Page 54 of The Words We Lost

A text flashes on the screen next to me, and Joel’s name mutes all crunching and commentary from Chip.

Joel

Indy–sorry to keep you waiting. Discovered a blown breaker thirty minutes ago. An electrician is on his way over. Looks like I’ll be stuck here for a while. Can we reschedule for tomorrow afternoon? I’ll bring the memoir.

I think on my reply—starting it twice before landing on something safe.

Ingrid

Tomorrow afternoon is good for me. Hope everything goes well tonight.

Joel

Thx. I’ll call you tomorrow.

“... although, in my opinion, the Green Salsa Verde ranks below Taco. I wonder if anybody has ever taken the time to officially rank Doritos by flavor?”

Hoping Chip’s Dorito flavor ranking question is rhetorical only, I jump in with a topic change. “These pitches look great to me. Feel free to send anything else for me to review before the conference.”

“Wait, conference isn’t until next month. You’ll be back by then, right?”

“Of course I will,” I say with all the confidence I can muster, though we both know my answer hinges on a certain discovery that is still MIA.

“Okay, good. I was hoping I wasn’t missing something.”

Only I know he is missing something, maybe a couple of somethings, and I don’t want to get off the phone without clearing them up. “I don’t hate it here, Chip. It’s not a tropical vacation or anything, but it’s not all bad.” I think of my time at Wendy’s and then with Allie today. I smile as I recall Rontu’s wagging tail and my sunrise walks on the beach. And then I picture Joel at the helm of a boatlast night as he took my hand and shared a kindness with me I won’t soon forget and certainly hadn’t deserved.

“Oh ... well, that’s good. Does that mean things are less complicated than you thought?”

“Hardly.” I breathe through my nose and feel a tingling in my lips to tell him what I’ve been holding back since the day after I arrived. “If anything, they’re even more complicated now.”

I think of the critical findings Allie helped me discover today, the ones I haven’t even had the chance to tell Joel about yet. A mix of elation and anticipation buzzes in my chest. I click out of my email browser and into the online spreadsheet we’re using to track every post that mentions a location Cece visited or was tagged in during the last year of her life. We tracked patterns, activities, hashtags, fan visits, and most importantly, any clue involvingThe Fate of Kingand her notebooks. Another confirmation: It’s definitely more than one notebook, like I suspected. One wouldn’t be enough. She’d have needed multiple. No wonder Wendy couldn’t pinpoint an exact description. We tracked the posts from December to early August—the last month Cece was online. We spotted four unique composition notebooks in total—similar to the ones she used in high school—in yellow, blue, red, and black.

“This can’t go beyond you and me, Chip, but there is something I haven’t told you yet.”

All sound in the background stills, and a strange blend of foreboding and excitement brews inside me as his silence encourages me to continue.

“The package I picked up from the attorney’s office last Friday— it wasn’tThe Fate of Kings.”

“Y-e-a-h.” The word is drawn-out, confused. “You told me that already, remember?”

“Yes, but what I didn’t tell you then was that the package did actually contain a manuscript. One Cece wrote for her cousin Joel and me. It’s a retelling of our childhood friendships, of our lives together in Port Townsend. We’ve been reading it like she askedus to and...” The hair on the back of my neck rises as I recall my conversation with Wendy. “And despite it not being the manuscript I wanted, I can’t help but think there’s a bigger purpose for why she gave it to us, you know?”

Chip’s breathy swear is so muted I barely register it. “So you’re telling me that Cece wrote a manuscript you had no idea she was writing?”

“Yes.”

“And then she left it to you?”

“And to Joel, yes.”

Another curse. “Sorry, that’s justa lotto process.”

“Which is why I needed some time before I said anything to you about it.”

“Understandable.” A long, pensive silence stretches between us before Chip speaks again, his tone far more serious than it had been a moment ago. “Ingrid? You haven’t told anyone else about this right?”

“Just you. Well, and Allie.”

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