Page 14 of The Words We Lost

Joel nods at me with a resolve that feels as certain as the one that’s anchored inside me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s guessed the contents of this package by shape alone. He knows Wendy gave me Cece’s laptop after the funeral, the same way he knows my searches forThe Fate of Kingshave been fruitless ... until now.

“Go ahead,” he says. “You can do the honors.”

“Thank you,” I reply, gently pressing my fingertips to the dusty surface. “And thank you again for meeting us on a Saturday, Marshall. I have a feeling this discovery will mean a great deal to a great many people.”

I break the seal at the top of the padded envelope and reach inside to grip a ream of paper. The sturdy feel of it in my grasp is confirmation enough, but my eyes still burn to see it. I slide the bulk out in one single motion of bittersweet relief. The overall volume isn’t quite as hefty as I remember her last manuscript being, but when my gaze falls on the emboldened “PROLOGUE” header midway down the first page, I exhale a year’s worth of unmet hope and fight to keep my emotions reined in.

I scroll my pointer finger under the first words, and then along the first sentence, and then down the entire first paragraph.

And then I’m frozen.

My hand. My head. My heart. All of it a brick of unthawable ice.

“Is it what you were hoping for?” Marshall inquires hesitantly.

I’m unable to answer him. I’m not able to do anything but stare at the blurring ink on the paper in front of me.

“Ingrid?” Joel asks as he slips the manuscript out from under the dead weight of my arm to read it for himself.

His mouth opens and shuts. Twice. And though his eyes never lift from the page, his voice is as piercingly intimate as if he were holding my face between his palms and speaking directly into my soul.

“This isn’t fiction.” When his eyes find mine, they brim with an audacity that throws me back to the night I spoke my final good-bye to him on a dock not too far away from where we sit now.

Blood swishes in my ears at such a high velocity that I shake my head in an attempt to mute the sound. But it only increases, beating out a chorus ofthis is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong...

Joel slides his finger along the paragraph a second time as if the words printed there might have changed in the last sixty seconds. But even as he reads them aloud, they are the same.

“‘I suppose their friendship began the way all good stories begin—with a promising hope delivered at just the right time and place. But as in all good stories, theirs shouldn’t be judged midway through or even by one poorly executed chapter. Their story should only be judged upon its completion ... which is still writing itself.’” He continues to scan the page in silence. When he finally speaks again, my ears strain on the rough timbre of his voice. “This is about the three of us.”

I’m actively drowning in a sea of confusion when I reach for the pages again and riffle through them as though somewhere hidden beneath this odd prologue is therealmanuscript. The one she spent years of her life crafting. The onewe allspent years of our lives crafting—together. But as I flip through the pages and find each chapter ascending in order, my hope of discovering a stowaway manuscript expires.It’s not here. My eyes blur as the only lead I had morphs into a riddle I’m not sure I’m strong enough to solve.

Joel’s lifting the envelope and reaching inside for something more, but I... I can’t seem to remember how to breathe.

I tug at my shirt collar, at the fabric trapped against my clammy skin, and push out my chair.

“I’m sorry, Marshall.” The rasp breaks halfway up my throat. “I need a minute.”

The crumbling is happening inside me again, boulders falling and crashing, a landslide of dangerous debris threatening to flatten me if I don’t leave now. If I don’t find airnow.

Joel is speaking words I can’t decipher, his voice like a steady pulse to restore the order I’ve disrupted. But unlike Joel Campbell, I wasn’t born into polite society. I was born a salty sea captain’s daughter, and I have nothing to prove and no reputation to save.

On unstable legs, I stand and break for the exit.

The instant I’m out the office door, my walk quickens to a jog, and soon I’m at the end of a dead-end street in my canvas dress flats, staring down at the steep, rocky shoreline below. The air pressure is different on this side of the point, the wind gustier and mistier than at surrounding beaches, which makes this beach both unappealing to tourists and ideal for me.

The panic that fuels me down boulders and over seaweed-slick driftwood numbs my inhibitions, and in only a moment my exposed skin prickles with a chill that does little to tamp the pain splitting my chest wide open. Scattered shells and pebbles cut into the bottoms of my thin soles, but I’m as unbothered by my footwear as I am by the tide creeping inward. All I know is that I must keep moving forward.

“Ingrid, stop!Wait!”

From somewhere behind me Joel’s voice distorts on a gust of wind that manages to untuck my shirt. The gauzy fabric has become like flightless wings at my sides, flapping in place without purpose. Without direction. Without one last remaining hope.

He catches me around the elbow and pulls me to a stop, but whatever he sees reflected in my gaze causes the jump in his jaw to slow, to soften, and then to disappear altogether. “You can’t just ...”He scrubs his opposite hand down his face and starts again. “This shoreline isn’t safe to walk when the tide is out, much less now. ”

“Did you know?” I ask him, my lips trembling against my will. “Did you know she was writing something about us?”

“No.” He speaks the word like a swift punch. “I don’t have a clue what that is back there. As soon as Marshall brought the package to the table, I figured it had to be the manuscript your publisher’s been after all year.”

I cut my gaze to the overcast horizon, swallow. “That’s what I thought, too.”

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