Page 74 of Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy

“I think we can try. We can change it later if people disagree.”

I wilt against him. “By people, you mean my mother.”

“I doubt she’ll know what came from Iris and what came from us, as long as the world we create feels the same and we’re consistent with the characters Iris already established. We’re more likely to get notes from an editor, though they might enjoy seeing a few changes from Iris’s outline, too. It’s more than seven years old. And she left it to you, not to her publisher, her agent, or the head of the estate. She trusted you, and maybe her story could use an update.”

I glance around the kitchen, unsure I can handle one more thing that needs updating.

“You seem so confident about this,” I say. “How did you get through it the first time?”

Dylan draws back to blink down at me. “Get through what?”

“Writing an entire novel without a comprehensive plan?”

“Iris always had a comprehensive plan.”

“I’m not talking about Iris’s books.”

“Ah, right.” He nods in understanding, and while he scratches his neck and tugs his ear, he doesn’t fidget for too long. “I made my own plan. I also let the story evolve as I wrote it, which might not have been the best idea, given the mess that ended up on the page.”

I press my palm against his chest until I can feel his heartbeat, and the passion he hides in self-criticism about inertia that I don’t think defines him as much as he claims.

“How do you know it’s a mess?” I ask.

He steps away, busying himself with the chips. “I just know.”

I open my mouth to ask the obvious follow-up question, but Dylan shoots me a look that begs me not to, and it’s answer enough. I might be leaping to conclusions, but I doubt it. He told me his ex-wife was an editor and that he valued her opinion on his writing. Why wouldn’t he have shown her his manuscript? And why wouldn’t he have taken her criticism to heart?

“Will you ever let me read it?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “You have better things to read.”

I’m not sure this is true, but his reticence to discuss his novel is as clear as ever, so when he diverts the topic back to A Siren Calls, I follow willingly, a whole new story about a dashing pirate king and a feisty stowaway unspooling in my head and a smile stretching across my face.

“I can’t believe I’m genuinely excited to make stuff up,” I say.

“I’ll tell you what I’m genuinely excited about.” Dylan’s eyes sparkle with mischief. It’s one of my favorite looks on him. It’s rare but so joyful, and so free of walls.

“What’s that?” I ask, playing right into his hands.

“Postponing lunch so I can pay my rent.” With a grin and a whoop, he flings me over his shoulder and carries me upstairs, where for the rest of the afternoon, he fulfills the terms of our recently agreed-upon tenancy arrangement. No cash changes hands, but he earns his lodging several times over, and the next time my parents ask if he’s paying rent, I’ll just nod and smile.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I don’t get the grant-writing gig, but in the first week of February, I pick up ten hours a week doing digital archival work for a museum in Boston. It’s a temporary hire for not a lot of money, but it’s enough to get my budget on track, and it’s really interesting work, tracing Boston family histories through old photos and documents, finding links and patterns that help illustrate what life was like in bygone eras. It’s the kind of history I love best, small scale and personal, and it’s eye-opening to get paid by the hour rather than working a job that never stops expanding.

In the second week of February, Dylan and I write our steamiest sex scene yet. I still get the giggles when we debate the best way to refer to a nipple or a penis, and Dylan still blushes as though we haven’t spent the last month and a half ravaging each other, but somehow, we get the words on the page, and the story continues to take shape in ways I think Grams would enjoy.

In the third week of February, I fly to Wichita for my two-day campus interview.

And I completely blow it.

They throw me into the classroom first thing Monday morning for my teaching demonstration, for which I’ve carefully prepared a lecture, slides, and discussion about textile production in the colonial US, the topic I was told to teach as per the syllabus of the course I’m stepping into. The students are highly engaged and demonstrate strong critical thinking during my guided discussion, so I think I’ve done well, but right after the class, two members of the search committee pull me aside and ask why I didn’t teach about my primary area of expertise. I explain that I was given specific instructions about teaching within their syllabus. They tell me I should’ve disregarded the instructions since this was my chance to demonstrate who I am as a scholar, and any candidate would be expected to show off their strengths.

The conversation gives me major flashbacks to my last job and how often I took the blame for anything that went wrong, even when I was following Carl’s explicit directions. I’m left reeling as seven years of terrible memories surface, throwing me off my game for the rest of the interview process. I blunder my way through my research presentation, which only three people show up for, even though it’s scheduled in a lecture hall that seats five hundred. I muster polite enthusiasm no one else even attempts to mirror during an agonizing formal interview with all five members of the search committee, one of whom doodles what appears to be some sort of cat/vampire bat hybrid for the entire hour while another never looks up from his phone. I chat with the only two students who show up for a “meet the candidate” session, who also head out after about ten minutes, leaving me alone in a sparsely furnished break room that has a sink full of dirty dishes and a blurred sign on the fridge that says Anything without a name on it will be discarded immediately. A quick peek inside the fridge suggests this policy is not being upheld.

Philippa: You ever hear anything back about UKW?

Amelia: Sorry!! Thought I replied about that ages ago. Hang on. Incoming . . .