Underlying Estrangement

Synopsis

The Unsent Moonlight On the rooftop of Loneville Hospital, the wind at three in the morning was biting cold. Vernon Janke leaned against the railing with an unlit cigarette between his fingers. His phone screen flickered on and off repeatedly. In his photo album were shots of Yulianna Quesnel's pale face in her hospital bed, snapshots of them sketching by the sea back in college, and all the memories of youth he had hoarded for eight years. He started drafting a post, picking a photo of the moon outside Yulianna's hospital window. He kept tweaking the caption until he finally settled on a single line: [Being by your side feels just like old times.] He stared at the screen for a full ten minutes with his finger hovering over the "Post" button. In the end, he withdrew it and set the post to "Visible only to me." He had forgotten that Yvette Waldner was still lying on the living room couch, waiting for him to come home. The girl who had loved him for four years and regarded him as her whole world was clutching his work phone at that very moment. She was going to close the work calendar he had forgotten to close, only to stumble upon those words and that moon that didn't have anything to do with her. Yvette's hand froze in midair. Four years of love were shattered into pieces in that instant.