Page 69 of The Words We Lost

When he reaches for his knife, I contemplate how appealing it is to watch grown-up Joel preparing a grown-up meal in his own grown-up kitchen. This front row seat which features the predominant flex in his right forearm as he chops vegetables sure does beat the late night dinner drive-thrus of our youth.

I blink and try to recall the conversation with Madison. “She mentioned seeing Cece use a writing dictation app on her phone. I think it’s how she wrote the majority of the memoir. It’s a common method for authors, and makes the most sense given Cece’s symptoms.”

Joel stills his hands, peers at me. “As in, you think she dictated each chapter into her phone?”

“I do.” I nod. “And I think she’d planned to give it to us in person after I came up during her recovery. Maybe she even planned to read itwithus.”

Joel makes ahmmsound in his throat. “It certainly would have made chucking a pillow at her easier if she were in the room with us.”

It would also make asking her one of a thousand questions easier, too.

As Joel continues to prep, I thumb through the chapters we’ve already read together, pausing in the place we left off. But then my eyes drag over the first paragraph. And then move on to the second.

To the third.

To the fourth.

To the fifth.

I flip to the next page, not wanting to stop now that I have some traction, but Joel’s teasing tenor breaks my momentum.

“You know, it’s a lot harder to follow along with you when you’re reading silently.” But whatever expression he interprets on my face causes him to set down his chopping knife. “What’s wrong, Indy?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head, emotion tightening in my throat. “I actually think something might beright. I just read this entire page without having to re-read a single sentence.” I swallow. “This chapter’s about the night of the treasure hunt.” My gaze slides to Joel’s right forearm again, only this time for a very different reason.

He dips his chin encouragingly. “Will you read it to me?”

I position the chapter in front of me, hoping I won’t jinx my momentary win by saying yes. “I’ll read for however long I can.”

“Then I promise not to miss a single word.”

22

“X Marks the Spot”

Cece knew how to keep a secret. Truth was, she’d been keeping secrets long before she started searching for her father online without her mother’s knowledge. And long before she considered the consequences of what such a search might reveal. Maybe that was the reason she’d insisted on ending Ingrid’s last day of spring break from Berkeley with a celebratory treasure hunt. Because while she couldn’t change the discovery of her father’s second family in Florida or the fact that he hadn’t bothered to reply toanyof her email messages, she could control the outcome of where her final clue would land Joel and Ingrid for their last night together until summer.

She sat on a hard bench outside the obscure tattoo parlor directly across from one of three liquor stores she kept tabs on while her best friend was away at college. Ingrid hadn’t asked that of her, of course. It was Joel she’d entrusted her father’s sobriety to, not Cece. But much like his own father, Joel was often too quick to forgive. Too willing to move on from a scandal and believe the best about people. But in these last two years since Captain Hal had returned from rehab, she’d kept her distance from him wheneverpossible, unwilling to get sucked back into the vortex of his magnetism. She’d been blinded by his gregarious personality and larger-than-life stories in the past, but she wouldn’t fall for it again.

Hal might be collecting sobriety chips from the local recovery group, but Cece would never again see him through the innocent eyes of her sixteen-year-old self—a girl desperate for her own daddy’s love. That girl had since grown up. And she’d learned how to funnel her personal struggles into her characters. The same way she’d do with this newest blow. Even now, she was plotting Ember’s narrative in her head for her final chapter in book two, using her own rejection issues to strengthen her heroine’s arc.

Cece had always believed the bond she shared with Ingrid was based on their mutual affection for all things fiction, but tonight, as she sat waiting for her friend, she wondered if their sisterhood had been built on something far more substantial: two failed fathers.

Determined to eradicate any trace of gloom from her mood, she breathed out a hard breath and refused to give another thought to either of those undeserving men. If she only had one more night with Ingrid before she went back to college, then Cece needed to make the memory count. And she needed to make it last. Life was too unpredictable not to make a permanent declaration of what mattered most.

The instant Cece spotted Ingrid and Joel walking hand-in-hand through the parking lot toward her, she plastered a smile on her face and jumped to her feet, every bit the fun friend Ingrid would expect her to be. “Good thing I didn’t put a time limit on that treasure hunt. You two would have lost.”

“It would have gone a lot faster if your clues had been better. You may know how to write pirates, but let me be the first to say your rhymes need work,” Joel doled out in his usual flat jest.

“Hey, be nice.” Ingrid elbowed him in the ribs and reached to hug Cece. “I think it was creative. Thanks for going to so much effort to make my last night here memorable. I’m just hoping I’m right about the last clue.” When Ingrid stepped back, Cece didn’t miss the way her best friend’s gaze latched on to the gift bag she’d purposefully left on the bench. The one she’d decorated in old maps and a giant red X-marks-the-spot on the front. Ingrid clapped and brought her hands to her mouth, her pitch climbing inchildlike excitement. “Please tell me the real treasure I’ve been dying to get my hands on is inside that bag, Cece.”

Ingrid’s enthusiasm brought a real smile to Cece’s face. The once stoic, cautious girl Cece had met reading on the hotel dock years ago was not the same young woman standing in front of her now. Perhaps this was what love did to a person: It slowly turned up the temperature from within so that eventually the outside of a person had no choice but to match the warmth of the inside. The temperature of Ingrid’s heart radiated through her eyes, her smile, her voice. The striking transformation was impossible to miss.

And even though Joel often kept his professional hat on whenever he saw Cece around the hotel while Ingrid was off working her way through the English program at Berkeley, Cece knew he had to be struggling. The transition from a day-to-day romance to a long-distance one couldn’t be easy. Nor was the transition from sharing everything with her two best friends to being scheduled into a single weekly phone call. Truth was, she was lonely in a way she’d never been. And it scared her.

She noted the way Joel’s arm casually looped around Ingrid’s waist as if he couldn’t help but pull her close in these final hours together. Cece wished she could freeze time right here and now. But seeing as she’d never been able to before, she simply reached behind her to retrieve the gift bag. “I know I could have sent this to you in an email attachment, but a novel feels way more legit when you can hold it in your hands—even though it did use all the ink in Uncle Stephen’s printer.” She cringed. “But I promised you the first printed copy of my first book, and even if nobody else ever cares to read it, this one belongs to you.” She offered Ingrid the bag. “I couldn’t have written it without you.” A truth she felt deep in the marrow of her bones. There’d been so many plotting brainstorms, field trips, scene reenactments, and painful deletions and rewrites that went into finalizing this first draft ofThe Pulse of Gold. As well as a few characters who’d stitched themselves to her soul in the process. She squinted at Joel. “And I suppose I owe a fair amount to you, as well. I have a copy with your name on it, too.”

Cece reached for the other bag she’d hidden under the bench seat for her cousin. Surprises were always more fun.

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