Page 3 of Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy

I let a thick biography about Louis XIV drop with a thunk. It’s a loud thunk, one I feel in my bones, one I suspect isn’t about the size of the book. One I know isn’t about the book.

“What, um, what about it?” I stammer, which is a serious tell. I almost never stammer.

“Couldn’t you live there for free?” Amelia asks. “At least until you know what’s next?”

I shift my stance, suddenly restless. “That’s not really an option.”

Amelia leans forward, her interest piqued. “Why not?”

The question looms large and loud. Too large and loud to ignore, and while I’m not prepared to examine all of my reasons, let alone discuss them, I can share the most obvious ones.

I stop tossing aside books to climb over the scattered pile and stand at my desk. Since my office wasn’t officially an office on the building’s ground plans, my applications for an office computer were repeatedly denied, so I spin my personal laptop to face Amelia and pull up a street view of a slate-blue three-story house built in the Second Empire style, complete with mansard roofs, a spindly wraparound porch, and no two windows precisely the same. It was erected on a rocky outcropping on the central coast of Maine in 1877 and purchased by my eccentric, wealthy grandmother more than a century later. Squinting, it looks like a quirky bed-and-breakfast in the daytime and like a place kids might dare each other to knock at night. Not squinting, it looks like what it is: an old, weather-worn house that requires buckets under several roof leaks and towels shoved around gaps in window frames. Banister rails and roof shingles are missing. A few of the windows are busted and boarded up. The yard is cluttered with rusty shipping gear, and the carriage house that once worked as a garage is collapsed in on itself.

“Exhibit A,” I say. “The house.”

Amelia cringes before tempering her reaction with an encouraging smile.

“Nothing a good handyman can’t help with,” she says. “Or an exorcist?”

“I can’t afford either. I’m officially unemployed now. Grams left me the boat, the house, and its contents, but most of her money went to my mom, who’s currently enjoying it with my dad in Croatia. Or maybe they’re in Spain. With so many trips, it’s hard to keep up.”

“Right. The world travelers.” Amelia concedes the point with a sigh. “Exhibit B?”

I pull up a photo of the “yacht.” It’s a two-masted schooner modeled after an eighteenth-century Russian cargo vessel, only it doesn’t currently have any masts at all, as both were lost in a violent lightning storm. What’s left is a hull with an elaborate but faded paint job and a pile of rope and moldy canvas on its deck. What that rope and canvas hide, I don’t want to know.

Amelia acknowledges the ship’s less-than-seaworthy state with another sigh.

“Is there an exhibit C?” she asks.

“Oh, yes. Get ready for it.” I do a quick image search for Dylan Sterling, the writer my grandmother hired to assist with her pirate romance novels after she got her cancer diagnosis. Her fans were clamoring, and she didn’t want to let them down. How she found Mr. Sterling and why he was the one to help with her last three books, I have no idea, but apparently, she knew what she was doing. At first, he organized her notes or typed up her handwritten chapters, basic admin he could do on short visits, but as her health declined and he took on some ghostwriting, she invited him to move into the house, saving him a lengthy commute from Portland. Publicly, the books were entirely hers, and she wouldn’t have agreed to that if she didn’t do most of the writing herself, but privately, she swore Mr. Sterling was indispensable and the final book in particular wouldn’t exist without him. It came out six years ago, a few months after her death. I initially felt gross about the publisher exploiting my grandmother’s demise to crank up sales, but in time, I understood they just wanted to celebrate her work, along with her many, many readers. She wrote thirty-four novels in that series alone, and each one hit a bestseller list.

I’ve never met Mr. Sterling in person—our timing was always off when I visited—but anyone can google a name. The Dylan Sterlings of the world include a grinning, wispy-haired farmer in Cardiff, a twentysomething tattooed DJ in Atlanta, a surgeon, a lawyer, a real estate agent, a freshman at Tulane who seems to really like beer pong, and only one writer.

“This is the guy who’s still using the place,” I say, showing Amelia an image of the man my grandmother insisted be allowed to live at her house rent-free for as long as he wanted to stay, until or unless I sold it. She didn’t want to kick him out after all the help he gave her. She even wrote the conditions into her will, leaving me as his de facto landlord.

Amelia leans closer to the screen as I enlarge the photo. “He’s very . . .”

“Einsteiny?” I gesture at the erratic froth of white hair poking in every direction. “Grumpy old mannish?” I don’t have to gesture at anything. Mr. Sterling’s scowl is intense.

“Maybe he was having a rough day,” she offers through a hopeful smile.

I shake my head. “We’ve been corresponding for six years. The man’s emails read like the verbal equivalent of a grunt, using as few words as humanly possible. Fireplace collapsed. Third-floor window broken and boarded. Replacing front door. Not only do I marvel that this man helped my grandmother write three novels, but I suspect that scowl is his natural state.”

“Wow.” Amelia continues smiling, her expression equal parts wonder and amusement. “But why doesn’t he contact your parents about repairs? Don’t they live in Portland?”

“My mom won’t have anything to do with the house, other than paying the annual tax bill out of the estate funds as per the terms of my grandmother’s will. I own the house, but she owns the property it sits on. We’ve been in a standoff for years. She wants to liquidate, but she can’t do it while I own the house, so she keeps begging me to either sell it or burn it down.”

“Why haven’t you? Sold it, I mean. Pretty sure arson’s not your thing.”

It’s another deceptively simple question, and one I often avoid answering, especially when my mom is pressuring me to let the house go. To her, and probably to anyone who gives the matter two seconds of thought, keeping a house I don’t live in—and don’t intend to live in—while it slowly rots away and declines in value seems crazy. I can’t afford to fix it up as a proper rental, I barely manage it for its current tenant, and I haven’t set foot in it for over six years. Keeping it doesn’t make sense. I know that. I understand that. I agree with that.

However . . .

I drop into my no-longer-ergonomic desk chair and pull up the photo of the house again, weakened and withered on the rocks. It looks like one hard wind will flatten it, and yet, given its location so close to the sea, it’s seen a lot of hard winds, and it’s still standing. The boat’s still holding on, too. My grandmother was just as resilient, a fighter right up until her final days. She was funny, feisty, and perceptive, inviting me to stay with her during my childhood summers, when I was struggling socially while my siblings were out partying, playing sports, dating, and having a blast as lifeguards and camp counselors, all four of them gifted at making and keeping friends, something I never got the hang of. The school years were hard, but during the summers—and on the many extended visits after I finished high school—I had my grandmother, the one person who always, always made me feel okay being me. And I had hour after hour by the sea.

“I can’t sell it,” I say with an unavoidable break in my voice. “Even if I never go back.”

Amelia nods without pressing for more info, for which I’m deeply grateful. Instead, she stands and opens her arms wide. Swallowing hard, I get up and step into her awaiting embrace.