Page 51 of Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy

He slides his hand free of mine and opens his arms. I scoot off the table and edge sideways onto his lap, tucking my face to the side while my arms loop around his shoulders and his arms wrap around my waist, pulling me against him. The chair isn’t built for two, and it’s not the smoothest hug in the world, but with a little wriggling, and by swinging my legs over the arm of the chair so my feet dangle, we find a position we can settle into, with my head on his shoulder and his stubbled cheek resting against my forehead.

I want to ask if he still loves her. I want to ask if she’s still with the restaurant guy, if she found what she was willing to fight for. I want to ask if she was the editor who read Dylan’s novel or if she shared his taste in music or knew he hated pickles. I want to picture the woman who could let this man go, not only let him go but push him away. I also want to hate her for doing it, but I suspect Dylan’s right. They were either the wrong match to begin with, or they became the wrong match. Anything else is beside the point. So I don’t ask any questions. I let her be a ghost without a distinct shape. And I hold him. I hold him so tightly.

Though not, perhaps, as tightly as he holds me.

Chapter Seventeen

Although Dylan and I have learned plenty of hard lessons about the fallibility of our best-laid plans over the last decade or two, November drives the point home in spades.

The roofer—a fifty-something man of few words named Rahul—and his crew arrive on schedule and tear off old shingles at an industrious rate, uncovering more rot than was initially suspected. This drives the cost up by several thousand dollars, which he kindly agrees to accept in installments. Dylan also finds black mold while removing wallpaper in the dining room. Rahul takes a look for us, checks the adjacent rooms, confirms the problem’s not isolated, and suggests halting the wallpaper job and installing new drywall. While I research how much this would cost and add it to a growing list of Things to Deal with Later, we get our first snow of the season, and the roofing crew pauses for safety reasons. Rahul reminds me that he warned me about weather delays when I hired him, noting that he did most of his work in spring and summer for a reason. Thankfully, he doesn’t say it in the you made bad choices tone my parents love so much, and he properly patches the major holes with industrial-strength plastic before the snow hits, but the problems remain. The roof will take longer than expected to replace, it’s more fragile than ever while repairs are stalled, and the expenses keep piling up, well beyond what I’ve budgeted.

While we’re scrambling to earn more income, two of Dylan’s most lucrative modeling gigs get canceled, though he lands a print ad in New York, taking him to the city while I list the last of the valuable collectibles on eBay, saving a few especially precious historical treasures I refuse to part with. Bidding isn’t as vigorous as the previous rounds led me to expect, so I come up $3,000 short of my goal, leaving me unable to pay my siblings back as quickly as I’d hoped and making me suspect Dylan and I are in for a lot of shitty pasta this winter.

I have my video-call interviews with the search committees in Iowa, Colorado, and Kansas, and I even snag a fourth with a small liberal arts college in Twin Falls, Idaho. The Iowa one is an obvious misfit. The formality of the interview is so stifling, I have to shake off a chill when I hang up. The other three interviews go more smoothly, and I’m especially optimistic about Colorado, mainly because their questions wrap up early enough for me to ask a few of my own, which I’ve been dying to do on all of the interviews. I ask what everyone likes best about their job, how they manage administrative labor to ensure equity, and what they hope their new colleague will bring to the history department. I get an email the next day saying they’ve moved on with the search and I’m no longer under consideration. Surprised, I send a polite request for feedback so I can consider it for future applications. The response: The committee felt like I was interviewing them rather than letting them interview me. It’s a sharp reminder that I’m supposed to be so grateful to be considered for an academic job, I shouldn’t need to ask any questions of my own. It’s a reminder that I left this world for good reason.

A joyful break in the stress arrives when Haley has her baby in the third week of November, a gloriously healthy girl Haley and Mischa name Beth after Beth Ditto, one of their favorite musicians. I bus to Augusta to meet Beth as soon as I get word, with plans to stay and help out for a week. Beth is tiny and beautiful, and I sob my eyes out the first time I hold her.

“She’s perfect,” I blubber in the hospital room while Haley looks on from the bed and Mischa smiles through a yawn from a chair in the corner. They both look so tired. But so happy.

“You should’ve heard her scream when she arrived,” Haley says. “Total rock star.”

“She comes by it honestly.” I dab at her little nose and her restless little feet as tears continue streaking my cheeks. I wasn’t here when Eleanor’s kids were born. I met them when my semesters ended in December or June. Holding Beth in her very first days hits me hard, witnessing this tiny, fragile life just beginning, a new addition to our family.

“Be glad Mom and Dad already headed back to Portland,” Haley says.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window and almost laugh.

“It is possible to hold a baby and still not want one of my own,” I say.

“I know,” Haley says. “And someone else has to be the cool aunt this time.”

I glance at my reflection again. “How about the socially anxious, kinda nerdy aunt?”

Beth gurgles as if in reply, still kicking her feet while I marvel at her tiny, wrinkled toes.

“Sounds good to me,” Haley says.

“Sounds good to all of us,” Mischa says with another sleepy smile.

I perch on the edge of the bed, cradling Beth in my arms like I never want to let her go. She’s so warm, and so wriggly, and her curious brown eyes are taking in everything. While my disinterest in having my own kids hasn’t changed, I’m overcome by the idea of really knowing my new niece, not just sending her presents on birthdays and holidays but being here as she grows up and figures out who she wants to be, even if that’s a type A debate captain her mom doesn’t understand. Especially if that’s a type A debate captain her mom doesn’t understand.

I spend the rest of the afternoon at the hospital, where the hours pass quickly, filled with wonder, conversation, a trip to the cafeteria to fetch hot food and coffee for the new parents, and a visit from Eleanor and her kids, who are giddy about their new cousin. During a quiet moment, when everyone else has gone or is napping, I open Google Maps. Wichita, Kansas, is 1,400 miles from the nearest ocean. Twin Falls, Idaho, is about 650. Both are a really long way from Maine.

Despite all the interruptions, Dylan and I mostly stick to our writing schedule, though as anticipated when my siblings suggested writing Grams’s books would be easy, it’s anything but. The history is so interesting, but we keep glossing over it to propel the action forward and create a world where the heroes are easy to root for and the villains are relentlessly, simplistically bad. Who needs a complex system of global economics or political successions when we can drop in a random greedy king to hate? Trade routes and manufacturing developments? Yawn. And why deal with the realities of sea life when our hero needs salon-fresh hair? We also get stalled on the scene where we meet Zane’s new love interest, a literal siren named Amorosa. As always, she’s stunningly beautiful, so he’s instantly in love, and I’m instantly annoyed. After much discussion, we decide Zane can be drawn to Amorosa’s voice and not just her perfect face and body. This allays my worst frustrations, and we eventually finish the chapter, but as our adrenaline-fueled day-one momentum slows, our writing goals for late December start to seem unrealistic.

The only thing that progresses at an impressive rate is the crowdsourcing for the boat. Louisa finds the site before I tell anyone about it, which doesn’t surprise me. She probably has Google alerts set up for Zane Scarlett, whom she still likes to imagine I’m living with and sleeping with. Naomi shot amazing pics and video of Dylan and Trish. They pay tribute to Iris Flynn and her writing, they discuss the ship and what it would mean to get her seaworthy again, and they mimic embraces from the covers. She claws at his back while he sweeps her against him. With their eyes locked and lips parted, they look like they’re seconds away from combusting in a fiery torrent of mutual desire. It’s so hot, even I want to send money. Thankfully, I don’t have to because a lot of other people do, invested in the story of the Zephyr’s Revenge II and eager to see her in her full glory, especially if Zane Scarlett and Euphoria Belladonna will reunite to sail her.

By the time I cross off November 30 on our wall calendar, the boat’s been hauled to a shipyard, where the hull is being scraped clean and sanded while new masts, rigging, and sails are under construction. We also have half of a new roof and a very rough sixty pages of A Siren Calls, which is something, but as with our income, it’s less than we planned for.

In the chaos of shifting schedules and keeping up with only the most essential tasks, truth or dare falls by the wayside. I miss the little chances to learn more about each other or inch each other out of our comfort zones in a nonthreatening way, though we do at least manage an occasional hug when there’s something to celebrate. The hugs are warm and affectionate, and Dylan seems more relaxed around me now that he’s not hiding a giant secret about his past.

However, nothing about our hugs prepares me for writing chapter seven.

“Maybe they should just kiss,” I suggest.

Dylan shakes his head. “That’s not what the notes say.”

“But they only met a few hours ago.”