Page 75 of The Words We Lost

A thought I’ve had more times than I could count. “I agree.”

I’m pulling off another heavy plastic lid and uncovering another box of multigenerational family pictures. With a sigh, I seal it up again and then push it aside to stretch my back.

“Do you think the notebooks could have been stolen?”

I reach for another tote, but it’s far too heavy to lift on my own. Allie sees my struggle and steps in. We bring it down to the cement floor on the count of three. Dust plumes and we both turn our heads away and cough.“If they were, I don’t know why they wouldn’t have been pirated by now. The demand would be huge and those sites are like a fast-spreading cancer.”

“Just like social media can be,” Allie says. “I’ve seen some crazy things done by fans.”

I’m about to ask her what she means when my fingers skim the top of a familiar-looking red notebook.

I jolt upright. “Allie! Look!”

Her gaze locks with mine. “That’s the same brand I saw in the photos online.”

I hold my breath as Allie digs for the other three. I flip open the cover and squint my eyes at a title page written in black sharpie.

Weird Happenings at the Campbell Hotel—Vol. One

Allie scoots in to read over my shoulder, and I note the date at the top. “She wrote this when she was fifteen. The year she moved here with her mom.”

There are over twenty entries. Stories of weird incidents and strange guests. And by the third one, Allie is struggling not to laugh.

She taps a finger on the fifth. “Weird cat lady insists Joel brings her a specialty breakfast menu of foods she can enjoy with her kitty.” Allie sucks in her cheeks. “What do you think this is all about?”

“Knowing Cece?” I shrug. “She was likely using this to build her characters.”

We read on, finding quirky tidbits about townspeople, staff, and guests.

Entry 18: A widower rents room 114 every month on the twenty-first. It’s booked for an entire year. What happened to his wife? Perhaps we should be offering a discount for other guests who book that room on account of a possible haunting.

Entry 23: Jeffery the bartender tells everybody he’s allergic to peanuts, but I’ve seen him scoop handfuls into his mouth when he’s doing bar cleanup at night. No EpiPen ever required. Definitely an attention seeker of the first degree.

Entry 30: Someone is stealing the butter cubes from the serving bowls in the kitchen fridge. I think it could be Verna from Guest Services, but I’m not positive yet. Will report back soon.

Allie pinches her lips together and then says, “I don’t want to sound irreverent or anything, but I’d totally buy this if it was published.”

Her joke catches me so off guard that before I know it, I’m laughing so hard that I’m swiping tears from my cheeks. “Thanks for doing this with me, Allie—and for all your searching online, too.”

She sighs and helps me off the cement floor. “I just really thought we’d find them by now.”

“Me too.”

After we wedge the red notebook back into place and do a last search through the final two storage totes, I know we’ve reached the end of the road. I’m out of logical places to look, and I’m nearly out of time. But unlike last week, the thought doesn’t create a ricochet of panic inside me.

In fact, I feel something opposite of panic.

Something impossibly similar to ... peace.

Allie heads out to the club car, asking me if I’d want to get a blackberry lemonade slush with her before I head back to the cottage. But when I rotate to stretch my lower back, all thoughts of slushies slip from my mind as I notice an old desk protruding from the back wall. The surface of it is draped in a flat white sheet, blanketing something small and rectangular. I edge toward it, confused at why this one piece of furniture would be protected from dust when everything else of value is sitting out in the open.

I lift the corner of the sheet and immediately begin to tremble.

No,I think.This can’t be.

Only it is.

I stare down at the ghosted shape of an object I believed to be at the bottom of the ocean floor.

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