Chapter One #3
“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.
“I’ll miss you,” I say.
“We’ll keep in touch, no matter where you end up.” She pulls back but gives my hands a reassuring squeeze before letting go. “And for what it’s worth, I kind of envy you.”
I blink at her in confusion. “Because I’m jobless, homeless, and likely to only Netflix and chill in the most literal sense of the phrase for the foreseeable future?”
“Because you’re doing something brave, even if it doesn’t feel like that right now.”
Her comment hits me like a warm hug, and I will myself to believe it.
If anyone knows anything about bravery, it’s Amelia.
I might work with a bunch of mediocre white men who band together the instant one of them feels his self-imposed significance is threatened, but Amelia has way more to deal with, like listening to her colleagues complain about affirmative action hires while patting themselves on the back for making a vague public DEI statement they pulled off a pop star’s Instagram post. Not that everyone who works here is a racist, sexist asshole.
A lot of incredible people are trying to improve academic culture, but it’s an uphill battle.
Amelia and I part with plans to meet for dinner and drinks at the end of the week.
I keep my goodbye upbeat and my expression cheerful as I wave from my doorway while peeling my name off the wall just outside my door.
It’s scribbled on a torn scrap of notebook paper I taped up as a joke when I first started, declaring with a heavy dose of sarcasm that it would still be up when I retired.
Removing it from an office that never should’ve been an office is, perhaps, a fitting end to my tenure, and one that should take the edge off my decision to quit, and yet . . .
And yet . . .
As I take in the half-emptied shelves, the books on the floor, and the desk at which I penned three monographs and graded countless student papers, a single thought engulfs me.
What in the hell have I done?