The Words We Lost by Nicole Deese

Author:Nicole Deese
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance;FIC042040;FIC042100;FIC027270
ISBN: 9781493440719
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

17

My original plan for Operation Find Cece’s Missing Notebooks was to keep a structured inventory of each area, closet, and bookshelf I searched inside the cottage. But that was all before I’d held Joel’s hand on a boat during sunset as he spoke in hushed tones about my father.

Now there’s not a single organized thought to be found in my head.

Hundreds of books have been pulled off the shelves in Cece’s living room, and it’s fairly obvious that my only goal is to leave no possibility unturned. Cece was forever stuffing bank receipts, pictures, cards, and important mementos inside and behind the books she loved most. It was her own version of an under-the-mattress savings account.

Unfortunately, Cece was always far better at hiding treasure than she was at finding it. Probably why she was so phenomenal at drawing out her pirate maps as well as the scavenger hunts she’d leave for Joel and me to find at random. But Cece herself once lost a two-hundred-dollar cash tip in what she swore was her leather-bound edition of Pride and Prejudice. We found it a year later tucked inside her favorite thriller novel. For all I know, her giant hardback of War and Peace might actually be a hollowed front, hiding all six hundred handwritten pages of The Fate of Kings inside it.

All I know for sure is that it’s been five days and I’ve discovered nothing of significance. SaBrina will likely be posting a job opening for the position I currently hold very soon unless I can provide her with a promising lead, or better yet, a first draft. Whatever the case, I need to pick up the pace. As good as last night was, I’m not a first mate playing house with a part-time captain. I’m an editor, one whose future is not here.

Due to Joel’s long hours at sea yesterday, he’d texted to say he’d be landlocked at the hotel today and most of tomorrow, too—a fact that should make me grateful for the extra hunting time. But of all the confusing and downright contradicting feelings splashing around inside me, grateful doesn’t even make the top five.

Sometime in the late afternoon, I sit back on my haunches and jam my palms into my eye sockets. The chaos I’ve created in this room is abysmal, and I don’t feel a single percent closer to finding the notebooks or going home. There has to be an easier way of going about this, but how does one search for something they have so little information about?

My legs have fallen asleep from sitting in the same position for too long, and I grab ahold of the back of the sofa to haul myself up to standing. I’m too young to be making the kinds of noises that escape me, and yet, here we are: twenty-seven going on seventy-seven. On my way up, my hip nudges one of the book piles a tad too hard, causing a Jenga-style topple. A miniature-sized Polaroid skitters out from the hardback copy of Breaking Dawn and spins in place on the floorboards.

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