Page 35 of The Words We Lost

“And yet I’ve heard him boast about you to the entire hotel staff on more occasions than I can count. He thinks you’re brilliant, Indy. And I happen to agree with him.”

She yawned and lowered her head once again, her silky hair spilling like ink over the crisp white pillowcase. “You’re too nice to me.”

He stroked her hair. “Not possible.”

“I’m afraid if you keep that up I’ll miss my watch alarm to meet my dad in the morning. He has a fishing job I need to help him with.”

“Then I’ll stay awake for both of us. I don’t work till the afternoon anyway. You should sleep.”

“I’m just gonna rest my eyes for a minute.”

“Good night, Indy,” Joel said in a tone that caused goosebumps to rise on Cece’s arms.

The sleepy sound Ingrid muffled in reply indicated she was already halfway to dreamland. But as Cece observed the tender strokes of Joel’s hand over her best friend’s hair, she realized with sudden clarity that there might be another way—a better way—for Ingrid to become a permanent fixture in her family. One that didn’t involve blind dates or matchmaking schemes involving Captain Hal and her mother. Because maybe whatever Ingrid and Joel shared ran deeper than the romantic inspiration Cece needed for her two muses. Maybe it ran so deep that the only thing she needed to do now was sit back and watch fiction become reality.

12

As Joel reads the final line aloud, the air in the library thins, making me incredibly aware of the solid bookcase to my right. I sag against it, pressing my fingertips into the woodgrain of the shelf while I try not to picture my father in a Viking hat with a war horn pressed to his mouth or hear his boisterous belly laugh that never failed to elicit one of my own. I try not to think about the way things should have been.

Joel says my name, and his voice sounds too far away and far too close at the same time.

I start to shake my head to tell him I’m fine, but the fat, hot tears filling my eyes are a dead giveaway I’m lying to him. I’m always lying to him.

I swipe at my cheeks and stage a protest against my tears until they stand down.

Joel sets the manuscript on the glass table behind him, and though his hands are no longer occupied, he doesn’t reach for me. He doesn’t move at all. He simply takes me in as if I’m a lit firework. And why shouldn’t he be cautious? I’m the one who took all conversations pertaining to my father off the table. And yet Cece had gone and made Captain Hal into a conversational centerpiece so large it obstructs the view of everything else.

I stare down at my walking shoes as one rebellious tear slipsfrom my bottom lashes, drips off my chin, and splashes into the center of my crisscross laces. “I’d forgotten how fun he could be,” I say. “How he was in the in-between times. I’d forgotten all about that stupid horn and ridiculous hat.” My throat is impossibly thick and my swallow impossibly loud. “How could Cece remember so many details about one random winter day years ago when I can hardly remember...”Anything good at all anymore.I don’t speak the words aloud. They’re too condemning. Too heavy to hold in my mouth let alone in my heart. I hear Dr. Rogers’s voice inside my head, imploring me to go there, instructing me to step into the black hole I fear and grant myself permission to access the pain of a lost little girl who never knew which version of her daddy she’d wake up to in the morning.

Joel slides his hand across the bookshelf until it sits only millimeters from my own. His decision to remain quiet appears calculated. Only by the way he’s staring at me, it doesn’t seem like a punishment at all. My mind jogs back to the conversation in Cece’s kitchen twenty-four hours ago, first to my harsh outburst and then to Joel’s insightful assessment after I’d accused him of treating me like a broken little bird.

When I find the courage to speak, my voice is paper-thin. “What you said yesterday, about me punishing myself.” Reluctantly, I nod. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that. My therapist has said something similar.”

Joel spurs me on with his patient gaze.

“There’s no manual on grieving a man like my father. If there was, I would have read it by now.” An airy laugh escapes me. “Well, I would if I could actually read it, that is.”

At the frustration in my tone, the crease between Joel’s brows deepens. “Ifyou could actually read it?”

I can see him trying to work out the context of my comment. But I know he won’t be able to get there on his own. It took the better part of a year in therapy for me to understand it myself. And while I’ve had the practice of explaining it to two people now, sharing itwith Joel is a different kind of real. A different kind of loss. Neither my therapist nor my assistant ever knew Ingrid the Bookworm, the girl who carried a novel curled in her back pocket wherever she went just so she could stay close to a world far different from her own. But Joel had known that girl well. He had more than known her.

I glide my tongue along the backside of my bottom teeth and then rub my lips together. “I’ve lost my ability to ... to get lost in a book. It started soon after Cece...” I let the ending of that sentence hang, but Joel nods for me to continue. “It’s so much work to concentrate on even a single page of words. I can see them, I can read them, but sometimes it takes me four or five passes to comprehend what I’ve just read. I took so many online assessments, trying to understand what was wrong with me. Like maybe I developed some kind of late-onset dyslexia or another type of neurological condition. And I suppose it is that, in a way. Dr. Rogers says it’s a trauma response. Not ideal for an editor.” I try to laugh, but it comes out like a pitiful-sounding cough. “Between the app I found that converts the screenshot pages of my manuscripts to audible narration and the help of my assistant, I’ve managed to make it work.”Barely. I lift my gaze to his. “But the pictures my mind used to create while I read ... those have all but disappeared, and I’m not sure if they’ll return.”

There’s a part of me that wonders if he’ll think I deserve this—my penance for choosing to cling to a life submersed in fiction rather than deal with a reality I didn’t have the tools for. The missing pieces surrounding my father’s drowning. The broken promises from the man who vowed to look after him while I was at school. The secrets he kept from me when my father needed more than Joel knew how to handle on his own.

In a subtle movement, Joel’s hand covers mine. And when he speaks, the gentle affection of his tone holds the power to crush me into a thousand tiny pieces. “I’m so sorry, Indy.”

And somehow, I know thissorryencompasses so much more than polite sympathy. Thissorryis backdated to a night neither of us can change no matter how much we want to. I stare down at hishand on mine as if this is still the role he plays in my life: to protect me at all costs. Only that cost proved too much for us both.

“I am, too.” With these words, something inside me starts to shift. The sensation is so odd it’s almost peaceful, which makes no sense, given our history. Yet there’s a stillness present that wasn’t present before. And perhaps it’s why I decide to color inside the lines for him a little more. “I’d all but convinced myself the package Marshall had for us was Cece’s lost manuscript.” I swallow. “I needed it to be, not only for her fans or even for my publisher. But for me, too.” A truth I hadn’t even admitted to Chip. “I hoped the discovery ofThe Fate of Kingswould be the antidote I needed to fix whatever’s wrong with me. That if I could somehow bring closure to her characters, to her entire series, that it might also bring closure to me.” I shake my head and release a soft laugh, gently extricating my hand from his hold. “I sound like a fool.”

“No, you sound like someone willing to do whatever it takes to be healed.” His gaze lights a flame in my chest. “If I knew where to find it, I’d tell you.”

I want to believe him, yearn to believe him even ... yet he’d kept something from me before. Something far more vital than a missing manuscript.

“I just wish I could understand the reason she didn’t tell me where to find it. It doesn’t make sense.”

An old Carole King song I assigned to a contact in my phone long ago blares from my pocket and jumpstarts my heart.Wendy. Joel tells me to go ahead.

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