Page 7 of The Words We Lost

“I believe you.” She glides toward my office door and then promptly closes us inside. When she faces me again, her smile is as bold as it is telling. “You can start by accepting Joel Campbell’s invitation to Port Townsend this weekend.”

Nearly three hours later, I’m trudging down Sutter Street in Lower Nob Hill, my anxiety as impossible to contain as it was when SaBrina laid out her ultimatum. I mute her voice from my thoughts as I trudge up the steps into my apartment building, swipe my access key card, and nod at Mr. Winslow, who sits behind the security desk. He offers me his standard two-finger salute and I reciprocate in kind, thankful he doesn’t strike up a conversation that would require anything more than muscle memory tonight.

When my phone buzzes in my pocket, I silence it the same way I’ve done the previous three times. There is still too much unsettled business in my head to answer Chip’s questions—the majority of which will likely center around an encounter I can’t seem to stop reliving, no matter how many times I’ve tried.

I see and hear it all again as if viewing the scene on playback: the captive way Joel watched me pace across my office floor, the precision of his fingers as he refolded each crease of the yellow stationery, the earnest reprimand in his voice when he said, ‘You were her family, too.’

I take the stairs to the seventh floor, hoping the extra steps will slow my overactive brain cells. Within a minute of stepping into my four-hundred-square-foot studio, I’m out of my work clothes and into my vintageTwilighttee and coziest pair of drawstring shorts.

A minute more and I head to my spot.

Technically, the rooftop isn’t one of the highlighted amenities listed on my apartment lease. And it’s also technically not open totenants since it’s been “under construction” for as long as I’ve lived here. But for whatever reason, Mr. Winslow has never outed me to management, even though I know he’s seen me on his security camera at least a hundred times. Maybe it’s the children’s books I’ve gifted him at Christmas for his grandkids, or maybe he’s just a nice guy who doesn’t peg me as a threat to myself or others. Whatever the case, I’m grateful for the far northeast corner of this concrete island where I can pretend there’s still privacy to be found in one of the most populated cities on the Pacific coast.

I settle on the wide, bricked ledge where a whirling exhaust fan nearly drowns out the slamming of car doors, trolley bells, and drunken shouts ping-ponging in the alleyways below. Along with the soundtrack of the city, the unique odor of sulfur and urine is also dulled from up here, though I don’t make this trek for the change in air quality. I make it for the tiny sliver of bay I can see on a clear evening like this before sunset.

The water is miles away, but the reflection of the dipping sun within its mirrored surface has a profound and provocative effect on me nonetheless, both a beckoning and a rebuke. And a silent reminder that all is not lost inside me.

I hug my legs, rest my chin on my knees, and slip my phone out from my pocket. I tap into my photos and scroll to the last selfie I took with Cece, just six months before she died.

Due to our busy work deadlines, we hadn’t seen each other in person for several months, so when she’d called to say she was desperate for some story help and an old-fashioned slumber party, we agreed to meet somewhere between my bustling city and the suffocating seaside town I refused to return to. She booked us a mountain cabin in Sisters, Oregon, for the following weekend. “The town name was too perfect for me to pass up,”she’d said, hauling a duffle bag nearly as big as she was from our rental car through the log cabin door.“I think this place was made for us, Indy.”

In the selfie, our cheeks are smashed together in a way that contrasts the dark and light shades of our hair and eyes as well as thedifference in our skin tones—the golden hue of mine, the pinkish pale of hers. Unlike so many pictures we share together, it’s not Cece’s signature blond curls that steal the limelight, but the extra-bright smile that consumes her face. Yet another distinction between us. Cece’s smile was always halfway to a guffaw—a wide, open-mouth grin that showed all her teeth as well as her vivacious spirit. My facial expressions have always been far more controlled, my smile little more than a closed-lipped curve prepared to shift with the ever-changing winds of life. Only an hour after this photo was taken, the winds shifted again when Cece told me the truth about her perplexing bad headaches. They weren’t the barometric pressure migraines she’d diagnosed herself with. Cece had a brain tumor. Benign. Operable. Low-risk.

“I wanted to tell you in person, Ingrid, so you could see that I’m okay. See?”She’d crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.“This is me giving you permission to save your tears for the tragedy that is the last season ofGilmore Girls. On that note, can you also save your time off? I’m hoping you’ll agree to be my official recovery plan when I’m declared tumor-free.”Her voice was confident and assuring. “You’ll come stay with me at the cottage afterward, won’t you?”

Without a second’s hesitation I’d said,“Of course. I’ll come sooner if you need help to prepare—”

She cut me off with a hard shake of her head.“Believe me, between the smothering of my mom and my aunt, I’m having a hard enough time finding pockets of quiet to finish draftingThe Fate of Kings. I’m nearly there, though—don’t worry.”Though she didn’t mention Joel in her family inventory, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind he’d be there with her, too, along with his father, Stephen. The Campbells stuck together that way. It used to be the thing I admired most about them.“My goal is to turn it in to you before the surgery. Just in case.”

“No.”It was my turn to be adamant.“You are officially off deadline as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want it until you’re ready to trade it in for a giant bowl of cheddar-caramel popcorn and an episode ofGilmore Girls.”

Her smile brightened.“Deal.”

A single tear splashes onto my knee as my phone rings in my hand, blocking the image with a contact name that startles me out of the memory and back to the present—one lived in a world without Cece. I wipe at my face, clear my throat, and swipe to accept the call.

“Hey, Chip. Sorry about the delay.”

“Is there a politically correct way to ask your superior if she’s still employed? It’s not in the employee handbook—I’ve already checked.”

“I’m not sure.”

“About what part? Being politically correct or still being employed?”

“Both, actually.” I huff out a tired sigh.

This is usually when I’d power myself on to work mode and fill the void with talk of our never-ending deadlines and to-do lists. But tonight feels different. Tonight I don’t need an assistant as much as I need a friend.

“You still there?” he asks.

“I’m here.” Only, I’m not exactly sure wherehereeven is anymore. Sometime in the last few hours I’ve been sucked through a cosmic portal and dropped into a past life. One I’ve already lived once and never planned on repeating. But Cece’s letter, the words she’d penned, and the mysterious package waiting in an office a thousand miles away have me cornered in a mental dead end I can’t U-turn my way out of.

Or perhaps SaBrina’s ultimatum is what has me cornered: submit the missing manuscript within the probation period she’s outlined for me—AKA the ten days of paid vacation time I’d stored up for Cece’s recovery—or lose my job.

As I watch the fog crawl across the bay, I force the inevitable aside to prioritize the answers I know Chip wants first. “I didn’t tell SaBrina about my reading issues.”

His relief is audible. “Thank God, that was what I was most—”

“But even if I had, I’m not sure it would have made a difference.”The words are more difficult to say than I thought they’d be. “She was planning on firing me this afternoon.”

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