They found it three days later, back at the lakeside cabin for what had become a kind of ritual pilgrimage whenever either of them needed the particular quiet clarity the small house seemed to offer — tucked behind the same false bottom that had once held the brass key, a second, smaller notebook neither of them had noticed on their first search, bound in the same soft leather as Elena's journal but considerably thinner, its pages mostly blank.

Only the first few pages carried any writing at all, in his mother's familiar hand, dated the same week as her final entries in the larger journal.

For whoever finds this after...