Page 39 of The Words We Lost

Ingrid

I’m glad I didn’t leave before I saw this.

Joel’s reply comes quickly.

Joel

I’m just glad you didn’t leave.

I reread his text several times, staring at the words and pondering the conflicting sensation low in my belly.

The sound of the sliding glass doors opening and closing forces my gaze upward as Wendy traverses the lawn carrying two glasses of icy lemonade. “I feel spoiled getting to have you all to myself tonight when I’m sure there are a million other things you could be doing.”

I take her offering with a smile. “This is the only one that matters.”

14

Turns out, prepping secondhand furniture for art can work up quite an appetite. By the time we finished washing and stripping the old bench in preparation for Wendy’s next step, our stomachs were grumbling. But I’d appreciated having something purposeful to do with my hands while we talked. Somehow, it alleviated my stress over trying to do and say the right thing and instead allowed our casual discussion to flow naturally.

By the time we cleaned up our mess in the yard and began chopping vegetables in the kitchen for a curry salad, we’d already circled the moon in conversation. We’d orbited around the simplest topics first—work updates, town updates, friends old and new—and eventually wove our way toward the missing core in us both: Cece.

The first time Wendy mentioned her name while I poured curry dressing over a bowl of shredded chicken, my entire body went rigid. I was unsure of the next right steps, of how to give her what she needed. Unsure if I was even capable of giving Wendy what she needed. My own experience with grief had been so isolating. A heavily locked room ready to trap an unsuspecting victim inside it without offering a way out.

I didn’t want that for Wendy.

But then she touched my tense shoulder.“Talking about her is good for my heart, Ingrid. It keeps her with me. The same is true for hearingher spoken of by someone she dearly loved, and by someone who dearly loved her in return. I hope I never have to grieve her alone. I’m learning that much like love, grief is meant to be shared.”

I wasn’t familiar with the concept of shared grief. I hadn’t stayed near anyone who knew my father before he was reduced to little more than a tragic headline in our regional news. Most people I’d been around in those early months after my move to California barely knew me. And even when Cece flew out for visits or took me as her plus-one on book tours or red carpet events, I’d closed that part of my heart off, to her and to everyone else. And yet here was Wendy, inviting me to join her in the most sacred of places, the same way she’d always done for me.

“I have the table all set for us out here, Ingrid,” Wendy calls from out back. “Would you like a refill on your drink?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m just about finished in here.” I put the last of the ingredients away in the fridge, then carry the two plates of chicken salad to the outdoor table. My nose tingles at the all too familiar candle fragrance of Peaches & Cream wafting on the patio. Cece’s signature scent.

“I lit a candle in our girl’s honor. Thought it would be nice if we included her somehow—she wouldn’t have wanted to miss out,” Wendy says, her voice noticeably more wobbly as she speaks now than it was in the kitchen. “Is that okay with you?”

Throat tight, I manage a nod as I set our plates down. “Yes, of course.”

Once we’re sitting she takes my hand, and I curl my fingers around hers instinctively. But before she bows her head, she gently smooths her thumb over the sea glass on my right index finger. “A black ocean tear. To this day, it’s the only one I’ve seen come from our beaches,” she adds with a smile. “Your father gave you something special with this, Ingrid. A reminder that no heartache has ever gone unseen, and no darkness is ever too solid for light to overcome.”

I pinch my lips closed, already too overwhelmed to speak.

And then she bows her head.

Unlike when Joel prayed over our Sunday brunch, Wendy’s prayer feels altogether different. I want to curl up in her familiar phrasing and cover myself in the raw hope rolling off her tongue. I’d always admired the way Wendy spoke to God when I was a teenager, as if she’d saved Him a seat at the dinner table and He’d actually shown up, but I can’t help but feel the impact of every syllable she speaks now. Because of all the times for her to give up on an invisible God ... it should be now. Yet as she holds my hand and expresses her gratitude for a dozen blessings, including my visit, her strengthened faith is as obvious as the tears that streak her cheeks.

I wipe my eyes before she saysamenand offer her a clean napkin for her to do the same.

“I’ve learned to keep a tissue supply with me wherever I go. Tears come easily these days. In our grief group, my girlfriends and I often refer to ourselves as professional criers. We’ve even created a rating system for each tissue brand based on their absorption, softness, and durability.” She blots her eyes, sniffs, and tries on a smile I know is for my benefit. “Grief humor is a strange thing.”

I don’t have a reply for this, so I just nod as she takes the first bite of the salad and wait for her report. Her approvingmmms boost my confidence dramatically, and I’m not sure if I’m more elated over the idea that she enjoys something I made or being able to tell Joel that she ate a nutrient-rich dinner tonight. Even if her bites are baby-sized at best.

If I had to guess, I’d say Wendy’s weight loss since the funeral is somewhere in the ballpark of forty to fifty pounds—on a frame that could only stand to lose half that without appearing unwell. I try not to think about how waif-like her arms and chest bones look as they peek through the periwinkle V-neck she wears while I indulge in a few bites of my own salad.

We share a moment of silence as my eyes sweep across the yard again at all the projects waiting to be started and finished and all the beauty waiting to be created. She’d told me that it started when Stephen placed an old workbench at the curb she could view fromher bedroom window. And how surprising her indignation had been over the discarded object she’d seen him use in his shop countless times. Even more surprising was that it continued to poke at her all day until finally, she brought the bench into her garage where it sat for a week untouched. It was only after a beach walk where she collected more than her usual share of ocean tears that an idea sparked. She claims the first piece she worked on was nothing more than a hodgepodge of trial and error. It was the result of a dozen YouTube videos explaining the correct formulas and techniques she’d eventually need to create the art she envisioned in her mind.

“Do you have any plans for these pieces once they’re finished? Will you sell them?”

As Wendy sets her fork down and wipes her fingertips on a napkin, I can’t help but glance at the remaining half of her uneaten food on her plate. “I lived the better part of this year without vision for much of anything, much less a future, so I think there’s still a part of me that doesn’t want to place too much pressure or expectation on how long this project will last or even what it might grow to become. I’m simply trying to focus on having faith enough for today. And for today, this broken, recycled art is what God’s using to repair the broken pieces of my heart.”

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