Page 62 of The Words We Lost

Disbelief settled over Joel’s face. “There’s a clear no-drinking policy for any active crew member aboard that vessel. Your dad signed the contract. He knows the rules.” He hesitated, as if waiting for her to acknowledge what he’d just said. But she only crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s been in charge of a half-million-dollar fishing charter, Ingrid, not to mention all the lives he’s been putting at risk each week, includingyours.”

“Not everything is so black and white in this world, Joel.”

“But there is plenty that is.” He stared at her a long moment beforelowering his voice. “He lied on his resume. I’m not sure if you know this, but ... he has a felony. He served time in his early twenties for smuggling and possession before you were born.”

There was not an ounce of surprise on her face. “Do you really think someone like your father would have hired him if hehadn’tlied on his resume? Do you think your father would have focused on the three decades of solid sailing experience my dad has under his belt—which more than qualified him for the position, I might add—if he’d known about the priors? No. He would have taken one look at the ugly truth of his past and dismissed him like everybody else always has.” She shook her head. “My dad’s not the same guy he was back then.”

Joel edged toward her cautiously. “Is he the kind of guy who would hit you? Because he certainly didn’t seem to be in control of himself in there.”

“What?No.”

“Ingrid,” Joel pressed. “I need you to tell me the truth. If he’s ever laid a hand on you then—”

“Never one time!” She snapped her neck around so quickly her damp hair stuck to her shoulder. “He’d hurt himself long before he’d ever hurt me in that way.” The pronouncement bellowed through the thick forest and Cece had to swallow back a sob of relief, but Ingrid wasn’t finished yet. “You don’t know him the way I do. He’s not dangerous. Bullheaded and impulsive, yes—butnotdangerous.”

“And all this time, you’ve just been out here with him,handlingthings on your own.”

“What other choice do I have? My mom isn’t here anymore. It’s just me. Now you see why I can’t ever leave him—not even to go away to college. He needs me too much.”

The wind gusted hard and Cece trembled in the shadows, wrapping her arms around her middle.

“So he’s never been ... sober?”

“Not since before Mom died.”

Cece could tell Ingrid was trying to be nonchalant, but she was shaking so violently now that her words came out in a choppy, breathy staccato.

Joel rubbed at his temples before pointing to the boat. “Ingrid, this isn’t okay. What I saw in there tonight—”

“What yousawin there tonight is a man who feels like a failure. Who couldn’t bear to tell the only living family member he has left that he messed up again, so instead he drank a fifth of rum and started cleaning out the cupboards, looking for a way to make sense of something. To fix something he could control. What yousawis a father who is too ashamed to ask his daughter to leave the only town she’s ever loved because he doesn’t know another way around it.” Her lips quivered. “And neither do I.” She stared at the ground. “My life isn’t like yours and Cece’s. I don’t have parents who go to church on Sunday and pray before meals and buy matching sheet sets for their guest rooms. But I do have my dad. And as rough around the edges as he is at times, he’s mine.” She began to cry openly. “He’s all I have.”

Joel didn’t wait for permission before he crushed Ingrid to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. She sagged against him without a fight. He held her close and pressed his lips to her temple. “You have me, too, Indy. I promise, you willalwayshave me.”

Slipping off her mother’s red raincoat, Cece moved toward them, wrapping her jacket around her friend’s soaked shoulders like a cape as Joel opened his arms to allow her into the sacred space. She looped her arms around Ingrid’s waist and hoped she was giving as much warmth as she was taking.

“You’re ours for keeps,” Cece whispered into the huddle. “We’ll never let you go.”

20

I’m numb as Joel pins the remaining memoir pages under his backpack and stands without speaking a word. He exits the lantern room through the steel gallery door and walks several paces onto the deck to my right. But seeing as the lantern room is one large circular window without obstruction, I can see him as plainly as if he was standing directly in front of me. He bends at his waist and rests his forearms on the railing as if something in that great beyond holds the power to heal the gaping hole this last chapter ripped open in our chests.

I’ve tried to forget that night so many, many times. Tried to lock away the multitude of feelings surrounding it, to no avail. I’m convinced milestone memories are the hardest to erase because they wedge themselves deepest into the soul.

Joel and Cece not only uncovered a lifetime of secrets that rainy fall evening, but their insistence on spending the next several hours cleaning up the mess my father had made inside that weary old tugboat left a permanent mark on me. I’d been terrified for them to see the world I really lived in, one so unlike theirs. Yet when they had, they hadn’t abandoned me to it ... they joined me in it.

Within a few days’ time, Stephen had arranged a follow-up meeting with my father and the president of a faith-based rehab facility in Seattle, offering him something nobody had before: the chanceto truly start over fresh. It was his choice. If he said yes, his chartering contract with the Campbells would be waiting for him upon his return. And if he said no, there would be no future for us in Port Townsend.

I had just arrived at the hotel for the start of my lunch shift that Tuesday morning to find my father waiting for me, his favorite crimson sea cap folded in his meaty hands. I tried to dissuade him from standing in the middle of the main dining room, knowing that at any moment the hotel’s clientele would be looking for a hostess to seat them. But my father was as immovable as a dry-docked battleship. His watery, expressive blue eyes held mine for several beats, and I knew he’d come to a decision.“I’m leaving for Seattle tomorrow. I’ll be gone sixteen weeks, maybe more. Stay with your friends. I know they make you happy.”He’d paused and then reached for my face. His calloused fingers cradled my chin the way he’d done since I was a girl.“You are strong, Elskede. Brave. You will be okay without me.”

Only I’d just wantedhimto be okay.

My father had mentioned sobriety before, but this was the first time the conversation was motivated by something other than a hangover confession. And maybe that was the reason I allowed myself to hope for a miracle from a God I so desperately wanted to believe had heard my prayers.“Wendy said I could stay with her and Cece. Until you come back”was all I could choke out in response, too afraid to jinx the moment. Too afraid to show my father just how much I needed him to follow through for me. How much I needed him, period.

He’d pulled me in for a brisk hug that left my entire body wrought with hope and confusion. And when he’d strode out the lobby doors that day, leaving me to seat my first customers, it wasn’t the list of lunch specials I recalled as I’d handed them their menus and lifted my eyes to the street. It was the parting words my father had spoken in my ear. “Maybe the Campbells are exactly who you say they are.”

It’s an effort for me to slow my mental highlight reel from going too much further. I cut it off at the strong, healthy version of myfather upon his return home from the inpatient treatment center, the sober man who claimed he’d found faith in the same God the Campbells trusted in. The same God I’d come to trust in, too.

My cloudy gaze focuses on Joel through the viewing window. I watch the way his shoulders tense and contract on every inhale-exhale exchange. I watch the way he clasps his hands in front of him and the way the breeze teases the hemline of his shirt to expose the defined muscle beneath it.

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