Page 44 of The Words We Lost

The doorbell rang, and Cece could hear her mom pad across the living room to answer it. She tried to keep her face neutral.

Ingrid crinkled her brows. “Why are you making that face?”

“What face?”

“The face you make whenever you’re trying to hide something from Joel.”

Cece was still searching through a mental database of lame excuses when Wendy called for them.

“What did you do?” Ingrid hissed right before Cece shoved her frienddown the four-step hallway and into the living room...where Captain Hal stood waiting with a single red rose.

“Dad?” Ingrid gasped, and Cece couldn’t help but gasp right along with her.

Never once in the last two years had she seen Captain Hal without his red stocking cap on. She would have believed he slept in the thing—one of his many fisherman superstitions or something. But here he was, his hair combed and gelled to the side and his rust-colored beard trimmed and tamed into something other than a wiry, windblown mess. His yellow rain slicker had been swapped for a gray sports coat that looked a size too small and resembled one a certain uncle of hers had donned a time or two around the hotel. Even still, Hal was a rugged kind of handsome when he wasn’t gutting a fish or wearing a Viking helmet. It was really too bad Ingrid had put a stop to Cece’s matchmaking plans between their parents a year ago. Captain Hal was a catch.

“Elskede,” Hal whispered to his daughter as if nobody else was in the room. “You ... you look like your mother. Beautiful.”

Ingrid moved toward him. “You said you didn’t want to come tonight.”

He winked. “I was hoping to surprise you.”

“You did,” Ingrid all but giggled. “You definitely did.”

Hal glanced above his daughter’s head and tipped his chin to Cece. “You can credit Curly for that. It was her idea.”

Ingrid spun around, and it was only then that Cece saw the tears gleaming in her best friend’s eyes. Happy tears, the best kind. Ingrid reached for Cece and pulled her in for a tight embrace. “You’re the best.”

“Nah. But I might be pretty close.” Cece pulled back. “And look—now you don’t have to sit alone. All problems solved.”

Ingrid smiled as she stepped onto the porch with her father, taking his arm to steady the wobble in her high-heeled stride as they strolled the short path to her uncle’s front door. Cece could feel her mom’s unwavering gaze on her back as she waved them off to the pre-dinner greeting and photo ops, assuring Ingrid she’d be over as soon as she pinned her hair up and found her work apron.

The instant she closed the front door, her mother opened her arms upwide in invitation, and unlike the many times Cece had pushed her mother away during the angry years of her early teens, this time she collapsed into them. And unlike her friend, the tears she cried onto her mom’s blouse were not of the happy variety.

“My sweet girl.” Her mom smoothed her hair and held her close, releasing a deep sigh. “Oh, how I wish I could take away the pain he’s caused you. I’m so sorry.”

The condolence made her stomach clench. It had been years since her mom had mentionedhim. But that was the thing about loss, even when you didn’t make room for it, it showed up anyway, usually unannounced.

“Ihatehim for leaving us,” Cece wept. “Don’t you?”

Her mom loosened her arms and took hold of Cece’s chin in her hands. “No, I don’t.”

“How?” she asked, bewildered. “He threw us away like trash, Mom. It’s like neither of us ever meant anything to him at all.”

When Cece looked up at her, the creases around her mother’s eyes deepened, and for a moment, she wondered if she’d gone too far. “I promised God long ago that I would look for the good in every season of life He gives me, even the hard ones. And right now, I’m looking straight into the eyes of the good that came from the season I shared with your father.” She pressed a kiss to Cece’s forehead. “If you waste your heart on hate, you’ll miss the good life has to give. Don’t miss it, sweet girl.”

Cece’s mother had encouraged her to take a few extra minutes to freshen up before she arrived at the staff dinner. Each year there was a skeleton crew of employees who volunteered to stay behind and manage the hotel while everyone else came to the Campbells’ Queen Anne mansion. Even though it was up to the members of the Campbell family to serve all thirty of this year’s selected staff, it was a local Italian cuisine restaurant that catered the appetizers, salad, soup, fettuccini, and award-winning tiramisu. Likely, they were still enjoying the course of bread and caprese set on the tables.

Though there was a definite agenda to the special evening her aunt anduncle planned each spring, neither of them was a fan of rushing through any one course. There was a purpose for each, and by the sounds of it, the purpose of the first course—fellowship—was well underway.

After washing up in the kitchen, Cece checked in with her mom and aunt and quickly followed their lead, balancing salad plates along her forearm to serve to their guests. If there was one thing she knew well, it was how to waitress like a pro. Seconds before she slipped into her aunt’s transformed Victorian dining room, she powered her smile to the highest wattage.

She’d spent most of the day setting up these dining tables with her family members, adding lights and centerpieces, and as her uncle said, “Wendy-fying” the place. Her mom definitely had an artist’s eye. Maybe one day she’d put it to real use and create the kind of art Cece was certain stirred in her soul.

Greeting each of her hotel colleagues by name, Cece served the salad course, making sure to take inventory of who was seated where and which plus-one they’d invited for the evening. Ingrid and Hal’s table was closest to the kitchen door, and by the looks of it, she hadn’t been wrong about Joel. He was currently serving their table, and even while he poured the ice water, his gaze rarely strayed from Ingrid.

When it was time to begin bussing the empty plates, he nodded at Cece from across the room and then halted. He squinted at her as if trying to zoom in on her face.No, thank you. Cece made a quick diversion by offering to refill a few extra glasses of water, placing her back to him. She had no desire to rehash her little breakdown from earlier. It was over; she was fine now. Soon her uncle’s talk would be the focal point of the evening, and then the real fun and games would begin after dinner.

When she’d suggested to Hal that he be Ingrid’s plus-one tonight, she made sure to tell him all about the board games that came as soon as dessert finished and how there were prizes for the champions and how the evening’s music selections were drawn out of a bowl. She knew Hal liked cards; she’d seen him do a few tricks on the cruiser, and once he’d even told her about the time he’d nearly won a sailboat in a poker game a few towns over. Regardless of her uncle’s feelings about gambling, she’d been so impressed!

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