Page 1 of The Words We Lost

1

Everytap, tap, tapof my editorial director’s blood-red fingernail against her ceramic coffee mug feels like another second closer to the death of my career. And unfortunately, my only chance at an exoneration is currently limping his busted bicycle through the soggy streets of San Francisco on this uncharacteristically wet day in July. Below the conference room table, I twist the black sea glass ring on my right index finger, wishing it held the power to summon an ETA text from my assistant. Preferably one that starts with:Just arrived! Be right up!But instead, when a notification brightens my silenced phone, it reads:Can you stall for ten more?

“You’re up next to pitch, Ingrid,” SaBrina Hartley says, managing to draw my two-syllable name into three. It’s a practice she’s perfected since her transfer and subsequent promotion to our division nine months ago, along with her many lectures on the importance of signingestablished authorswithestablished platforms. “You ready?”

This, of course, is a rhetorical question. Nobody ever tells SaBrina they’re anything but ready.

“Uh, yes. Sure.” I surrender my phone face-up on the conference room table, as if Siri might sense my panic and offer me a preemptive bailout plan. Sadly, no such thing happens. Heat prickles at the base of my neck when I open the cover of my iPad and stare downat the proposal for a dual-time novel I know far too little about to discuss intelligently.

Of the two critical meetings scheduled during the summer publishing season, this is the one I’d allocated to Chip, the young, enthusiastic editorial assistant I’d trained straight out of college. He’s also quite possibly the only reason I still have a corner office and the title of Senior Acquisitions Editor. While I’d been overloaded with deadlines for our national sales conference at the end of the month, he’d completed all the prep work for today’s meeting. Not only was Chip the one who’d reviewed the manuscript and researched every comparable title for the proposal we’d planned to pitch together—with Chip shouldering the majority of our shared talking points—he was also the one best-equipped to answer SaBrina’s cross-examination questions about the book and author. Truth is, I’d only managed to read the first couple chapters before I handed it over to Chip, and not even the most accomplished editor in the world could successfully pitch a manuscript for publication after reading so little of the story.

Another truth: there’s no mystery on how long it’s been since I last acquired a new book contract.

More than nine months and twenty-six days ago.

I hook the lock of dark hair obstructing my vision behind my right ear and lift my gaze to the exposed brick walls of our rectangular conference room. The space is bookended on either side by shelves filled with plaques and awards and the internationally recognized bestselling fantasy novels most of those accolades belong to. Their astonishing success single-handedly launched our midsize printing press into an entirely new stratosphere roughly five years ago. Consequently, they are the same best-selling titles that shoot a flaming harpoon through my ribcage whenever my gaze lingers too long in their direction.

I divert my attention to the half dozen unsmiling faces of our acquisitions team: four editors and two assistants who rarely lift their eyes from their laptops. It’s strange to think that once upon a time—back before SaBrina Hartley arrived from our New York imprintand before my brain short-circuited to a pace slower than dial-up internet—thatthiswas once my favorite meeting of the month.

Under past leadership, this space was a welcome reprieve from the endless cycle and demands of publishing—a safe launching pad where fresh ideas and premise hooks sailed back and forth like a crowd-pleasing game of hot potato. We’d laugh over the scrambled coffee orders we’d have delivered and swap them with ease the way we once swapped inside jokes and stories from around the Golden City. The only stories we share now are the ones we pitch in an atmosphere as hospitable as Alcatraz.

I tap my iPad screen and stare down at the proposal Chip emailed on my behalf to each editor in this room while I’d been cramming for a sales conference I might be uninvited to after today. I clear my throat and twist the underside of my ring with the tip of my thumb, turning the band around until the oblong piece of frosted black glass is tucked safely against my palm.

“Moonlight on Sutter’s Mill,” I begin in my most professional-sounding voice, “is a dual-time narrative that’s unique for several reasons, the first being that the setting is the iconic sawmill in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas where gold was first discovered in 1848.” I swallow and try to remember any other snippets of interest Chip might have shared with me while I continue to panic-skim the digital proposal. I glean whatever I can from the summary, throwing key terminology out like a magician practiced in sleight of hand: generational family feud, unsolved mysteries, debauchery and scandal, and a secret Romeo and Juliet love affair. “‘But perhaps,’” I read directly from the fourth paragraph, “‘the most interesting fact is that the author herself, Mary B. Jespersen, is a direct, albeit distant, descendant to the Sutter family.’”

My vision warbles in an obnoxiously familiar warning. I blink twice in vain, though I know from experience that the only remedy for the coming onslaught of brain fatigue is time.

Unfortunately, time is the one thing I never have enough of.

“And is this the reason you’ve listed no previous works in herbio—because she has a connection to a distant, dead relative?” SaBrina interjects before I can locate the notes Chip wrote about the author’s platform. But in the same way I can predict the ending of nearly every work of fiction I’ve ever read, I can also predict SaBrina’s next words. “As I’ve stated before, Ingrid, I have no interest in taking on a debut author in our current market—far too much risk for far too little reward. Fog Harbor Books is interested in authors with established platforms only.” She sighs in that dramatic way Chip loves to emulate, second only to his perfected pronunciation of the capitalBin our boss’s name. Rumor has it, SaBrina only became S-a-B-r-i-n-a upon her transfer here, as if adding a second capital letter to her first name would give her more professional clout. “Established authors mean established readerships, which in turn equals higher pre-order sales, visibility, and marketable placement on best-selling lists.” Her gaze finds me again. “Great story hooks don’t sell books. Platforms do.”

I clamp my teeth together as a rebuttal builds behind my closed lips. It wasn’t too long ago that Fog Harbor Books said yes to a no-name author after she was submitted to an editorial director via a no-name editorial intern who was so passionate about the power of story that she was willing to sacrifice her career track to see it published. But I don’t say this. Not only because the legendary tale of how I snuck Cecelia Campbell’s manuscript onto Barry Brinkman’s desk is as well-known as the five-book deal she struck because of it, but because it still hurts too badly to speak about my best friend in past tense.

With everything in me, I fight to recall the reason why Chip was so convinced he could get Ms. Jespersen’s novel sold despite all the contracted authors SaBrina hasn’t renewed for lack of sales this last year. But try as I might, I can’t remember, so instead, I go with what I can remember about the two chapters I managed to read. “Mary Jespersen writes with a rare blend of old-soul and a twist of modern snark. She also has a pitch-perfect sense of time and place. The tension and conflict is evident from the first fewsentences in each storyline, which isn’t often the case with dual-timelines. I was impressed with the current-day plot and the focus on the great-granddaughter, who is the historical protagonist, and the inheritance she means to—”

“Again, Ingrid, you offering a recap of the story won’t fix the fact that Jespersen remains unproven.” SaBrina’s perfectly groomed eyebrows arch in exasperation. Due to her high-end fashion and expensive cosmetics, her age is nearly impossible to pinpoint, but given her career track my guess is she’s hovering close to forty.

Early on in her invasion, when employee morale was still as much of a priority as analyzing the concerning downward trend in book sales, I chose to believe Barry must have seen something special in her, the same way he’d seen something special in Cece’s writing all those years ago. The same way he’d once seen something in me, too.

But now I’m convinced that whatever Barry saw in SaBrina when he and the board selected her as our new director was exactly what SaBrina hadwantedthem all to see. After all, she is nothing if not strategic.

SaBrina pushes her chair away from the conference table and stands with covetable grace in her dark pencil skirt and heels. When she sashays toward the bestseller shelf, my pulse trips over itself, ratcheting higher with every step.

She stops in front of a framed picture I know almost as well as the books standing guard on either side of it. The woman staring out from behind the glass is holding up an award forEditor of the Yearon a stage bigger than any she’d stepped foot on before that evening. Her ruby lips are a perfect color match to the glamorous, floor-length gown that hugs her curves as if it was designed with her figure in mind. The hazy aura cast from the spotlights on her long, shiny black-brown hair illuminates the amber flecks in her dark eyes and her bare, naturally tan shoulders. Due to the sweeping success of her best friend’s series, the outcome of that award ceremony hadn’t come as a huge shock to the editor smiling in that photo, or to the publishing house she represented.

But three years and two major plot twists later, I can hardly believe the woman in the framed photo is the same one I saw reflected in my bathroom mirror this morning.

When SaBrina turns her gaze on me it’s clear she, too, is playing the spot-the-differences game between the Editor of the Year Ingrid in that picture and the one who’s struggled to pitch a single manuscript since that dark day last September. It’s not that I haven’t tried to keep up the professional appearance SaBrina requires. I still follow the business casual dress code at the office; I still style my shoulder-length hair in headbands and clips; I still dab my cheeks with blush and swipe my lashes with mascara and blot my lips with the same sheer gloss I’ve worn for a decade. But it seems no matter how I try to conceal it, grief’s shadow is permanent.

The ball of nerves at the base of my belly squeezes tight as SaBrina reaches for the familiar spines of the Nocturnal Heart series beside her. She taps the special edition titles of all four of the epic fantasy novels one after the other:The Pulse of Gold, The Keeper of Wishes, The Art of Thieves, The Twist of Wills. She stops there, her fingernail sliding up the spine of book four, the wildly infamous cliffhanger that sparked nearly as much commentary as news of the author’s sudden and tragic death.

Unbidden, the text from Cece’s dedication page inside her fourth and final published work scrolls through my mind.

Joel—there are a billion sappy quotes for siblings and next to none for cousins, so it’s a good thing that you and I have never been much for sap. However, I would like to point out the fact that I’m the one dedicating a book to you. May this also serve as a collection notice that you still owe me a blackberry lemonade slush for beating you to the lighthouse.

We had a witness. Pay up.

And then, just like that, I’m there with the two of them all over again—seventeen and filled with the kind of blissful, adolescentrecklessness adults fear most. The sea breeze whips through our hair and tugs on our shirts as we race to the base of the hill before the start of the climb to the top of the rocky bluff. Cece and Joel are neck-and-neck on their flashy trail bikes, standing on their pedals as they pump their legs hard to reach the top first, when Joel suddenly squeezes his handbrakes and plants his feet. In an instant, Cece shoots out of sight, leaving the two of us behind on a deserted bike path. With little more than the sly wink he tosses me over his shoulder, Joel rolls backward down the hill while I pedal the rust out of my secondhand ten-speed. His chest is still heaving from the exertion of his climb as I pull even with him, yet it’s his hypnotizing smile that suspends my breath—that calming presence he carries with him everywhere as if he’s never known true fear. As if he doesn’t even believe it exists. As soon as he’s able, he takes hold of my handlebars and eases me so close our front tires kiss. The simmering heat of his arm when it settles against mine feels like the warmth of the afternoon sun when it finally breaks free from the clouds. When his fingers clasp around mine he says,“Cece can gloat about her win all she wants, but a few minutes alone with you is the real prize I’m after.”

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