashed the car, killing both Suzanne and Nicholas.

In the present, Katie is devastated by the truth about Matt’s past and finally understands that his tremendous grief and guilt is keeping him from moving on with Katie, who he does not know is pregnant by him. She visits Martha’s Vineyard and pays her respects at the graves of Suzanne and Nicholas, then finds the house where Matt lived with his wife and son. She encounters an old friend of his, Melanie, who tells Katie that she believes Matt does love her.

Katie returns to New York and begins to conceive of a life as a single mother, but Matt appears outside her office building and begs for forgiveness. They reconcile and happily marry. On her wedding day, Katie recalls Suzanne’s words from her diary, > “Isn’t it lucky?” and remembers to be grateful.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:47