Page 93 of The Words We Lost

“All the more reason to tell us everything in person,beforeher surgery.”

A swift revelation sucks the breath from my lungs as I think back to what Madison told me in the cottage—not only about the dictation app, but about her recovery plans. “She needed to be certain we’d willingly be in the same place long enough to read it together. This is what she was planning for us during her recovery. It had to be.”

Tension stirs inside me as my focus shifts to my father’s good faith trade resting on the table near us, and then to the manuscript I discarded to the sofa.

“You know we can’t turn it in, Indy,” he says with quiet resolve. “Even if you could edit out every identifying detail and implicating sentence”—he points to the battle-ax on the coffee table—“we can’t hand this off to anyone without talking to the authorities first. This is more than a memory, it’s also a confession to a crime.”

I close my eyes against the sting of that revelation.

“Your father’s sins are not yours to atone.”

I slip from his hold and sit beside my father’s ax on the coffee table, working to make room for a story revision so far outside the conclusions I’d drawn on my own. “I always believed if I could just understand what he was doing on that boat, I’d find the closure I need to move on. But I feel like I do after I read a cliffhanger—like the new unknowns outweigh the old ones.”

Before I even finish the sentence, a vivid recall of Cece’s last published novel plays out in my mind—the notorious last scene her fans went savage over. A brutal image of a beaten and bloodied Merrick left shackled to a deserted harbor while the love of his life is captured by his own sister, the Pirate Queen. A plot twist absolutely no reader—or editor—could have seen coming. And yet it was never meant to be the end of their story.

Maybe this isn’t meant to be the end of ours, either.

“There’s always a final clue,” I mutter to myself.

“What?”

“That’s what she said during the scavenger hunt she wrote about at the tattoo parlor.” I reach for where I’d abandoned the manuscript earlier and begin to flip back through the chapters, through each of the memories Cece chose to record for us, and land once again on the last page.

I read the final paragraph over carefully once more.

“‘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.’”

I fill my lungs with fresh air. “I think this could be it. The final clue.”

“Ingrid.” Joel says my name like it’s something fragile, something needing to be handled with care. “This isn’t a scavenger hunt.”

“Maybe not Cece’s traditional kind, no.” I tap the last paragraph. “But I think there’s something more to this ending she wants us to find.” I swallow hard and flip back to the first chapter. “And to find it, I think we have to go back to the beginning, to where this story first began.” I splay my hand across the page. “Our story.”

Our eyes lock, and in less time than a heartbeat, we say, “The library.”

Once inside the sleepy lobby of the Campbell Hotel, Joel slips his hand in mine. He greets each member of the night shift crew byname as we pass the front desk, and I don’t have to wonder at the kind of boss he’s grown into—it’s apparent in every warm inquiry and smile he receives in reply. A blaring contrast to the work environment I’ve been fighting to return to.

Joel swipes us inside the dimly lit library and taps the security panel on the wall to bring up the lights. But even under the full power of illumination, I feel just as uncertain about our next steps as I did in the dark. And by the way Joel scrutinizes me and the space around us, I’m not even sure he believes there is a next step to be taken.

“What now?” he asks.

“Now we search for a clue.”

“I’ve been in this library dozens of times since she died. There are no yellow notecards hanging out in plain sight.”

I twist to look at him. “When has Cece ever placed a clue for us in plain sight? We have to think the way she did.”

With a compliant dip of his chin, Joel turns for the shelves while I, like a ship coming into the harbor, follow the pull of the beacon’s light in the center of the room to the gorgeous display case Barry gifted the Campbells after Cece’s death. Perhaps being in such close proximity to her creative genius will enlighten me to something unseen. To a hope I trust is banked on more than a hunch. On the tail end of a deep inhale, I close my eyes and visualize the warm summer day when she found me reading on her family’s dock not too far from here. I think back to those first moments of Cece crashing into my private thoughts with her big personality and asking me a dozen questions about—

“Ingrid.”

My eyes snap open at the rumble of Joel’s voice from deep within the shelves. I weave through the quiet aisles. It doesn’t take long to find him, but I’m surprised at the section he stands in front of. And then again, I’m not surprised at all.

He lifts his finger to the top of the children’s reading section, to a shelf that is too high for most grade-schoolers and too uninteresting for most adults looking for a lighthearted vacation read. Thenovel rests peacefully on the far left side of the shelf, beckoning us closer. I tug at the unbroken spine, pulling down a special edition ofIsland of the Blue Dolphinsfrom the shadowed stack of untouched classics. The shift creates a domino effect among the shelf’s inhabitants, but neither of us pays it any mind. We’re too enraptured with the yellow envelope taped to the front of the hardback cover in my hands.

Property of Joel Campbell and Indy Erickson.

“Unbelievable,” Joel says with reverence. “You were right.”

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