Page 51 of The Words We Lost

I suck in a sharp breath as realization dawns.

His smile is half-mast as he answers my unasked question. “Your father apprenticed me for my captain’s license. Eighty hours in total. We started the summer of your sophomore year of college.”

I think back to our constant texts and video calls during that season and shake my head. “But how is that possible? How didn’t I know?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise, for when you came home from school.”

My throat grows uncomfortably tight as his meaning solidifies into a timeline of events I can’t possibly forget, starting with a phone call about my missing father, and then to a confession, and then to a funeral, and then finally to a breakup.

Joel sobers. “He talked about you a lot. Your mother, too, but mostly you. He told me so many stories about when you were young—how you took your first steps on a barge off the coast of Oregon, how you told him crabs would be nicer if only their claws weren’t so heavy, how you never went to sleep without a book tuckedunder your pillow, how he wished he could go back in time and change so many things about—”

“Joel.” His name is a shaky whisper on my breath.

With one hand still guiding the helm, he uses his other to capture mine. “He loved you, Indy. I know his death is complicated, and I know I’m the last person you want to hear this from, but you need to hear it. Even more than I need to say it to you.” He swallows. “I spent eighty-plus hours with your father alone on a fishing boat and never once did he fail to ask me the same two questions each time we docked in the marina.” The pinch in his voice causes my throat to burn. “The first was always, ‘She’s happy at school, isn’t she?’”

My chin trembles slightly as the pain in his gaze shifts to our joined hands.

“The second was, ‘You’ll keep her that way when she comes home, won’t you?’”

I cut my misty gaze to the sea, trying to reconcile the image of my burly, overconfident father asking Joel about my happiness. It certainly wasn’t my happiness he’d been thinking of that stormy night when he stole the Campbell’s fishing boat, never to return.

It’s difficult to swallow against the wind and even more so against the throbbing in my chest, but as soon as I slip my hand from his, my composure returns, and I find my voice. “I’m sorry, it wasn’t his place to ask that of you.”

“I’m just sorry my answer couldn’t be yes.”

17

My original plan for Operation Find Cece’s Missing Notebooks was to keep a structured inventory of each area, closet, and bookshelf I searched inside the cottage. But that was all before I’d held Joel’s hand on a boat during sunset as he spoke in hushed tones about my father.

Now there’s not a single organized thought to be found in my head.

Hundreds of books have been pulled off the shelves in Cece’s living room, and it’s fairly obvious that my only goal is to leave no possibility unturned. Cece was forever stuffing bank receipts, pictures, cards, and important mementos inside and behind the books she loved most. It was her own version of an under-the-mattress savings account.

Unfortunately, Cece was always far better at hiding treasure than she was at finding it. Probably why she was so phenomenal at drawing out her pirate maps as well as the scavenger hunts she’d leave for Joel and me to find at random. But Cece herself once lost a two-hundred-dollar cash tip in what she swore was her leather-bound edition ofPride and Prejudice. We found it a year later tucked inside her favorite thriller novel.For all I know, her giant hardback ofWar and Peacemight actually be a hollowed front, hiding all six hundred handwritten pages ofThe Fate of Kingsinside it.

All I know for sure is that it’s been five days and I’ve discovered nothing of significance. SaBrina will likely be posting a job opening for the position I currently hold very soon unless I can provide her with a promising lead, or better yet, a first draft. Whatever the case, I need to pick up the pace. As good as last night was, I’m not a first mate playing house with a part-time captain. I’m an editor, one whose future is not here.

Due to Joel’s long hours at sea yesterday, he’d texted to say he’d be landlocked at the hotel today and most of tomorrow, too—a fact that should make me grateful for the extra hunting time. But of all the confusing and downright contradicting feelings splashing around inside me,gratefuldoesn’t even make the top five.

Sometime in the late afternoon, I sit back on my haunches and jam my palms into my eye sockets. The chaos I’ve created in this room is abysmal, and I don’t feel a single percent closer to finding the notebooks or going home. There has to be an easier way of going about this, but how does one search for something they have so little information about?

My legs have fallen asleep from sitting in the same position for too long, and I grab ahold of the back of the sofa to haul myself up to standing. I’m too young to be making the kinds of noises that escape me, and yet, here we are: twenty-seven going on seventy-seven. On my way up, my hip nudges one of the book piles a tad too hard, causing a Jenga-style topple. A miniature-sized Polaroid skitters out from the hardback copy ofBreaking Dawnand spins in place on the floorboards.

I recognize the snapshot immediately. It’s from the night Joel read to us yesterday morning—the annual staff party at the Campbells. Only this picture had been taken at the end of the night, when all of us looked a bit worse for wear. Thanks to Cece’s obsession with hairspray, my beach waves looked like a solid piece of petrified wood. My gaze lingers on Joel’s dashing, youthful face, and I think again of the claim Cece made about Joel that night outside Wendy’s house, of what she saw in the shadows before he turned away.

I try and convince myself that none of it matters now. How could it? I heard what Joel said to Wayne yesterday, how the struggles he’d faced after I left town had taken him years to resolve. But even still, he’d resolved them.

If only I could be so lucky.

I scan our three smiling faces once more, shifting my focus to land on Cece’s goofy, lopsided grin. Grief sweeps low in my belly. We were only kids back then. None of us would have guessed what only a few short years would bring.

The sound of a key turning in the lock jolts me from the question, and I shove the photo into the back pocket of my high-waisted daisy shorts. Cece would have approved this Walmart purchase.

“Ingrid? You here?” Allie’s voice sails through the kitchen. “It’s kind of hard to tell when there’s nothing parked in the driveway.”

“Hey, I’m in here, Allie,” I call from the rubble. “Come on in.”

I can hear her kicking off her shoes before she makes her way through the kitchen and dining room. She slams to a stop the instant she reaches the living room.

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