Page 96 of The Words We Lost

My vision blurs as I trace my fingers over the handwritten dedication in black ink before I turn the page to chapter one. Unlike when I opened Allie’s digital manuscript on my laptop, I don’t need my usual pre-reading coaching techniques. Within the first sentence, my mind relaxes into Cece’s narrative, as if she were reading me the opening lines herself. Even though I’ve been away from this imaginary land for so long, the familiarity of it invites me in like a welcome guest and before I realize it’s happened, I’m swept back into Cardithia.

There are errors and missing words throughout the pages, sentences crossed out and rewritten, notes in the side margins preceding arrows and asterisks, and yet I’d trade none of it for a polished product. Because these notebooks, with all their imperfections and flaws, are the kind of treasure a loved one cherishes forever. The kind of keepsake a loved one vows to protect at all costs.

It will take me several days, but I will type each and every word of this first draft into a digital format before I’ll submit it to Fog Harbor Books. And even then, I have no intention of taking my eyes or hands off it for long. Cece entrusted me with her last written work,and I will do it justice. After she carried the burden of my father’s secrets for so many years, it’s the least I can do.

My lips curve slightly at the thought of everything this discovery will mean. Not only job security for me and story closure for Cece’s readers, but also Wendy’s protection and continued peace. Once I notify SaBrina of our findings, the search for the lost manuscript will be over and Fog Harbor Books will possess the long-awaited conclusion to the Nocturnal Hearts series.

Joel lowers himself to sit beside me, legs outstretched and back pressed against the same bookshelf as mine, but that’s where our similarities end. Because on my lap lay four composition notebooks pointing to the future, while his holds a history summarized on a single piece of yellow stationery. There have been so many words shared over the course of this night. Some spoken, some read, some only hoped for, and many still unknown. But at least in this one moment, as Joel laces his fingers through mine and sets our joined hands on top of Cece’s final book, there are no words lost between us.

30

It’s nearly midnight when I finish inputting the final paragraphs of chapter three into a new document titledThe Fate of Kingson my laptop. It’s been at least an hour since my last sip of caffeinated tea and two since I sat with Joel in the library. The ride back to the cottage had been much too short and much too quiet.

“I should let you get to work,”he’d said, idling in the driveway.“I know you have a lot ahead of you.”

A fact I couldn’t deny or argue with, and yet it didn’t stop me from wanting to.

“Good night, Indy,”he’d said before I could come up with something credible, some solution for how this could all fit together without us living nine hundred miles apart.

“Good night,”I’d said, wishing for a thousand more minutes like the ones we’d shared in the library, where the pressures and realities of the outside world had all but disappeared.“I’ll let you know how the call with Fog Harbor goes in the morning.”

“I’m sure everybody you tell will be ecstatic.”

And yet there was no question who wasn’t.

I step away from my laptop and out onto the private balcony in Cece’s bedroom. An ache has settled between my third and fourth rib. Even after I’ve left her fictional story world, I can still hear her voice like the steady heartbeat in my chest.

I love you, sister. Always and forever.

Reflectively, I twist my ring around my finger and take in the moon’s glow on the dark, rolling waves just beyond where I stand. By my fifth rotation, I exit the balcony in exchange for a closer view.

Armed with the emergency flashlight I found in the kitchen and a quilt I snagged from the hall closet tucked around my shoulders, I take the steep steps down the bluff outside the cottage toward a shoreline narrowed by the tide. Yet even at this late hour, there’s still plenty of beach to roam. I slip my sandals off near the bottom step, and the cold shock of wet sand sharpens my weary mind.

As I near the water’s edge, I lift my gaze to search the heavens the way Cece used to search her mural of Cardithia whenever she needed direction in her story world. I click off the flashlight in my hand. Its power is nothing against the illumination of the full moon. And for just a moment, its stunning presence mutes the throb in my chest. But not even the mystery of creation can cancel out the loneliness of loss.

I love you, sister. Always and forever.

I close my eyes and open my ears to the sound of the breaking waves.

Sister.

The significance of that title hits me anew as I recall the day we met, which was supposed to end with her taking a one-way ferry out of town. How if I hadn’t left the marina to read on her uncle’s dock, or if she hadn’t stepped onto that hotel patio to scribble a good-bye note to her cousin, the two of us never would have met. How after only a brief encounter about our shared love of books, she’d altered her plans, which had forever altered both our lives.

How even before I knew how to be a friend, Cece had chosen me to be hers. And she’d kept choosing me. Not only in life but even after her death.

I shift my stance in the sinking sand and work to find a new footing. For so long I’d accused God of being absent, of being silent ... and yet now I can’t deny the timing of how He’d used a spunkysixteen-year-old girl in my life at just the right time, in just the right place. Cece was a friend who held nothing back from me—not her mother, not her aunt or uncle, not her home or her faith, or even her only cousin. She’d given me a family, one who hadn’t shied away from my father’s struggles but had prayed for his victory and grieved over his losses.

The same way they’d grieved for mine.

The tears clinging to my lower lash line slip down my cheeks and fall to the sand at my feet. I adjust my stance again, and this time, when I step away from the deep footprints I’ve made to watch them fill with water, a glint catches my eye in the moonlight.

As soon as the shape and color of it comes into focus, emotion thickens in my throat. I squat down and scoop the triangle-shaped rock from the deep impression it made in the sand.

Only, it’s not a rock at all.

Careful not to let it slip from my slick fingertips, I hold the small black triangle up to the moonlight to examine it further as the opaque surface morphs into a translucent center. Still not trusting my eyes, I pull the flashlight out and lay my treasure directly on top of the lens. When light slices through the rough, dark surface, my tears flow in earnest.

After so many years of beach combing with Cece, so many years of searching for a duplicate like the one my mother had worn and lost and like my father had found on a shore not too far from this one ... this was the only black ocean tear I’d ever come across myself.

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