Page 19 of The Words We Lost

I shrug my bare shoulder, the movement causing the silky fabric of my gown to swish against my legs. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It absolutely does matter.” The dock creaks as he moves in close. “Everything between us would look different now if it didn’t.”

I shake my head as if to block out his words. “You want to know why I can’t make a decision? It’s because of this right here. If I agree to stay and read Cece’s memoir with you, then this kind of talk between us absolutely cannot happen.”

“And what kind of talk is that, Indy?”

I fight the effect his honeyed baritone has on every nerve ending in my body. “Anything pertaining to the way things used to be, to the us that died on this dock five years ago. I have no intention of going back there—not to that night, and not to each other.” My throat is dry, and the words feel as rough on my tongue as they do on my heart. “If we do this for Cece, then it has to be about her. Not anything else.”

The moon has arced above our heads. Its light exposes my face to him while it casts a shadow on Joel’s, but even still, I can sense his expression so strongly that if I were to brush my hand over his features, I know exactly what I’d find. I’d start by smoothing the pad of my thumb along the tension furrowed in his forehead before sliding the rest of my fingertips down the stress crease that sits between his eyebrows, and then lower still to where his narrowed eyelids fan an impossibly dark curtain of thick lashes. I’d glide my pointer finger down the masculine slope of his nose, careful not to skip the ridges of his brooding mouth. And there I’d rest, just beneath the swell of his bottom lip, in the faint, crescent scar one can only detect under a sky much like this one.

I blink, breathe, and hear him swallow.

“I can do that,” he says.

My reply is little more than a strained whisper. “Okay.”

“I’ll be over after church tomorrow with the memoir.”

I hold my breath for what will undoubtedly come next, an invitation like so many he’s extended me in the past: to join his family at the second service and to interact with the community they love.

Only Joel doesn’t offer me an invitation. He simply takes a step back and bids me good night.

8

“The Girl Who Came from the Sea”

It all started on a particularly warm day in early June. It was the kind of overly stuffy day that required Cecelia to prop open the third-floor window of the hotel suite she shared with her mother for fear she’d die of heatstroke. Unlike the desert-dry Nevada heat she’d grown up in, there were few buildings in Port Townsend ducted for air-conditioning. At least, that’s what her Uncle Stephen explained, and he seemed to know everything about this prehistoric sea town where nothing of significance ever happened. Sure, the Victorian buildings looked like they were straight out of the novels she borrowed from the library when her mom wasn’t with her—the ones with shirtless men embracing fancy ladies in low-cut gowns with titles that boasted words like Duke or Duchess, Rogue or Rake.

Cecelia liked the historical romance genre well enough, but not nearly as much as the sweeping adventures she collected about life on the high seas. She’d always had a thing for pirates, which was precisely how her mom had lured her to the tippy top of western Washington in the first place. Only so far, every deckhand, fisherman, and sailor she’d met could either be classifiedas geriatric or reeked worse than the fish guts the hotel cook flung into the compost pot her mom insisted be saved for the gardens.

Cecelia took one final glance at the carefully scripted good-bye letter she’d penned to her mother and placed it underneath the jewelry box her dad had given her on their final Christmas as a whole family. Zipping up her backpack, she took one last glance at the movie poster she’d hung above her bed before closing the door to room 312.

Contrary to what the diehard fans ofPirates of the Caribbeanmay believe, not every history-centered seaport town held the mysteries and inspiration needed to write an epic fantasy. After thorough investigation, Cecelia had concluded that Port Townsend could win a contest for the most boring, predictable place ever to be established on planet Earth. Furthermore, there were exactly zero persons in this town who resembled a young Orlando Bloom.

Which was why she was headed back to the desert. Today.

There, at least, was a true mystery waiting to be solved. No matter what her mom told her, Cecelia knew better than to believe her father didn’t want to be found. After all, wasn’t the best fiction just a couple lies south of the truth?

She’d researched her plan of escape for weeks, stockpiling her backpack with essentials while her mom organized ego-stroking events for folks who only came to this town to eat crab cakes and drink too much wine in one sitting, all while rambling on about how exquisite the sunsets were over the Sound. Althoughthisweekend, everybody would be chatting about the same thing: the annual Summer Dayz Festival, sponsored by none other than her own extended family.

It was both the alibi and distraction she needed. When she didn’t show up for her shift to wait tables in the dining room later this evening, everybody would assume she got caught up downtown, enjoying the street musicians and socializing with the masses. But in reality, Cecelia would already be halfway across the water, bound for the airplane she planned to catch in Seattle. By the time her mother found her note, it would be too late. The festival traffic would make getting to the airport by car nearly impossible, and the nighttime ferries were too infrequent to get anywhere quickly. Hermom would never make it to her in time to stop her plans. Cecelia had, however, left her mom the number of her new prepaid phone. Yet another part of her carefully researched plan.

Oddly enough, though, it wasn’t her mother’s wrath she feared most when this elaborate scheme came to light. It was her cousin’s. Sure, her sweet mother would be disappointed in her, maybe even angry. But Joel would be ... she shook her head. She didn’t have to wonder what he would be. Sometime after Aunt Patti decided to give up the fertility battle for more children after suffering through many, many losses, Joel had become unbearably protective of everything and everyone around him, reminding Cecelia all too often of the whopping thirteen months he had on her. But as sad as she felt for Aunt Patti, Cecelia had never been interested in filling the role of Joel’s younger sister. Nor was she in need of a big brother. She was an independent woman of sixteen, full of ideas and dreams, and old enough to make up her own mind,thank you very much!

But the minute she stepped onto the hotel patio where VIP parties were held and where old couples shuffled to music that should only be played in elevators, something tugged at her conscience, enough to cause her feet to slow. Was she really going to leave without telling her cousin good-bye? She bit her bottom lip and then quickly swung her backpack around to her front, rummaging through it for a notebook and pen. She had plenty of time to jot something down and hide it for him somewhere on the property. She began scribbling out a message. She’d send him a text in a couple of hours and tell him where to look—

Cecelia stopped mid-note as her gaze snagged on a blur of thick black hair attached to a girl reading at the far end of the Campbell’s private dock. A girl who looked to be around her age. One she was certain she’d never seen in this town before. She glanced at her watch. Her bus to the ferry was leaving in thirty-two minutes, plenty of time for an introduction to a stranger for the sake of character research.

She dropped her backpack on the patio and started for the dock. The closer she got, the more curious she grew about the book that had so enraptured this stranger’s attention that not even the sound of Cecelia’s approaching footsteps turned her head. It had been a long while sinceshe’d been so engrossed in a fictional world that she was able to escape her real one.

“Whatcha reading over there?” Cecelia asked as water lapped against the dock underfoot.

Like in a poorly written comedy, the girl on the edge of the dock startled, causing the book to leap from her hands like a hooked fish arching toward the water.

A collective cry rang out as Cecelia dove for the paperback mid-air, arms outstretched, as her body thrummed with an adrenaline that had her straining for the novel with muscles she was certain she’d never before engaged. Miraculously, she caught it, the trophy now safely cupped between her palms as if it were the Holy Grail itself. Both girls stared at it wordlessly before moving their focus from the novel to each other.

It was Cecelia who spoke first. After all, it was Cecelia who almost sent the book swimming in the Sound.

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