Subterra Heart

An Excerpt from the Journal of Nelda Crane

Date: 7/15/982

I should not be coming back here. If anything, I should have simply hidden Dr. Rocha's notes and kept my journal separate from it. I always gravitate back to it when something happens. And something was bound to happen. I know this.

Better yet, I should have destroyed the notes entirely, but I simply cannot do such a thing to Matteo's life work. Perhaps they will be of some use in the future, but for now, it is best to let them be, lest this Fenrir creature turn his wrath on us because of them. But I digress. Now I sit here in the depths of the University Library, having been driven back to my journal and the notes' hiding place. Oh, dear sweet goodness, why must something always happen?

Leonard has been acting oddly as of late – more oddly than usual. I don't see him often anymore, but it seems to have been building over time. He has taken to his trips to Flores Greens to visit his uncle's family with enthusiasm since I recommended it when he was a boy, always approaching these trips with a sort of giddiness and a bright shine in his eyes. He has even continued these visits as a young man. I assumed that he had become close with his uncle's family.

I have only made the trip once, just to see him off when he was fourteen. I have been rather busy since then, you see, and I have never had more than a brief, passing conversation with his uncle. Now, perhaps it was a fit of my own paranoia that drove me, but I finally went back to Flores Greens after Leonard had returned from his most recent visit. I wanted to know what his family knew of him that I did not. Well, imagine my surprise when I found the Rochas in Flores Greens to be quite a bit poorer than they should have been, given the inheritance that Matteo had left his youngest son. I had wondered if they had perhaps spent it all rashly, but Samuel insisted that they had received no such inheritance. And Samuel's son, Connor, seemed rather wary of my godson when I sat down to speak with him. He was rather surly, actually, and simply left with barely a word once I brought up his cousin, but I had gotten a brief sense of nervousness from him. I found the whole interaction rather discouraging.

I was even more discouraged when I returned home, only for Sebastian to admit that he had stolen his younger brother's inheritance to fund the pharmacy in Heart Central. Actually, no, I was not discouraged. I was livid. It had been done with the intent of eventually returning the money to Samuel's family, but that never happened now, did it. I quit on the spot, before even thinking to gather sound evidence against Sebastian.

Stupid, stupid idiot of a woman that I am. Even if I go to the authorities over this, it will simply be my word against his. And this does nothing to address my original question of Leonard's oddness. I have had this cold feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since I encountered his family's apparent wariness towards him. And then, just this morning, I recalled when I had first seen that same bright giddiness in Leonard. It was after he had first read his grandfather's notes some ten years ago, and it has only been growing ever since, with each visit to Flores Greens. I had to confirm that the notes remained untouched, and now that I have, I know not what to do.

Up until now, my life has been dedicated to the Rocha family and their pharmacy. Now that I have cut myself loose, I find myself rather...lost. I am an idiot. A blind idiot of an old woman. What am I to do now?

Nelda Crane, signing out.