"Are you still writing it?"
"I'm two pages from the end," I say. "I was literally mid-sentence when you called."
A beat of silence. "Should I call back?"
"No." I mean it. "It'll keep."
"What happened to it?" he asks. "You said once it was stuck."
"It was. For a long time." I think about how to explain it. "I was writing around the real thing instead of at it. Once I stopped doing that it started moving."
"What was the real thing?"
I look at my hands on the counter. "This," I say. "All of this. The family and what I chose and what it costs. I kept trying to write a fantasy novel and it kept turning into something else."
"Did you let it?"
"Eventually."
He's quiet for a moment. I can hear him breathing on the other end of the line. He sounds like he’s thinking before saying anything.
"Is it good?" he asks.
"Olive thinks so. She had notes."
He laughs at that. It's a short sound, genuine, surprised out of him. "Of course she did."
I lean against the counter and look at the ceiling and let myself be in this for a moment — talking to my father on a Thursday afternoon in my kitchen in Malibu about the book I’ve been trying to write for two years. None of this was in the plan when I flew here from Boston with a one-way ticket and no idea what I was walking into.
"Is it going where you wanted it to go?" he asks.
“Actually, somewhere better," I say. "Somewhere I didn't plan."
"That's how the good ones work," he says. "At least that's what I've heard. I don't read much fiction."
"I'll send you a copy when it's done."
"I'd like that."
We're both quiet for a moment. But it’s not the uncomfortable kind.
“Your mother grew peonies,” he says after a moment.
I stop.
"Did she ever tell you that?" He says it carefully, like he's handing me something fragile. "She used to grow peonies. Big pink ones. She had them at her place when we were together. I remember them because I asked her why peonies specifically and she just shrugged. Said she liked the way they smelled." He pauses for a moment, looking up wistfully. "It stuck with me. I don't know why."
I don't say anything.
I'm standing at the kitchen counter in Malibu thinking about peonies. Sydney raised me on practicality. Beauty was fine but it didn't pay the rent. And then I remember.
The fire escape outside the kitchen window. Third floor, west-facing, the one that got the afternoon light. Sydney kept things out there. I remember now, pink flowers in terracotta pots that appeared every spring and disappeared by July. I was maybe seven the first time I noticed them. I asked her what they were and she saidflowers, Jadein the tone that meant the question was over, and I never asked again.
Peonies. They were peonies and I didn't know that until right now.
"She did grow them," I say. "On the fire escape. She never told me what they were called.”
"They were just hers."
