Page 41 of The Words We Lost

A foreign feeling begins to build inside me. It’s different than love, but it spreads a similar weightless warmth throughout my ribs and torso.Hope,I think. This is hope.

“I’ll try,” I manage to whisper.

“Good.” Wendy blots her cheeks and pushes out her chair. “Now, how do you feel about sorting and polishing a fresh bucket of ocean tears with me while we listen to some Carole King? I’ll clear our plates if you do the heavy lifting and maneuver that bucket out there closer to the table. I’ve developed a bit of a system over the last couple of months.” She stands and then stops abruptly, turning to me as if she’s just recalled something important. “Unless you’re needing to return Joel’s car back to him tonight? I certainly don’t want to hinder any plans the two of you may have made together.” She makes no attempt to hide the interest in her voice.

“No plans,” I try to answer as nonchalantly as possible. “He’s picking the car up from me in the morning.”

The creases around her eyes soften like her tone. “Talk about a person who’s worn guilt like a second skin...”

Of all the topics we’ve discussed this evening, this is the only one I’d like to avoid completely, but Wendy’s gaze has turned maternal again and I know my wish is in vain.

“I know why you felt you needed to leave Port Townsend, Ingrid. The same way I know why you felt you couldn’t come back. But I’m living proof that life can go on, even when everything in your world seems to be pointing to the contrary. I’m also proof that moving forward doesn’t have to mean leaving everything I loved behind. I pray you both can find the freedom you’re looking for.”

“Joel and I are completely different people than we used to be,” I appeal without the usual defense in my tone. “Too much has changed.”

“Your worlds might be different, but your hearts have always matched. They still do.”

Wendy pats me on the shoulder and then moves to collect a stack of plates as if to tell me she’s finished with this topic for now and immediately, the tension in my shoulders eases. Over the next few hours we sort through a mountain of red, yellow, green, and blue sea glass. But all the while her words circle my heart like a permanent marker, and I can’t stop picturing the way Joel stared at me in the library earlier today. If I’m honest with myself, it’s the same way he’s been staring at me since I arrived.

“Oh, goodness, Ingrid,” Wendy blurts as she checks her watch. “I’ve kept you so late.” She yawns as I help her shut down her house for the night. “It’s easy to lose track of time doing this, isn’t it? I just love watching the colors come to life underwater.”

“I enjoyed every minute,” I say. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that accomplished.”

Back in the living room, I initiate a hug that feels like the most natural comfort in the world and promise Wendy I won’t be a stranger in the time I have left here.

I pass by the bookshelves in her living room on the way to herfront door and notice the recliner Cece must have sat in during her hardest days and nights. As if it’s beckoning me to come closer, I move toward it and skim my fingers along its broad leather back, trying to picture her during our text exchanges when I’d believed she was in her office or out on the beach or sitting on the hotel dock. I work to reframe the memories to this chair in her mother’s living room. Try to picture her here writing ... and then my eyes snap open wide. I stare down at the chair again and then up at Wendy.

Adrenaline whooshes through my veins. “Wendy? You said Cece wrote here, even after she’d moved into your house?”

“Yes, she did.”

“But the laptop screen was too triggering for her migraines—correct?”

“That’s right. She stopped using it months before she moved in, but I almost never saw her without one of her notebooks. Like the kind she used in high school. Why?”

Awakening blooms in the center of my chest. “Do you happen to knowwhatshe might have been writing in those notebooks?”

Wendy’s eyes round as if she’s only just now realizing the gravity of her answer. A hand flutters to her mouth. “Oh, Ingrid. I’m so sorry, I never once thought about that until right now—”

But I don’t allow her to finish that statement before I’ve wrapped my arms around her. “It’s okay, it’s okay. No guilt, remember? You had way more important things going on than keeping track of a book.” Her hold on me tightens and out of my mouth comes a sentence that implies so much more than I have capacity to process. “Maybe it was supposed to happen this way. Maybe I wasn’t meant to know what I was looking for until now.”

It’s late when I arrive back to the cottage, still in a bit of a daze over my discovery tonight. Despite how I tried to assure Wendy that her lack of mentioning the notebooks was understandable given allshe’d gone through this last year, I can’t help but feel like an idiot for not having thought of it as an option myself.

I carry my phone with me like a security blanket as I enter Cece’s bedroom and flick on the bedside lamp. I perch on the edge of the mattress and try to imagine my friend staying up late and writing the last of her best-selling series in a set of composition notebooks she probably picked up from the corner market, in the lone aisle dedicated to office supplies. The same way she did when we were girls.

I kick off my shoes and slip my cold feet under the fluffy down comforter. Tomorrow morning I’d start my treasure hunt for the notebooks, but in the meantime, there’s another story I’m feeling more and more attached to continuing. Or maybe it’s my reading companion I’m feeling more and more attached to.

I squash the thought before it has a chance to multiply and tap on my darkened phone screen, hovering a finger over Joel’s contact and debating between a call or a text. My cowardice wins out.

Ingrid

What time were you wanting to pick up the car in the morning?

His reply is immediate.

Joel

Depends on what time you usually drink your coffee. I’ve always been a fan of Cece’s fancy espresso machine.

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