Page 9 of The Words We Lost

Not surprisingly, the time it took to book my plane ticket, ferry passage, and rental car was only half as long as the time it took meto summon the will to text Joel. Due to the height of tourist season in this part of Washington State, the closest vacancy for a hotel room was more than a thirty-minute drive out of town. And even if I’d wanted to stay at the Campbell Hotel, I already knew their summer reservations booked out by mid-March. I also knew that if I asked Wendy for a room she wouldn’t turn me down, the same way she hadn’t during Cece’s funeral, but I have no right burdening a grieving mother with a houseguest during the weekend of her daughter’s birthday.

So instead, I’d sucked up my pride—after deleting the first six messages I’d attempted—and texted Joel about an alternative housing option only he could grant. Cece had willed her cottage to him, or rather, to the property management company he helps oversee in addition to the family’s hotel. Wendy’s financial needs had been more than taken care of through a separate trust Cece had set up for her mother, but her cottage was a different type of investment: a prime piece of real estate in a seaside town that lacked for vacation rentals.

It’s also a place I deeply regret never visiting while the owner was still alive to receive guests.

Ingrid

I’ll be coming into town this Friday. Can you arrange a meeting with Marshall on Saturday morning? I’ll plan to attend the birthday party that evening.

Also, would it be possible for me to rent Cece’s cottage from you for the weekend?

His reply came less than an hour later.

Joel

We’re set to meet with Marshall at ten on Saturday morning. As for the cottage, it will be ready for you by Friday afternoon. I’ll text you the gate code along with any other relevant information.

Thank you for choosing to come, Indy. You being here this weekend will mean a lot to my family.

I’ve reread the text thread a dozen times, and yet the surrealness of the exchange hasn’t lessened. I replay his word choice over again in my mind, pausing like always at the recall of his last line.You being here this weekend will mean a lot to my family.

I wish I could build a box around that final sentence and toss it out to sea, casting with it the sickening guilt I haven’t been able to shake regarding the Campbell family. Cece had been my only real link to them in the years following my move to California. She was eager to supply me with every necessary and unnecessary update of the hotel, the town, the people. She was even willing to fly her mom down to see me for a mini reunion and a tour of the Bay Area, though that trip had been far less about Wendy wanting to see Ghirardelli Square and far more about her checking up on me. Shamefully, I’d failed to do the same with her, with any of them. I hadn’t picked up the phone once since the funeral. I just...I couldn’t.

Perhaps that’s the real reason behind why Joel had written that last line about his family, a dig to remind me of my many shortcomings in relationships. Joel would have picked up the phone. I have no doubt that if the situation between us now was reversed, the ever-reliable, ever-responsible Joel Campbell wouldn’t have waited a week—much less a disgraceful ten months—before making an inquiry to my family if I’d been the one to die on a cold operating table.

Then again, our situation can’t ever be reversed seeing as I have no family left for him or anyone else to inquire after.

Despite the windblown state I’m sure to arrive in, I lean farther over the railing and stare into the inky sea below, allowing my thoughts to surf the rhythmic waves in seclusion, where it’s safest. It’s one thing to talk about my past with Dr. Rogers through a video screen, but something else entirely to be returning to it. The rumble of the vessel’s engine vibrates the soles of my feet, and I can’t help but wonder just how many days, months, years of my life could be measured standing next to a railing near open water? How many times had I watched my father at the helm of a ship, interpreting his wordless orders to me with a ready smile and an eager will to please him?

I twist the only possession he ever gave me around my finger and scan the vast horizon in search of answers I know will never come.

“Hello, I’m Emma.” A small, tinny voice at my side startles me out of my reverie. “Is that a black agate?” She points to my finger while steadying herself on the railing. “We studied rocks at my school last year.”

Two velvety brown eyes blink up at me from a girl who can’t be much older than nine, ten at most. On instinct, my gaze darts around the deck in search of the child’s guardian. I locate her immediately. On the opposite side of the glass, a woman holds a sleeping toddler to her chest and raises a hand to me with a smile, a gesture that confirms both her authority and awareness. I nod my acknowledgement and return the gesture before I bend to answer the girl, whose arms are now looped around the railing as she arches her back. Her gaze is still locked on my ring.

“This is actually black sea glass,” I confirm.

She scrunches up her face. “I didn’t know glass comes from the ocean.”

“This kind does.” I smile as she asks if she can touch it.

I release my grip on the railing and squat to give her a better look. Emma pokes at the ring. “But how does the ocean make this?”

The sunlight glints off my ring as the child twists the oblong piece of glass left to right. “It takes a very, very long time for the ocean to make a piece of sea glass,” I explain. “Often it starts as a piece of a broken bottle that’s pulled out to sea by the tide where it’s tossed around in the surf, beaten against the sand, rocks, and shells for dozens of years until one day, something like this rolls onto the shore.”

Her wide eyes blink in awe. “Will I be able to find one with my mom and my baby brother?” She looks back at her mother and waves with an enthusiasm that makes my heart swell.

“You just might. Sea glass comes in all different colors and shapes. This one was found on a beach in Port Townsend.” I slip the ring off and hold it up to the sun for her to inspect it. “It’s rare because it appears to be solid black until ...”

“I can see the light through it!” she exclaims. “See? Itislike an agate! I knew it!”

The wind whips my dark hair into my face, and it takes effort to tame it behind my ear. “I suppose you’re right. You have a good eye.”

A moment later Emma is called back inside for a snack, leaving me alone to recall some of my own beachcombing memories. Mesh bags swinging from tanned arms, worn sandals piled on driftwood, sand dollar collections, and sea kelp wars fought by teenagers in the tide.

As familiar as I was with a life at sea by my youth, I rarely spent my free time at the beach. If Dad and I were docked—either after the end of a chartering job or waiting on our next clients—then I was usually hunting for books, not seashells. But whenever Cece and her mother invited me to join them on their beachcombing adventures, I rarely turned them down. There was no first mate expertise required to walk on wet sand in search of treasures dancing in the tide. I could simply be an ordinary teenage girl doing ordinary teenage girl things.

One cool morning, under a narrow bluff on the northeastern side of the peninsula, where the tide crept in and out without warning, the two of us had stumbled upon a sight more coveted than any treasure Cece’s pirates tracked across the dark waters of her fictional Cardithia: a glittering, multi-colored shoreline of sea glass. It was more than I’d ever seen in one place.

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