[1]

I hate this- the silence, the sympathy. It reminds me too much of high school. Of Mystic Falls and a full four bedroom house with a giant mahogany table in the dining room. Of whispers and apologetic faces.

"I already knew." I save my partner from the awkward confrontation by jumping into it first. Seeing a tiny little tv with my dad's face plastered big on the screen saying, "Dr. Grayson Gilbert: PRESUMED DEAD" wasn't exactly my idea of a good morning shift. Judging by Romero's sudden awkwardness, neither was it his.

"I'm sorry about your dad, Elena."

My eyes flush up on their own. I force myself to look out my window. The tears aren't from grief or sadness. It's a burning fire that starts from my chest that wants to get out. He's not dead.

I nod, crossing my arms and picking at my nails to help me bite my tongue. He's not dead. "Thank you," I say.

We found your father's car by Mt. Laguna, said Holffstead. We need you to come in to confirm his license and belongings.

But they couldn't find the body. Nothing but a small sample of blood and flesh.

He takes the next exit and cleared his throat. "Dispatch will understand if you have to leave early."

"I already told them that I'm taking a two week break," I say. "Max knows that I won't be back till after the funeral."

He actually looks at me this time, turns his head to the side instead of making brief eye contact through the rear view mirror. I spot sympathy. "Are you guys bringing him back to Virginia?"

The ambulance's engine roars loudly to my dull ears, and for a second I thought the windows were down cause of the way my chest tightened up so quickly. "Yeah," I say. Technically, we're taking a glossy urn as a placeholder.

"It's our ancestral home," I added absentmindedly. "My entire family's lived there for generations. We have a lake house around the area, too."

"Did you ever think about going back?" Romero asked, keeping the conversation light. "They'll do good with your pair of hands."

I think of university and my in-progress masters. Happily pre-med, just like my dad- and just like his dad. I've been getting emails from all of their colleagues, from the old ones at Mystic Falls to my dad's convention buddies from Silicon Valley. Then I think of small town Mystic Falls, tucked away in layers of trees and even more trees. Weeks of therapy and a lake underneath a bridge.

"No," I tell him. "They've got enough hands in Mystic Falls."

[2]

"I don't understand how you can survive out here." Jeremy made a face at the receipt before throwing it to the trash.

It feels so surreal having him in my apartment, eating right in front of me. He flew in from Colorado a few days ago. While I never seemed to have gotten older after moving away from our home town, doe eyes and all, Jeremy just kept growing. He's 25, now— all bulked up with a soft 5'o clock shadow. "How can you pay for this while in minimum wage?"

I snort. If there's anything I miss about Virginia, it was the cost of living. Not that I even understood what that meant at the time. But—

I take a large bite off a bunch of tiny, cute, cubed-shaped strawberries paid by my share of Dad's inheritance money, suddenly grateful for the 2 bedroom apartment and my fully-paid car. "Dad."

Jeremy is surprised. "You're using your stash now?"

"Yeah?" I say the same way one would have said 'duh?'. "What else am I supposed to do with it?"

It's not like it was any problem. We have enough money from our Dad's work for our grandkids and their grandkid's grandkids to live comfortably here in San Diego.

Jeremy says nothing and stands, and I'm thankful that he doesn't comment on my sudden willingness to use my share of the inheritance after weeks of arguments about it. He carefully steps around my hazardous floors, filled with scraps of paper, books, and some of my homework from late nights thinking I'll pick it back up the next day. I already yelled at him after he smudged up my thesis.

He looks at the board I had set up, which somehow looked crazier than my floor (I really need to clean up) and says, "I don't think you should be using his money like this."

I know he doesn't mean the food.

"He'll be financially stable when he gets back." He has another account set up for the both of us linked to Gilded Lines revenue and shares, only to be accessed in the event of his death. He has a main account too, I'm pretty sure. Though I don't really know what banks do in the event one of their account holders die- or be presumed dead, in this case. Our family lawyer, Emily Blake, one of Mom's good friends from their shared time at Whitmore College, handles all of our financials.

Ugh. I need to get into that.

"Elena," Jeremy says, "are you even listening to me?"

I wipe my mouth with a napkin. "Say what again?"

Jeremy turns back to the board in lieu of answering. I've had multiple theories as to what happened to Dad, most of it from heading up to northern California by the weekends when I'm off work. While Dad knew plenty of people that could hold a grudge because of his work, nevermind Big Pharma, none of my theories were feasible. There was no one with an actual motive to kill him.

I look at the very top left of the board, a scrapped piece of paper with a random number written on it. It was the same number that started all this, the one that called Jeremy one night in Colorado, telling him that our Dad had been kidnapped, days before he even went missing. Below it was all the information I found from doxxing him.

Jeremy had shrugged the call off, because why wouldn't he? After Dad published his paper, we've been getting all sorts of threats and red herrings. Dad was fine later that day after the call, we even went out to dinner after I had him read my latest research paper. But that phone call was our only lead. The call was too close to the day he went missing, and the events that led up after it was too accurate, too knowing, for it to be ignored. Of course, SDPD thought differently.

"I think we should stop," he says quietly.

I'm still looking at the phone number, it had "WASHINGTON" pinned right next to it in giant bold red letters. So engrossed that it takes me a second to process what he said.

"What?" I say, "no." It was Jeremy who started this whole spiel, looking for clues, for anything, to find out what really happened to our Dad. And now he wants to back out?

Jeremy took a deep breath. "Elena, we haven't found anything we haven't known before. People are becoming concerned. It's been months."

"I don't care." I walk past him to angrily start decluttering my apartment, suddenly feeling a rush of energy burst through me. "There has to be something else we've missed. Something from San Francisco, hell- something from Mystic Falls."

Unlike my spending habits, my sudden desire to clean didn't go unnoticed by Jeremy. He takes a good look around my apartment, suddenly looking older than he actually is, and says, "Elena, look at this place. Look at you. This isn't healthy."

I glare at him, unwanted memories of our younger selves coming into mind, back when Jeremy still smoked pot and did who knows what. "Not healthy?" I echo back. A scrap of paper gets crumpled on my hand. In the back of my mind I hoped it wasn't homework. "Don't you start," I warn him. "Not when dad's still missing."

I look back to our board in disbelief. He started this, for everyone in the world to see. For some reason I don't voice this out loud, the thought of actually confronting that weeks of searching, scraping for information, led to nothing, made my stomach churn. Like someone took a hot spatula and decided to stir my insides with it like I was 3-in-1 soup.

"Using his money for all this, trips to San Fran to take pictures of dad's old coworkers—"

"You know they know something Jer—"

"Elena," he says desparately. "You can't go on like this. We can't keep relying on Emily to save our PR."

"I don't care about my PR."

"You know that's not true," Jeremy argues, "What about the board? Do you think they'll let someone with a restraining order become a doctor? You're seven months away from graduating."

I shake my head at him, face flushing red. In sadness, grief, anger? I have no idea. But whatever it is it burns in my body, hot and cold all at once. I wanted to scoop it out. I screw my eyes shut. My dad. My dad. The only other person in the world who understood what it's like to drown. Who loved me despite for murdering his wife.

I don't understand why he's changed his mind. I don't understand how he can.

"Don't-" I say, but to my embarassment it comes out as a hazardous cry. Jeremy's firm resolve crumples, breaking at the sight of me crying. It breaks me out of my haze. I get a grip, sniffling hard. "Just— stop."

Jeremy's already halfway across the room, arms open for a hug. I try to struggle, angry and sad and hot from the thick jacket he's wearing in the middle of the fucking summer. But he forces my head down to his shoulder. No, no, no.

At a point, he stopped supporting me and I held unto him as he bared all his weight down. At a point, there was no telling whose snot was on whose shirt. We were one pillar left standing in the ruins of a majestic citadel, fusing the same way a child would force misshapen pieces of the same puzzle together.

Later, more to comfort my brother than myself, I clean the rest of my apartment. Jeremy helps as I bregudgingly take down pictures of Dad's coworkers and of people he knew, William Belknap, Thomas Cox, Amelia Sneider, Lucien Castle— and many others. With each pin getting put down feeling like a betrayal. But as I watch Jeremy's tense body begin to relax, I found myself finding it easier to breathe. How odd, the way I feel so unstable and structured right next to him. Still, I don't shred any files away, keeping them all tucked in a box, hidden away in my passenger bag.

[3]

It's been 10 years since we moved away from Mystic Falls, six since I've last seen it, and the layers of dust in the old Gilbert House is an obvious display of our neglect. There's a giant spider where my favorite pillow used to be, one that I aggressively wack away with a hairbrush as soon as I placed my bag on the floor.

My bag falls down with a soft thud, the sound more resonating than I wanted it to be. It breaks me out of the haze I've been trapped in for the past few months, and my eyes temporarily widen as I remember why I'm actually here.

"Aunt Jenna!" I call out for no reason.

"Yeah?" she calls back out. Jenna rushes up the stairs, strawberry blonde hair tied up to a neat bun. Behind her, I can see her husband- Alaric- hovering in concern. Three-year old Miranda's tucked in his arms, ginger curls flying everywhere as she slept. I quickly scramble for an excuse.

"Is the Grill still open?" I ask.

Jenna's expression relaxes. "Yeah," she says. "Actually Elena, I think I saw Caroline with the sheriff across the street. Maybe we could-"

"That's fine, I'll call her later." I smile tightly. "Thanks, I think I'll just go grab dinner and head to the historical society afterwards."

If Jenna felt bothered by my rebuke, she was careful not to show it.

I don't go to the Grill. Instead, I'm an hour away from my childhood home, tucked inside our family's old lakehouse. Oddly enough, it looks much neater than the Gilbert home— though I suspect Jeremy's been using the place as a little getaway.

I don't know why I lied to Jenna. Or why I've been so distant towards her since we got here. I love her. She came back to Mystic Falls despite working on her degree when Mom passed away, putting her life into a halt just to help out raising Jeremy and I until Dad finally got his head back together. At that point we became closer than 'aunt and niece'. We became sisters in the way that Bonnie, Caroline, and I desparately tried to become.

Seeing her again— stable, happy, and starting her own family, felt bittersweet. I guess it was just too much to look at her right now.

Taking a deep breath, I slowly start to organize the entrance hallway in preparation for the two days Dad's empty coffin would be here before the move to the Gilbert house.

I start by sweeping the floors, ignoring the frozen happy faces of the whole Gilbert family staring straight back at me from their designated spots in the shelves. Looking at it, the shelves look dusty— I grab a towel next and made it shine with whatever wood primer was left in the garage. But now that the shelves are all shiny, I realize that I need to mop the floor.

The cupboard under the stairs, where the mop and his lightning bolt scar resides, is jammed. I sigh, contemplating how badly I wanted to do this.

Another glimpse at the floor tells me I needed to do this badly.

It takes a while for me to pry the door open—

"Fuck."

I pried it too hard, parts of the frame hang lowly to the side—

Wait. No. I didn't break it.

I frown deeply, what the hell is this? The wall right next to Moppy Potter emitted a soft light by its edges. I squint my eyes and take a peak, my curiousity getting miles ahead of me. There was definitely something on the other side, but the gap was too small to truly make sense of what it was. There was something behind the wall. A room? A safe? Another cupboard?

Grabbing my phone, I was seconds away from calling Jeremy to ask about it when I remembered our argument back in California and decided not to. Instead, I inspect the wall further. And there! By the bottom left of the wall, of what was the corner of the small cupboard, was a little latch. Heart suddenly beating fast, I open the damned thing.

I didn't know what I was expecting. But it wasn't this.

Crossbows. Spikes. Stakes. Stakes, for goodness sake, were hung up on the smaller room within the cupboard under the stairs. Along with them were stacks upon stacks of journals, labeled with years starting as early as the 1800s written on the spine of each little notebook.

"What the hell?" I murmur, grabbing the journal at the very top of the stack. Only for my eyes to significantly widen upon reading the front page. Moving my fingers along the fine print, I suddenly found it more difficult to breathe— from excitement, grief, and hope.

There, written in regular print because his cursive has always sucked, was my Dad's hand-writing.

By Grayson Gilbert, 54

Journal #37