Page 81 of Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy

“No.” I slide onto a stool at the island and reach for a cookie. They’re warm, gooey, familiar, nostalgic, and made with love, and they taste like everything good in the world.

Haley lines up three mugs on the island. “But you’re feeling good about your decision?”

“I’m feeling a lot of things about my decision,” I say. “Happy. Sad. Anxious. Hopeful. Thankful. Proud. A little bit excited. A lot scared.” I flick a crumb off my thigh, remember I’m not in my own house, and pick it up off the beautiful tiled floor so I can toss it into the beautiful farmhouse sink set into the beautiful marble countertop. Everything in this house was carefully selected. Every doorknob. Every light switch. It was Haley and Mischa’s labor of love while they were trying to get pregnant, nearly a decade of work. “Are you really going to sell this place?”

Haley looks around fondly. “I think so. Mischa loves being a stay-at-home dad, and Beth adores him. It’s working for us. We put a lot into this house, but it isn’t right for us anymore.”

I have to smile at that, and at how her ability to adapt might help me adapt, too, something I’ve been considering since she mentioned her house at the bridal salon, and even more so since I got Amelia’s text about pursuing an unaffordable dream. I’d find a way.

I don’t have that “way” yet, and my dreams are evolving too swiftly to pinpoint the one I most want to pursue, but if my job search has made one thing perfectly clear this year, it’s that the problems in my last job aren’t isolated. Any academic position will likely include some of the same challenges. Workload imbalances. A lack of departmental support for setting boundaries on my time or saying no to unreasonable student demands. A top-down culture that fails to value its employees in accordance with their skills and efforts, rewarding those who accomplish little but boast the loudest while ignoring those who do meaningful work without constantly demanding praise. Yes, being a history professor was my dream, but it’s not my dream anymore, and by the time I got up to watch the sunrise this morning, I knew I was ready to chase a new dream. I informed my siblings through our group text. The thread erupted with celebration.

Haley slides me another cookie while Eleanor checks the kettle.

“Any more thoughts about what you’ll do next?” she asks.

“Yes and no,” I say. “I contacted the museum in Boston about more archival work. A curriculum development company I worked with a few years ago might be hiring this summer. I reached out to a sailing school to see if they need instructors. Out of sheer curiosity, I even looked up the Portland diner where Grams used to waitress, and they’re hiring, which is hardly my dream job, but it could be a fantastic research opportunity if I write her biography.”

Haley grabs my wrist, and Eleanor nearly spills her tea.

I can’t help but smile again, lit up inside by the same excitement I felt when Dylan and I found Grams’s notebooks, or when I saw the initial renovations on the ship. Not just excitement but wonder, curiosity, and perhaps, most of all, a sense of possibility.

“I kept looking at our family photos this week,” I tell my sisters. “They got me thinking. Despite all the important history I’ve studied and taught—the icons, the empires, the innovations and discoveries—the history that interests me most right now is our family’s.”

Haley tears up as Eleanor quickly produces tissues, one of her many superpowers.

“It’s a beautiful idea,” Haley says.

“Grams would be so honored,” Eleanor says.

“I hope so.” I resettle her shawl around my shoulders. “In the meantime, I’ll reduce my expenses, take whatever job I can find, hire a really skilled career counselor, babysit if either of you wants a date night, and I’ll live, be, exist, watch the trees bloom, collect sea glass at low tide, and allow myself to stop thinking I have to keep wanting the same things I wanted when I was in my twenties simply because they were part of my plan. Like you said about this house, what was right for me once isn’t right anymore, and it’s time I discover what is.”

Eleanor presses a palm to her chest, gazing across the island with warmth and pride, while Haley wraps me in one of her side hugs, both of them showering me with sisterly affection I’m so grateful for and that I’ll need to rely on more than ever in the days to come.

“And if Mom pulls the rights to the books?” Haley asks.

“I don’t know.” I exhale slowly, trying to shake off the tension her question provokes. “I hope she’ll at least let Grams’s editor look at our manuscript, if or when Kate thinks it’s worth sending. And while I’d love to sell it, maybe what matters most is that we wrote it.”

Eleanor lets out a soft laugh, making the steam on her tea swirl. “We’ll get Louisa plotting on your behalf. You know she’s dying to see your name on a pirate romance, especially if she can use it to orchestrate a reunion between you and ‘the pirate king.’”

I laugh, too, picturing Louisa scheming to sway our mother. I doubt her efforts would affect my future in the ways she hopes, but knowing my sisters have my back reaffirms my decision to stay close by, to accept that home and family are more important to me than I once thought, and it’s worth seeing what happens when I fully embrace that knowledge.

How do you know when something’s worth fighting for?

Maybe you don’t, not with absolute certainty. But you do know when not fighting feels so wrong, all you can do is roll up your sleeves, brace yourself, and give it your best shot. Even if it means letting go of the absolute last thing you ever thought you’d part with.

I get out my phone, set it on the counter, and stare at it like I’m facing down my enemy.

“One more try getting hold of Dylan?” Haley asks.

I shake my head. “I’ve sent him enough messages already. He knows I’m ready to talk if he ever wants to talk to me. And while I’d do a lot of things for a chance to keep him in my life, he has to meet me partway.” I let that comment sit for a minute, fighting a powerful instinct to backpedal. I miss him so much, and I hate that I didn’t cling to him while I had the chance, but I can’t be the only one to be brave. “This is the right choice for me. Whether it’s the right choice for us is a question I can’t answer right now. Not without knowing he’ll fight for me, too.”

I hit speaker on my phone and dial our mom. She picks up after a few rings.

“Philippa? What’s wrong? What did you do?”

I swap an eye roll with my sisters. Ah, Mom. So predictable.

“Mom? Hi,” I say. “I’m ready to sell the house. But I’m not taking the job.”