The Moon Between us

The Name in his Notebook

That evening, Elena found the sticky note beneath her keyboard and took it home.

She told herself she was only keeping a record. If the strange symptoms continued, she could show the notes to a doctor. It was practical, not paranoid.

At home, she searched online for explanations of auditory disturbances, unusual sensitivity to sound, and brief episodes of disorientation. The results ranged from stress and lack of sleep to neurological conditions she didn't want to read about.

Nothing mentioned hearing a voice that seemed to come from somewhere that wasn't there.

Nothing explained why touching a wet branch had made her feel as though she had remembered something.

She closed the browser.

Then she opened it again and searched for one phrase.

Why does a place feel familiar when you've never been there?

The results were less useful than she'd hoped. People described déjà vu, dreams, memories, and the brain's tendency to connect unfamiliar experiences to familiar patterns.

Elena read several pages, growing increasingly frustrated.

She had seen a forest for less than a second. She couldn't remember its shape clearly enough to describe it. There had been dark ground, trees, and movement. That was all.

Yet the feeling it had left behind was not like remembering a dream.

It was like forgetting something important and suddenly realizing that the thing you had forgotten was still waiting for you.

A soft knock came at her bedroom door.

Grace stepped inside carrying a folded towel.

"You're still awake."

"I'm researching something."

"Something medical?"

Elena hesitated. "Sort of."

Her mother put the towel down. She didn't ask to see the screen, which somehow made Elena feel guiltier.

"Do you remember anything from when I was a baby?" Elena asked.

Grace's expression shifted with surprise.

"Of course. Not much from your earliest months, naturally. You were tiny when we brought you home."

"I mean before that. Where you found me."

Grace sat on the edge of the bed.

"We've talked about this before."

"I know. I just want to hear it again."

Her mother studied her face, then answered.

"We found you in the care of the people who brought you to us. You were very young. There wasn't much information about where you'd come from, and we never found anyone who could tell us more. You were healthy enough, though you were unusually quiet."

"Did I have anything with me?"

Grace glanced at the pendant resting beneath Elena's collar.

"You had that necklace. It was around your neck when you came to us."

Elena drew it out, letting the silver rest in her palm.

"Did you ever try to find out where it came from?"

"Of course we did. We asked questions. We tried to trace it. We didn't get anywhere."

"Why didn't you tell me more about it?"

"Because there wasn't more to tell." Grace reached over and closed Elena's fingers gently around the pendant. "We didn't want you growing up thinking that your life had started with a mystery. You were our daughter. That was what mattered."

Elena swallowed.

"I know."

Grace kissed her forehead before standing.

"If something is worrying you, you don't have to solve it alone."

After she left, Elena remained still for a long time.

She had expected the conversation to make her feel better. Instead, it had given her another question.

Her parents had searched for answers when she was a baby. They had found none.

What if the answers had never been lost?

What if someone had made sure they stayed hidden?

The thought frightened her enough that she pushed it away.

She took off the necklace and examined it beneath the desk lamp. The old silver looked almost black in the deepest parts of its carved design. She traced the pattern with her thumb, trying to find something she had never noticed before.

Nothing changed.

No hidden inscription appeared. No sudden memory returned. It was only a piece of old jewelry, worn smooth by years of contact with her skin.

Elena put it back around her neck.

Then she opened the notes on her phone and typed a new line.

Ask Mum and Dad more about where they found me.

She stared at it, then added another.

Find out what happened in the forest.

She didn't know which forest she meant.

That was the part she couldn't explain.

____

Liana had spent most of the night telling herself that three words in an old notebook were not a good enough reason to return to a place she had deliberately avoided.

By morning, she had come up with seven reasons not to go.

The gathering would be full of people who thought her father's name gave them some claim over her future. Her mother would expect her to behave. Someone would inevitably ask whether she had reconsidered the proposals she had already rejected, and at least one person would pretend the question was about her happiness rather than their family's political ambitions.

Worst of all, if she asked about the Veyr matter, her mother would know she had been looking through her father's belongings.

That last reason should have been enough to settle it.

Instead, Liana found herself sitting at the kitchen table with her father's notebook open beside her breakfast.

She had read the same page six times.

The Veyr matter.

No explanation. No names beside it. Just those three words at the bottom of a list that appeared to document meetings between influential families.

She turned the page, then the next.

Nothing.

She checked the preceding pages for a date and found one written in the upper corner: twenty-two years earlier.

Liana stopped turning pages.

Twenty-two years.

She was too young to remember anything significant from that period, and the date meant little to her on its own. Her father had attended countless meetings throughout his life. Some had concerned business, others politics, and a few had involved disputes between families whose names she had heard since childhood.

Still, he had marked this page.

She closed the notebook and carried it to her bedroom.

There was someone she could ask, but she disliked the idea of making the call.

Her mother's older sister, Aunt Selene, had been close to Cassian and had remained involved with the family after his death. She was one of the few relatives who had never treated Liana's independence as a personal insult.

Unfortunately, she was also very good at answering questions without actually answering them.

Liana found her number among her contacts and stared at it.

Then she called.

Her aunt answered after the fourth ring.

"Liana? What a surprise."

"Hello, Aunt Selene."

"Is everything all right?"

"Yes. I wanted to ask you something about Dad."

The pause on the other end was brief, but Liana noticed it.

"Your father," Selene repeated. "What about him?"

"Do you remember a family called Veyr?"

Silence.

Not the ordinary silence of someone searching their memory. This was different. Liana could almost hear her aunt deciding how much she was willing to say.

"Where did you hear that name?"

"In his notebook."

"Which notebook?"

"The small leather one he kept in his desk."

Another pause.

Liana sat down on the edge of her bed. "Aunt Selene?"

"That was a long time ago."

"I gathered that from the date."

"Some family matters are better left alone."

"That sounds suspiciously like something people say when they don't want to answer a question."

"Liana."

She recognized the warning in her aunt's voice. It was the same tone adults had used when she was younger and had wandered too close to a conversation they believed children shouldn't hear.

She had never liked it.

"I'm not asking you to tell me every secret Dad ever had," Liana said. "I just want to know why he wrote that name down."

"I can't tell you that."

"Can't or won't?"

"I won't pretend I know the whole story, because I don't. But I know enough to tell you that the Veyr name was dangerous in those days."

Liana's fingers tightened around the notebook.

"Dangerous how?"

"Your father knew people who were involved in what happened. He didn't agree with everything they did, but that doesn't mean he was innocent of every decision made afterward."

The answer unsettled her more than a simple refusal would have.

"Are you saying Dad was involved in something bad?"

"I'm saying your father lived in a world where good people sometimes made terrible decisions, and powerful people were very good at making those decisions look necessary."

Liana looked down at the notebook.

"Was he one of those people?"

"I don't know what he told you about that period of his life. I wasn't there for every conversation he had."

"That isn't an answer."

"No," Selene said quietly. "It isn't."

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then her aunt continued. "If you want to understand your father, don't start by asking whether he was a good man or a bad one. Start by asking what he was afraid of."

The call ended a few minutes later, leaving Liana with more questions than she had begun with.

She sat on her bed, listening to the silence in her room.

Her father had been many things: patient, stubborn, affectionate in ways he tried to disguise, and occasionally infuriating when he believed he knew what was best for her. He had also been powerful enough to make people reconsider their words in his presence.

But afraid?

She had rarely seen him frightened.

She opened the notebook again.

For the first time, she wondered whether her father had been protecting her from something more complicated than the expectations of their society.