Page 52 of The Words We Lost

“Whoa.” Her eyes round at the sight of the floor. “Is this a crime scene? Have the police dusted for fingerprints yet?”

“Afraid they’d only find mine if they did. I’ve been working on a... project.”

Allie says nothing as she circles the mess and assesses the “project” that looks more like the aftermath of an earthquake.

“Ya know, I’m pretty good at organizing if you need some help.”

The casual way she suggests this, as if seeing a hundred-plus books in random stacks—one that’s recently been toppled—is just a normal part of her day, makes me laugh.

“Don’t you have other jobs to get to today?”

“They’re almost done. Besides, dusting this bookshelf is technically one of my weekly tasks at the cottage anyway.”

“I think this qualifies as more than dusting.” I laugh again and move to the end of the shelf and riffle through the last ten books.

“How were you hoping to organize these?” She maneuvers theottoman in front of the bookshelves, and I’m instantly envious of her genius. There will be no needle pricks of death for her long legs. “We could sort by book size, color, or genre? Or of course the library standard of alphabetizing by the author’s last name?” She digs into her pocket. “Ooh, there’s actually some book reviewers I follow whose shelves look like works of art—here, let me show you.”

In less than six seconds, she’s swiped and tapped and flipped her phone around to show me a bookshelf in the color scheme of a rainbow, and she’s right—it looks like a mural I’d see on the side of a used bookstore in my city. She continues to tap on new images via hashtags, and I’m in absolute awe at how quickly she’s finding these things and how old I feel that I know so little of this world. And it’s then my brain does some clicking and swiping of its own as I recall that Miss Allie Spencer here is not only a loyal employee to the Campbells but an admin for Cecelia J. Campbell’s Memorial Page. As well as countless other such pages. I stare at the books on the floor again and then back at Allie on her phone. Perhaps the easier approach to my book hunting is sitting right in front of me.

“Allie?”

She types in a new hashtag and shows me a pic of a mountain pattern and sky pattern and then one more of a tree-like shelf made entirely of books. “Cool, huh?”

“Yeah, super cool.” Gingerly, I sit on a stack of hardback books across from her so we’re nearly eye to eye.

She looks up from her phone and seems to register something in my eyes. “What? Did you think of a pattern you want to try? There’s lots of color in these stacks so there are tons of options.”

I shake my head. “I don’t have a pattern in mind, but I do have something else I’d like to ask you about.”

She leans in, elbows on her knees. “Okay, shoot.”

“Let’s say I wanted to search for something specific, across every social media platform out there—a specific type of picture, with a specific person in it, during a specific time period. Would that be possible?”

She nods slowly, as if still waiting for me to get to the hard part. Only for me, that is the hard part. I don’t have the first clue about filtering details through social media posts. “Sure. So if I heard you right, you’re wanting to find something ... specific?” She smiles.

I pick up the nearest book, which just so happens to be a thriller spy novel from the early 2000s I never read. “What would you think about doing some online investigative work for me?”

Her entire face cracks wide open. “I’d say absolutely. Just tell me what you need.”

I glance around the house. “How often are you supposed to tidy up this place?”

“Twice a week, at about an hour each time. It’s mostly light cleaning and airing out the rooms and stuff.”

“What would you say if I offered to do your two hours of cleaning inside the cottage in exchange for you doing two hours of online detective work for me—plus, I’d pay you an hourly wage for whatever time you can give me above and beyond that.”

Her eyebrows jump to her hairline. “You want topay meto search some stuff on social media for you?”

“Yes.” I pause, debating how much I should tell her about the search itself. “It’s important work—confidential, even. But if you can help me find what I’m looking for, it would mean a great deal to a lot of people. Myself included.”

She sits back and sucks her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ll do it,” she says, “but I don’t want you to pay me.” A full three seconds go by before her heel jitters on the floorboards. “I’m wondering if we might work out a different kind of trade instead? It’s totally okay if not, though. I don’t really know how this kind of thing works. It’s part of why Cece agreed to come to my writing club at school—she was going to talk to us about the process of publication and such.” She shakes her head, as if realizing I’m not tracking with her. “I know you’re like one of the best editors in the entire world, and I have no business asking this of you, but—”

I reach my hand out and place it on her knee, finally understandingwhere this is going. “Allie, do you have something you’d like me to read?”

Her nod is reluctant. “It might be really awful though.”

I smile and think back to how many times Cece started off her chapter readings to me by saying just that. “Why don’t you tell me a little about it—it’s fiction, I presume?”

She nods and exhales a deep breath, and then launches into a fantasy premise about fairies and trolls and humans all coexisting inside a story world that wedges itself deep into the folds of my heart. Her passionate voice creates images that rise to life and waltz across my mind’s eye. I’m not prepared for the movie reel she awakens from inside the black cave of my hibernating imagination. Goosebumps trail my arms and neck as she describes an unjust moral system which begs for mercy. Her voice quakes with the heartbeat of characters who revive an instinct inside me I believed dead until now.

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