Page 92 of The Words We Lost

And then he was gone.

To the naked eye, the exchange between them looked like nothing more than a simple trade of goods. One highly valued possession for another. But as she watched Captain Hal motor her uncle’s cruiser into the black waters beyond the Sound, Cece knew her view of the world would never again be the same.

The divide between love and hate and good and evil wasn’t nearly as extreme as what she’d penned in her stories. Nor were her hands nearly as blameless as the heroes she crafted.

In her fictional world, she held all the control. It was her decision to allow justice to prevail and victory to reign. She was the one who could restore order and redeem the wreckage lost in life, love, and war. It was she who authored the happy endings for those most deserving and she who put to death those who lacked any true sense of virtue.

But here, in this world, she had no control over such things. God was the ultimate authority over justice, and His endings superseded what her limited mind could understand. She often disregarded the trivial role she seemed to play here, as if she were only a secondary character going through the motions in this life. But she’d never again see her role as inconsequential.

She felt for the bar napkin inside her pocket one last time before crumpling it into her fist and tossing this last piece of evidence into a lonely barrel at the edge of the dock. She would never speak of this night again.

Joel had been right. It was best for everyone if she was never here.

She couldn’t have known then what was to come. She couldn’t have predicted Hal’s shipwreck any more than she could have predicted the shift in the winds, but if given the chance to do it all over again, if given the chance to trade her silence for the protection of the people she loved most in the world ... she would make the same trade again. Her silence had come at a cost much higher than she could have ever anticipated, but even still, her conviction was stronger.

Because even when the words seemed lost and the world seemed bleak, Cece believed love would find its way back home. Just like the best stories always find their way back to where they first began.

29

When Joel and I finally come up for air, our gazes are anchored on each other, still braced against the undertow that’s sucked us into its depth and spit us out onto this unrecognizable shore.

“That’s not—that can’t be all there is,” I sputter. “She wouldn’t just end it that way.”

Joel’s expression is a dazed kind of anguish as he lifts the final pages for me to examine on my own. Seized by a compulsion I can’t control, I skim the last few paragraphs again and again. There’s not even aThe Endunderneath her last line—there’s nothing.

I flip the page over in my hands and find it unacceptably blank.

On unstable legs, I move from the living room couch to collect the rest of the chapters sticking out from Joel’s backpack. I riffle through the crinkled pages the way I did back in Marshall’s office when I was certain he’d handed us the wrong words, the wrong story. Only now I’d give anything for this story to be the one that continues. But as I find no missing chapters within this weathered stack, I realize what I’m searching for doesn’t exist on any page.

Because it’s not more story I need but the storyteller herself.

I need Cece.

The sound that escapes me is guttural, scraped from the hollowhusks of an ever-changing grief. Of a longing to have protected her the same way she protected me.

When Joel captures me in his arms, our embrace is that of two fractured people who can’t possibly stand without the strength of the other. But even our combined strength isn’t enough to sustain us forever. I realize only now, it was never meant to.

His voice is rough against my ear. “I didn’t know, Indy. I swear to you, I...”

But when his words give way, I can do nothing but cling to the fabric stretched across his heaving back.

“All these years,” he continues, “and I never once suspected she was keeping something like this from us.” He pulls back, his eyes red and raw. “I should have listened to her, asked your dad about those men. I should have stayed with him until—”

“No, Joel. This isn’t on you any more than it’s on Cece.” I fight to reverse the direction of the mental spiral we’re both on. “My father—” My voice cracks. “My father made his own choice that night, the same way he’s always made all his own choices. Even if Cece hadn’t been there and even if you had stayed with him all night long, he would have found a way to take that last run.” It’s a revelation that sears itself into my soul. “Nobody could have talked him out of it.”

Not even me.

Joel frames my face with his hands. “He made the only choice he thought he could to keep you safe. He loved you.” He pulls me in close again, and I burrow into his shoulder, mourning a truth that hurts almost as badly as the lie I’ve believed, mourning a death almost as confusing as the life my father lived on this earth.

And yet rising up from the sorrow, confusion, and doubt, a spark of light breaks through the darkness. And as it grows, so does the clarity it illuminates. “I was so wrong to blame you, Joel. I was wrong about so much.”

He presses a soft kiss to the top of my head. “You were hurting.”

“We were both hurting.” I pull back and stare into his mossy green eyes. “We still are.” I hold Cece’s face in my mind, wishingshe were here with us, too. “It’s so much to process—I’m not even sure where to start.”

The muscles in his neck contract. “She shouldn’t have kept this from us, it wasn’t her burden to carry.”

“It was an impossible situation.” Much like the odds Cece faced only a year ago. “You know how smart she was, Joel. You know she didn’t keep this from us out of ignorance or neglect or spite. For her to keep this kind of a secret for those four years she lived after my father died...” I shake my head.

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