THE RIFT BETWEEN US

chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE – SHADOW OF A NAME

Grief is a strange thing. People talk about it like it has a schedule. Like it shows up, breaks your heart, and then gradually fades—softening over time until it becomes tolerable. Manageable. Something you can box up and tuck away like old letters in a forgotten drawer.

But grief isn’t linear. It doesn’t respect your calendar. It doesn’t dissolve.

It lingers.

Like a shadow.

Silent. Constant. Always there when the light begins to dim.

For me, that shadow has a name.

Damian.

Five years ago, he vanished.

Not died. Not walked out with a suitcase and a cruel goodbye. Not even a ghosted silence you could chalk up to cowardice. No. He simply… vanished.

We were in the middle of planning our wedding—arguing over whether lilies or hydrangeas would better match the ivory napkins. His jacket was still draped over the back of our shared chair. His phone had been left charging by the bed. Our apartment door was locked from the inside.

And yet, one morning, he was gone.

No note. No messages. No trail.

And as if the universe wasn’t satisfied with stealing him away, it made sure to erase every trace of him from the world.

His friends? Claimed they’d never met him.

His family? Disconnected numbers.

The landlord of the apartment he had supposedly lived in since college? Said he’d never signed a lease. Never existed.

It wasn’t just forgetting.

It was erasure.

Deliberate.

Terrifying.

And no matter how many times I screamed, pleaded, begged someone—anyone—to remember him, they looked at me like I was insane.

Eventually, I stopped asking.

I built a life on top of the wreckage. Brick by broken brick. I became someone else—a woman with ambition, with goals, with no time for ghosts.

But grief doesn’t play fair.

And tonight, as I stood in the reception lobby of the Hotel Vienna, staring blankly at the receptionist’s carefully polite smile, I felt it creeping in again.

“Miss Sinclair?” she said, her voice soft, rehearsed.

I blinked. “Yes. Sorry.”

She offered a small brass key with a yellowed tag. “Room 308. Breakfast begins at seven. Conference schedule is available in the welcome packet.”

“Thank you.” I took the key, the weight of it oddly heavy in my palm.

The hotel was grand but faded—like a former opera singer clinging to the last note of her youth. Ornate chandeliers dangled overhead, their crystals slightly dulled. The wallpaper had once been regal but now bore the bruises of time—peeling corners, yellowing patterns. There was something romantic about it, something tragic too.

Vienna was like that.

The city outside the tall glass windows looked like it had been plucked from a storybook—cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carriages, cathedral spires that clawed the sky. But beneath that beauty, there was a hum. A whispering silence. Something deeper.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor, suitcase wheels thudding against each rise. My fingers itched with nerves I couldn’t name.

“This is fine,” I murmured, unlocking the door to 308. “It’s just another hotel. Another summit. You’ve done this before.”

The room was small but warm. A single bed with ironwork framing. A desk by the window, aged and uneven. Cream curtains, heavy and still. It smelled faintly of lavender and older things—dust, wood polish, maybe even history.

I let my suitcase fall beside the wardrobe and sat in the armchair by the window. Vienna sprawled beneath me in twilight shades—dusky roofs and golden lights, as if the city was exhaling after a long day.

“This was supposed to be a fresh start,” I whispered to the glass, watching as my breath fogged the cold pane in a fragile, fleeting bloom.

Beyond the window, Vienna stretched out in gold and dusk, its rooftops casting long shadows over the winding cobblestone streets below. It looked peaceful—timeless, like a city suspended between memory and dream. But the beauty felt hollow tonight, like a lullaby with no melody.

No matter how far I traveled, Damian followed.

Not in form—not in sightings or haunting footsteps. But in memory. In the fragmented echoes of a laugh I couldn’t remember perfectly anymore. In the questions that chased my sleep. In the cracks of what I thought I knew.

I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the windowpane, the cold anchoring me.

I tried to imagine his face. Sharp jawline. Dark eyes. That crooked smile he always wore when he teased me about my obsession with alphabetizing the spice rack. But the image felt grainy now, like a photograph that had been left out in the sun too long.

Grief doesn’t leave just because you ask it to. It lingers. And when you try to ignore it, it finds new ways to be heard.

♡

The first letter came the next morning.

There was no knock. No shuffling sound. No rustle of paper slipping under the door.

I had woken early, the jet lag still tugging at my limbs, and shuffled toward the door to retrieve the complimentary newspaper. My hair was a mess, and I hadn’t even bothered with slippers. I opened the door, half-asleep—then stopped.

It was there.

A single envelope.

Unmarked. White. Spotless. Not tucked under the paper. Not slid casually to the side. It sat perfectly centered in the threshold—as if someone had measured the distance between the walls before placing it.

And my name was written across the front.

Not typed. Handwritten.

The moment I saw it, something inside me dropped.

Eve Sinclair.

The ink curved in delicate loops. A slant to the left. The capital “S” was unmistakable. My knees weakened.

Because I knew that handwriting.

I hadn’t seen it in five years, but I knew it. I would know it blindfolded.

Damian.

The name wasn’t on the envelope. But it didn’t need to be. My hands trembled as I reached down, the paper smooth and cool beneath my fingertips.

I blinked hard, convincing myself it was a trick of the light.

It wasn’t.

The ink looked freshly dried.

“Impossible,” I whispered, my voice hoarse in the quiet hallway. “This isn’t real.”

I backed into the room, closing the door behind me with a soft click that echoed far too loud in the silence.

My fingers worked the flap open without permission from my brain. I unfolded the paper slowly, breath catching on each movement.

One line.

Do you ever wonder if the memories you trust are your own?

That was all.

No hello. No signature. No punctuation.

Just a question that made my blood freeze.

I read it again.

And again.

My vision blurred, not from tears, but from the weight of that question burrowing under my skin.

What did it mean?

My throat tightened. My fingers curled around the paper as if I could strangle it for answers.

I stumbled backward and sank onto the edge of the bed, the springs groaning beneath me. I stared at the wall across from me, heart hammering, while the paper lay in my lap like a ghost.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, this is a prank. Someone found his journal. Or his notes. This is a cruel joke.”

But no one had those.

No one even remembered he existed.

I had tried. I had screamed his name to every ear that used to know him. And all I’d gotten were blank stares, polite smiles, and eventual pity.

I pressed my fingers to my temples. “You’re spiraling,” I whispered to myself. “You’re just tired. You haven’t eaten. You’re jet lagged. It’s the city—it’s messing with you.”

But deep down, I knew none of that was true.

The letter was real.

And so was the dread curling through my stomach like smoke.

I stood abruptly and began pacing the room, arms wrapped tightly around myself.

Damian had vanished. But now he was writing me letters?

Had he been alive this whole time? Had he been watching? Did he stage the disappearance?

Or had I imagined him all along?

No. No, I refused to believe that.

I had loved him. Touched him. Laughed with him. I had planned a life with him. That kind of connection doesn’t exist in fiction. It leaves a mark too deep.

My phone lay on the nightstand. I snatched it up and opened my contacts. My thumb hovered over Clara’s name.

What would I even say?

Hi, Clara. Remember the man nobody else remembers? The one I was going to marry before he fell off the face of the earth? Well, he just sent me a letter. Cool, right?

I didn’t call.

I couldn’t.

I set the phone down and walked to the window again, forehead pressed against the cold glass.

Vienna’s rooftops were dusted in early sunlight now, the city waking gently.

But I wasn’t.

I was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere between panic and disbelief.

The letter sat on the desk, mocking me with its silence.

My reflection in the window didn’t look like me.

She looked like someone unraveling.

And I couldn’t tell if the thread had just been tugged—or if it had never stopped pulling.

END OF CHAPTER ONE