Page 82 of The Words We Lost

I can be over in ten.

Ingrid

Thank you. I’m in Cece’s office.

Reclined on a bean bag pillow, I stare up at the vivid mural of the Kingdom of Cardithia on Cece’s ceiling, charting my way across the painted waters the way I’ve charted the conversation I’ll be having in only a matter of minutes. When I hear the door open downstairs, my entire body is tuned to Joel’s presence, even from a floor away.

I close my eyes and trace his footsteps through the cottage by the familiar creaks and pops of the weathered floorboards below. I hear when he drops his keys on the countertop and the thump of his backpack near the place he always slips off his shoes. And as I wait for his next course of action, I wonder if this is what it would feel like to build a life with someone: the swell of anticipation of a beloved’s homecoming.

But, of course, that’s not what we’re doing. And that’s not who we are to each other.

I track him as he passes through the dining room and note the exact location where his movement pauses. It’s the same place I’ve stopped each time I’ve passed my father’s wooden ax chest on the coffee table. And though I can imagine his pensive expression as he studies it, I refrain from guessing at his thoughts.

My pulse hums as he climbs the stairs, but no amount of preparation could have readied me for the defeat I read in his haunted gaze when he fills the attic doorframe. The disheveled look of his hair and the open collar of his shirt that exposes the tight cords in his neck floods my gut with shame.

I did this to him.

I push myself to a seated position and tuck my legs in close. I’m suddenly unsure if I should extend an invitation for him to do the same on the pillow across from me. Truthfully, considering what I’m about to ask of him, I’m unsure of nearly everything I felt certain of only minutes ago.

But once again, Joel surprises me as he claims the bean bag across from me and folds himself into a position that is likely as comfortable for him as the company he’s been asked to keep tonight.

“Thanks for coming,” I say. “Were you able to speak with Marshall this afternoon?”

“I was.” He’s inches from me and yet he’s distant, careful even. “There’s no legal action we can take until there’s evidence of criminal activity, or until there’s a threat made to Wendy directly.”

I nod in acknowledgement. It’s what I’ve been dreading he’d say. I lift my gaze to the mural overhead for several heartbeats before I find the courage to speak. “Did Cece ever tell you I discouraged her from painting this?”

I feel his focus shift to where mine is anchored on a single ship sailing off course into the dark waters beyond the fleet. I map the rebel ship’s route in my mind and continue. “My reasons were selfish, but I feared her artistic interpretation would somehow alter the way I imagined Cardithia—that it might lessen my experience or harm my understanding of a place I’d come to love almost as much as the author who invented it.”

Joel’s disquiet settles over the room, but it doesn’t deter me.

“But I realized today that it doesn’t matter if Cece’s interpretation of Cardithia was the same as mine. Because my version of it lives in here.” I touch my temple. “And here.” I touch my chest. “All those brainstorms Cece and I shared, all those first-draft chapters I read, all those revisions I edited ... I’m the keeper of those memories and what happens to them. They belong to me.” I work to calm the erratic thump in my pulse points. “No matter how many fans post reviews I don’t agree with, or how many character sketches I’ve seen that don’t match the Merrick and Ember I’ve come to know, or how many future lit teachers might try to break Cece’s writing into symbolic, literary nonsense ... none of those things get to change my view of Cardithia or the Nocturnal Heart novels as I know them. Not if I don’t allow them to.”

I feel the instant the slow trail of his gaze finds me. It’s the sametime I feel the strength in my bones vacate. “I think we should send the memoir in to Fog Harbor, Joel.”

“No.” It’s an immediate, end-of-discussion kind ofno. And yet, I can’t allow this to be the end. We are equal in our rights to it, but we are far from equal in our responsibility.

“Please, just hear me out. If I start tonight, I could scan each page into my laptop and edit the names and location details before I sent it off. I could have the whole thing finished within forty-eight hours, and I’ll do everything possible to protect the Campbell family in the revision.”

“You’d edit the details,” he clarifies, “as in you’d whitewash the truth.”

I clear my throat. “My goal would be to revise anything even slightly incriminating to Cece’s reputation or history—”

“Is that what you think I’m most concerned about? Cece’s reputation,herhistory?” He leans forward, his gaze boring into mine. “It’s not Cece’s life she exposed in that memoir, Ingrid. It’s yours.”

I glance at the single floorboard separating our folded legs. “It’s yours, too.”

“It’s not even close to equal.”

It’s what I hoped he might say, and yet I hadn’t anticipated the distress in which he’d say it. “If that’s how you feel about it, then shouldn’t the decision be mine to make?”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Ineedto do it, Joel.” My throat aches on the plea. “Please. After everything your family has done for me over the years—for my father—I can’t hurt them like this.” I press my lips together to keep the quiver from my chin. “I can’t.”

“You’re willing to expose your deepest wounds solely to keep strangers from coming here again.”

“Yes.”

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