Chapter Two #2
This one feels especially dramatic, though, so I grab my bag from the passenger seat and root around for a painkiller as my phone lights up with a text from Maddie.
I probably shouldn’t have told her about the publisher’s offer to write The Last Mountain.
If I’m honest, I’d hoped she’d talk me out of it.
But no. She thought the book was a great idea.
That writing it would take me on some magical journey through grief and out the other side.
Now I realize I should have kept it from her as I’m doing with everyone else, but I tell Maddie everything, and so here we are.
With a link to yet another article.
I think you should look at this one. It’s on writer’s block.
At that, I scoff.
Writer’s block.
I don’t have writer’s block. I have a dead father and a mountain of bills to pay. I have life block.
Besides, Dad would never dream of having something like that.
He always said he didn’t have time to. One look at his bibliography and you can see why.
He wrote twenty-four novels in his lifetime.
Twenty-four novels, eleven short stories, and a library of scribbles and notes and thoughts.
He spent years working as a teacher during the day and telling stories at night—raising me as a single parent all the while.
And if he hadn’t come up with the world of Ravian, that’s how it might have stayed.
I was seven when it happened. When his dream became a reality.
The first book in a new series was published to small but overwhelming praise.
Most fantasy books weren’t mainstream back then.
They were at the back of the bookshop, hidden away.
But this one kept going, the word of mouth strong and passionate, and by the time the second one came out eighteen months later, it was tipped as the most anticipated novel of the decade.
And then he did a magical thing.
He did it again.
And again and again and again.
I didn’t get it at first. I was used to seeing his face in the local paper. I understood it. We were from a small town. Of course everyone knew my dad. Everyone knew everyone.
It was only when I got older, when I started traveling, that I got a real sense of it.
Germany on a school trip. France on a summer exchange.
Translated versions with unfamiliar covers at Spanish bus stops.
A woman reading one on the plane with a spine so creased I was surprised it didn’t fall apart when she turned the page.
But despite his newfound fame, our lives didn’t change.
Dad didn’t have much use for money. In fact, he spent most of his career giving it away.
Scholarships, grants, prizes. There isn’t a university in Ireland that doesn’t have a plaque with his name on it.
And it wasn’t just the literary world. Dog shelters, cat shelters.
A stranger needing medical care. He sponsored shirts for the local football team.
He bought a school bus for the village down the road.
Money was for spending, and life was for living.
He wasn’t irresponsible. He just didn’t believe in keeping it for himself.
But he did make one purchase just for us. One very large, ill-advised purchase of the kind that everyone should make at least once when their life and fortune changes so dramatically for the better.
He bought the house I’m sitting in front of right now.
Four acres, three floors, two rooms hidden behind bookcases, and no architectural style to speak of.
He was obsessed with it. His readers were too. Maybe because he only ever showed them hints of it. Snaps in the background of author photos. Brief descriptions in articles he wrote.
I think he loved it even more than his books.
And when he died, he left it to me.
And now it’s ruining my life.
The thing about big houses is that you need an equally big fund to maintain them. Especially if they’re falling down. And even if they’re not falling down, there’s still property tax and land tax and a million different ways to take money that I don’t have.
I know what the smart thing to do is. The simplest thing. Sell it for a small fortune and set myself free. It’s not as if there wouldn’t be any takers.
But I can’t sell it.
I won’t.
Dad wanted me to have this house because it was his favorite place in the world. He didn’t want it to go to anyone else. And privately, selfishly, I know that to give it up would be like saying a final goodbye to him. And I’m not ready to do that yet.
So when, a few months ago, I got an email from his old editor, I sent a reply. And after a few days of talking, when Casey Richardson offered me enough money to solve all my problems, I said yes.
All I had to do was the impossible. Write Ravian’s final book.
At the time, I figured, why not? I’ve written books before.
And what Casey said to me in that first email was true.
No one knows that world better than me. They couldn’t, even if they tried.
Even if they read all the books a hundred times over.
Even if they debated on forums and wrote fan fiction and spent their whole lives growing up loving it.
They didn’t have an ounce of the information I had access to.
The notebooks filled with my dad’s neat handwriting.
The rough maps scrawled on napkins. All the snippets of all the stories he never had the chance to explore.
I did my research and wrote the first few chapters in a daze, focused on the money and nothing else. But as soon as Casey gave me the thumbs-up, as soon as this became reality, it was as though a curtain came down over my brain, stopping everything in its tracks.
I’ve been stuck ever since.
Another text arrives from Maddie. Another link to another article, and I pop the headache pills into my mouth, swallowing them dry as I tilt my seat back.
As though I’ve just given my body permission, exhaustion hits me, and I reach out blindly, turning on the radio and letting the quiet voices discussing the hot weather tune out everything else.
Rest.
Just for a few minutes, anyway.
Just a few minutes and then I’ll fix it all.