“What?” he all but shouts. “On what grounds?”
“Your lawyer side is showing again.” Given that seventy-five percent of Chip’s family works in the legal system, this is a common occurrence. “You already know on what grounds. There’s no need to rehash every area I’ve fallen short this last year. It’s a long list.”
“You’ve been grieving. Is she really so heartless? So you haven’t hit your sales quota for the year; what about all the novice authors you’ve responded to? Does she even realize you’re the only one of her editors who personally responds to queries the way you do? And what about the virtual story workshops you’ve taught online? Or the—”
“Chip, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but that’s not the stuff she cares about. And truthfully, she’s not paid to care about it. She made it clear that if not for my past successes, I would have been gone months ago.”
“So why aren’t you, then? What did you say to convince her to keep you on?”
I close my eyes, replaying the events of the day all over again as I muster up the courage to tell him more personal information in this one conversation than I have in the past two years combined.
“Listen,” he says tentatively. “I get that this is probably a lot weirder for you than it is for me—being my supervisor and all—but let me remind you that you know pretty much everything there is to know about me in case you ever require blackmail material.” And then he begins to list off facts as if reading them from the headline on a supermarket gossip magazine. “My parent’sverypublic divorce. My boarding school years in Monterey. The custody arrangement that kept me apart from my sister for so long we’re little more than strangers now. My repulsion to the sight of seaweed. Every one of my failed pick-up attempts with Chelsea to date. Losing my grandpa to a stroke last Christmas Eve.” He releases a sobering exhale. “For whatever it’s worth and for however unprofessional it is to say this,when everything happened with Cece last fall I started to think of you like the big sister I never had growing up. If that makes you uncomfortable, then you can hang up now and we can just go back to—”
“Joel Campbell came to see me today at work.” It might not be the ease-in approach I was prepping for, but Chip knows a decent amount about my history with the Campbell family. Working so closely with Cece over the last couple years, there were simply too many unavoidable questions. Even more so after her death when Chip was the one fielding my phone calls and scheduling my calendar.
After a brief exhale, I extend a conversational 4-1-1 to him and walk him through the drama-filled events of the day, taking great care to summarize Cece’s letter to the best of my ability and ending with the probation plan SaBrina placed me on with orders to find a missing manuscript I’ve already searched for extensively on Cece’s hard drive.
There’s a long silence at the end of my monologue, and then I hear a muffled curse. “That was not at all what I was expecting.”
I laugh at his candor. “That makes two of us.”
This time his quiet is of the contemplative variety, and I wonder if he’s experiencing the same nagging thought that has been buzzing around my head like a gnat ever since I stepped off the Bart. But like an author who hasn’t given herself adequate space and time between her first draft and her developmental edits, I can’t trust my own discernment. I need an outside perspective.
“This might be totally off base, but do you think there’s any possibility the package Cece has for you might containThe Fate of Kings?” The reverent, almost cautious way he asks prickles the skin on my neck.
“I don’t know,” I all but whisper, too afraid to hope it could be that easy. That simple. “Maybe?”
Again, he falls silent. “If it is, then why would she give it to an attorney to hold on to when she knew it was under contract with Fog Harbor?”
Perhaps for the same reason she’d name her cousin and me trustees. Because Cece never stopped hoping that the two of us could overcome the past for a future that was never meant to be ours. Once a matchmaker, always a matchmaker. “Maybe because she wanted to give me time to read it with fresh eyes and not with ... grief eyes.” Ironic, considering my current situation.
“Okay, sure. But what does her cousin have to do withThe Fate of Kings? It’s not like the two of you can shop it around to other publishers looking for a better deal. The deal was already made—she signed it.”
That answer, I realize, is far more complex than I’m willing to hammer out on the phone, but I know with glaring certainty that her reasoning for including Joel would have nothing to do with seeking better deal points or bigger royalties from a different house. Cece was as loyal to Fog Harbor as I am. So instead, I take the simplest approach to this one. “There’s an added level of accountability when two people you trust have to sign off on a project together—especially one as big as the end of a book series.” And wouldn’t Cece have relished in the idea of Joel and I having to stay connected throughout the duration of a publication process—having to agree on every little decision until release day.
Cece’s real-life plots were often as intricate as her fictional ones.
“You realize how insane a discovery like this would be, right?” Chip’s volume begins to escalate. “The ripple effect would be huge. Can you even imagine what her fans would do? The media would lose their minds. Not to mention all it would mean for Fog Harbor Books, and for you, the heroic editor who brought the most coveted manuscript in the world back from the ...”
“Dead,” I finish after he bails.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant. And you’re not wrong. Finding that manuscript and turning it in after all this time would be an ending better than fiction.” My eyes sting at the thought of offering a conclusion to Cece’s millions of diehard fans, all those readers left onthe edge of a cliffhanger who deserve to see justice done. Could this nightmare really come to an end in the span of a single weekend? Could one quick trip back to Port Townsend really be the answer? The magnitude of such a question begins to unfurl inside me. My future at the publishing house would be secure, Chip’s promotion to editor inevitable, and the world would finally have what’s remained elusive to me for five years.
Closure.
“What are you going to do, Ingrid?”
This time, I don’t stop my wandering thoughts from traveling in a direction I haven’t allowed in over half a decade. Because this time, there’s no room for second guessing.
“I’m going to findThe Fate of Kings.”
4
Midway through the ferry ride across the Puget Sound, I zip up my windbreaker and cut a path through the congested passenger area for the viewing deck on the stern. Though I’d escaped the frenzied pace of the San Francisco airport and the bumper-to-bumper traffic of downtown Seattle, the nerve-wracking anticipation that vibrates from every happy tourist aboard this hollow sea vessel pushes me toward the open air.
As soon as I step alone onto the viewing deck, it’s a battle to stay upright against the bluster of the wind. There’s a reason most passengers have chosen to remain inside where it’s warm and stable. I grope along the railing until I find a secure place to anchor myself until we’re docked in Bremerton. After that I’ll drive for an additional hour to reach the northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula in a rental car that’s only available through Sunday. But if my growing suspicions about the secret package from Cece are true, then I won’t need to stay any longer than the weekend, anyway. No matter how trying the events of the next thirty-six hours might be—or the estranged company I’ll be sharing the majority of those hours with—every minute will feel worth it if it ends with the retrieval ofThe Fate of Kings.