The Inherited Sentence

The midday sun scorched the ancient stones of Dubrovnik's Old Town as Eva Perković dragged her suitcase down a narrow alleyway off Stradun. Her sandals slapped against uneven flagstones, her shoulder ached from her laptop bag, and sweat rolled freely down her back.

"This is it," she muttered to herself, stopping in front of a modest stone building with wooden shutters painted sea blue.

It had taken her years — and the complete meltdown of her life — to get here.

Once a rising star in the Croatian literary world, Eva had published a debut novel that won awards, gave readings in Zagreb and Split, and even saw her face printed on bookstore banners. But that was seven years ago.

Since then, silence. Blank pages. Half-finished manuscripts. Broken relationships. Depression. Mounting bills.

Until two weeks ago, she received an email from her late grandfather's lawyer. She had inherited his apartment in Dubrovnik. Eva had barely known him — her mother rarely spoke of him — but with her Zagreb flat repossessed and no other options, she packed what little she had and came south.

She stepped inside the apartment, the air cool and slightly musty. It was like stepping into another time. Dust danced in sunbeams, slicing through shutter cracks. Books lined every wall. A thick, old wooden desk stood at the far end of the room, facing a window that offered a sliver of the Adriatic between rooftops.

She dropped her bags and approached the desk. Something tugged at her memory — a faint smell of cedar and ink.

There, on the desktop, sat a thick leather-bound notebook. A black fountain pen rested on top of it.

The notebook was old but unused. Heavy creamy paper. No branding. No price tag. The first page bore a small inscription, handwritten in neat cursive:

"To rewrite the world, write it first in truth. But beware: the truth will write you back."

Eva scoffed. "Dramatic."

Still, she took the pen in hand. The weight of it felt oddly satisfying. The nib glided across the page like silk.

She began with a simple scene, just to warm up:

"A cool breeze blew in from the sea, brushing away the heat that clung to the stone walls of the apartment. Eva felt her skin prickle as relief washed over her."

The moment she finished the sentence, a sudden gust of wind blew in through the window, rattling the shutters. The temperature dropped noticeably.

Eva blinked.

She stood up, walked to the window, and looked out. The palm trees across the street swayed lightly. Everything else was calm.

She glanced back at the notebook.

Over the next few days, Eva tested the notebook.

She started small: writing that a neighbour's cat would appear on her windowsill. Minutes later, a tabby cat meowed outside her window.

She wrote that a stranger would drop a coffee cup on the street outside her building. The next morning, sipping her own kava from a bar across the alley, she watched a young tourist trip and spill his takeaway espresso.

It was real.

She controlled reality — but only what she wrote in that notebook came to life. And only when written with clarity, confidence, and a certain rhythm of language. Vague ideas fizzled. Hesitations failed.

She tried writing that her bank account was complete.

Nothing happened.

Then she realised the pattern: she couldn't write against her known reality. She couldn't lie. She could only nudge the world forward. The notebook wasn't for fantasy — it was for rewriting truth.

And truth, as she soon discovered, had a price.

It was during a walk along the Dubrovnik city walls that Eva decided to write again — really write. Not just tests or scenes. A novel. But this time, it would matter.

She returned to the apartment, opened the notebook, and began her new book. She called it "The Woman Who Waited." In it, she wrote about a fictionalised version of herself: a woman who had once been famous, had lost everything, and came to Dubrovnik to write again.

She gave this character a chance encounter — with a man named Luka, a Croatian-American photographer who'd grown disenchanted with Los Angeles and returned to his roots. In Eva's story, Luka was kind, quiet, and a little broken, like her.

She wrote a long chapter about their first meeting on Banje Beach. As she finished the final sentence — "He looked at her with recognition, not of her face, but of her silence" — a knock came at the door.

Eva's hands trembled as she opened it.

A man stood there with a camera hanging from his neck.

"Sorry," he said, "I'm new to the building. I just moved into the flat below and saw your light on. Do you know where the garbage bins are around here?"

His accent was odd. American, maybe. His hair was sun-bleached, his eyes a familiar shade of grey.

"Luka?" Eva blurted.

He frowned. "Uh… yeah. How did you know?"

For a while, it was bliss. Luka was everything she had written. Curious, artistic, careful. He invited her to join him for coffee, then for walks, and eventually for long nights on the balcony, sharing wine and stories.

Eva no longer wrote the story of The Woman Who Waited. It was writing itself — through her.

But cracks began to show.

One night, after they made love, Luka told her a story from his childhood — one she had written earlier that week. Word for word.

She tried not to panic.

She began writing less about him, focusing instead on herself — giving her character more confidence and more clarity. She wrote that Eva (yes, her own name now) would finally be invited to speak at a literary conference again, even if just as a panellist. Two days later, she received an email from the University of Split.

But then, the dreams started.

She dreamed of Luka watching her from the doorway of her apartment, face blank. In one dream, he opened her notebook and crossed out an entire page. In another, she watched him disintegrate into ash as she read aloud from her draft.

She began to realise — that the more she wrote about Luka, the less real he became.

Or worse: the more she wrote him, the less real she became.

She decided to stop writing, just for a while.

She told Luka she was taking a break from the novel. He smiled and nodded. But the next morning, she woke up to find a fresh page filled in her handwriting.

It was a scene she hadn't written — or so she thought.

In it, Luka takes her hand and tells her, "You don't need to stop. You need to finish me."

Eva stared at the page for a long time. Then she ripped it out, crumpled it, and threw it into the sea.

But the next day, Luka changed. He became quieter. More distant. His touch colder.

Eva opened the notebook.

There were more pages written — scenes of her walking through Dubrovnik in the rain, of her dreaming of the sea swallowing her whole. Scenes of her sitting at the desk, writing Luka back into existence.

She did not write them.

Someone — or something — was using the notebook.

Was it him? Was it… her?

She searched the apartment. Looked for cameras, for a second notebook, for any sign she was being watched or manipulated.

Nothing.

Then she did the only thing she could think of.

She wrote the truth.

"Eva sat at the desk in her grandfather's apartment and wrote the one sentence she had never dared to write: I don't know what's real anymore."

The moment the ink dried, a deep creak groaned through the apartment. The walls seemed to shudder. The light dimmed. A book fell from the shelf: A Study in Balkan Folklore.

Eva picked it up and opened it.

There, between pages, was a folded letter. Dated 1972. From her grandfather.

"To whoever finds this:

The notebook is not a tool. It is a mirror. It will give you what you most desire — and it will cost you what you least expect.

Do not write to control. Write to understand. Or else, the story will write you in — and leave you there."

She stayed awake all night.

She realised that every time she wrote Luka, she erased some part of herself — her doubts, her complexities, her fears. The more perfect he became, the more hollow she became.

She opened the notebook one final time.

This time, she wrote not a story — but a confession.

"I wrote you into being because I didn't know how to be alone. But that loneliness was mine, and it was real. You were never meant to carry it.

Luka, I release you. You were a beautiful lie. But I choose the truth."

She closed the notebook.

When she turned, Luka was standing by the window.

He smiled — not with malice, not with sadness, but with understanding.

"I always wondered if you'd do that," he said.

Then he faded like fog in the morning sun.

Eva stayed in Dubrovnik. She wrote a memoir titled "The Woman Who Waited." It became a bestseller — not because of magic, but because of its raw honesty.

She left the notebook in the library of her grandfather's apartment, which is now a literary residence donated to the city. She glued the first page shut.

Sometimes, at night, she still dreamed of Luka. But in her dreams, they sat side by side, not speaking. Just being.

She no longer needed to write the truth into the world.

Because now, at last, she was living it.