Chapter Five #2
Haley matches her optimistic tone. “Or being a consultant on period movies?”
I tuck myself into the corner of the porch, letting my siblings brainstorm with enthusiasm, as though I could start any of their suggested jobs tomorrow with only a phone call and a smile.
As though plenty of people skilled in those careers wouldn’t be first in line.
As though the jobs pay a living, steady wage.
As though I’d be happy in them, simply because they involve history.
While my siblings shout out more unrealistic job titles—archivist!
heritage home tour guide! reenactor! American Girl doll designer!
—my parents’ warnings about pursuing a history PhD without a second concentration in business, marketing, or anything else with “real earning potential” ring in my ears.
I understand them now in a way I didn’t at eighteen or twenty-two, but also, if everyone only pursued careers with “real earning potential,” who would paint murals, design chairs, landscape urban gardens, and compose symphonies?
Life isn’t only about making money. It can’t be.
It isn’t for any of my siblings, even though their interests are more stable than mine: government, medicine, software engineering, and data science.
I’ll find a way to afford groceries and a roof over my head. Preferably a roof that doesn’t leak.
“Are we plotting Philippa’s new career?” Louisa asks as she joins us on the porch.
I sink farther into the corner. All four of my siblings together can be a lot.
Eleanor fills Louisa in on the discussion so far. Louisa perks up, though she’s by far the perkiest of the five of us, even at her most sedate, so the change is barely discernible.
“Why don’t you write the rest of Grams’s books?” she asks.
I choke out an uncomfortable laugh. “The pirate books?”
“Exactly! The Zane Scarlett ones. Numbers thirty-five through forty.”
“You’re kidding, right? Even Grams didn’t know what would happen in them.”
“Yes, she did. She outlined everything before she died.”
“I thought that was a rumor,” Eleanor says.
“It was. It is,” I say. “If there was any truth to it, we’d know by now.”
This elicits murmurs of agreement as we piece together memories with each other about the months after our grandmother’s death, when book thirty-four came out with its cliff-hanger ending and the internet blew up with speculation about how Iris Flynn really intended to end her series.
Within the family, we all heard her talk about story points to come.
Zane and Euphoria finally parting ways so he could meet a new romantic lead.
A quest for the kidnapped heir to a besieged throne.
Zane besting the dogged officer who’d been pursuing him since book one, or discovering his father was some sort of sea god, embroiling him in a war between deities while he grappled with his unexpected immortality.
She was full of ideas, but her editor had no clear information to work from, even after our mother scoured the house for notebooks or files.
If she’d found anything, another writer would’ve written and published all six books already.
Not that our mother is a calculating opportunist, scheming to make a buck, but she didn’t see much point in keeping any of Grams’s work secret or within the family.
She wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Dylan continuing the series, either, when Grams floated it.
Like the rest of us, our mom thought of him as her assistant, not a novelist in his own right, something I make a mental note to ask him about.
Either way, with clear enough outlines, our mom would’ve worked with the publisher to hire an author with name recognition and a bestselling sales record, ensuring Iris Flynn’s posthumous novels had the strongest chance of market success.
As the discussion ebbs, Louisa shrugs. “Maybe Mom missed something.”
“Unlikely,” I say. “Also, I’ve done a pretty deep clean this past week. And Dylan’s been living there for six years. If something existed, wouldn’t one of us have found it by now?”
Louisa shrugs again, displaying an enviable ability to let anything bounce off her.
“Maybe Dylan has found them,” she says. “Maybe he’s been writing the books in secret.”
Haley drums her purple fingernails on the arm of the chair. “Six years. Six books.”
Riley blinks in confusion. “So he’s saving his manuscripts to publish all six at once?”
“He can’t publish any of them at all without the estate’s permission,” Eleanor says.
“Maybe he’s counting on a loophole,” Haley says.
“No. No,” I say through a firm headshake. “I mean, it’s possible, but I can’t see it.”
“Because you have a crush on him?” Louisa asks, a little too hopefully.
“Because he doesn’t strike me as someone who’d abuse his friendship with Grams. Or, to be honest, as someone who’s spent the last six years in a flurry of creative productivity.”
More nods and more murmurs as my siblings continue speculating on the existence of the mysterious outlines and what might’ve become of them, building a collective excitement about the possibility that the story Grams intended to tell might not be over.
I have to admit, it’s a nice thought, and I can’t completely dismiss it, no matter how slim the odds seem.
“Seriously, Phil,” Louisa presses. “You could do this.”
“I’ve only ever written nonfiction,” I say, a key point she seems to have forgotten.
“But you’ve written,” Haley encourages. “Three books. What’s one more?”
“And you did say you wanted to pivot,” Eleanor adds.
“You have the perfect research background for the setting,” Riley says.
“For the real setting,” I argue. “Not for the fantasy version Grams wrote.”
“Whatever.” Louisa flicks a hand, her trademark gesture. “So you make the ocean sapphire instead of blue. Drop in a sea monster. Plant some cursed treasure on a deserted island.”
I choke out a strangled laugh, amazed my siblings aren’t instantly rejecting this idea.
Maybe they don’t know me as well as I thought they did.
Or maybe I don’t know myself.
“And the romance?” I ask.