The cursor blinked at me from the middle of a blank Word document, a tiny blue pulse on a sea of white. Next to my laptop, on the chipped kitchen table, a glass of iced tea sweated onto a coaster printed with a faded American flag, the stripes warped from too many Fourth of July parties. It was 7:13 a.m. in suburban Oregon, six hours before my meeting with Hartfell Publishing, and my 400-page novel—two years of work, seven hundred hours of writing, countless revisions—was gone.

Every folder. Every backup location. Every cloud sync. Nothing.

For one ridiculous second I actually thought about calling 911. “Hi, yes, I’d like to report a homicide, someone murdered my book.” But you don’t call the police for the death of a file, even if it feels like a crime scene.

What you do is stare at the blinking cursor and try not to scream.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I opened my external drive. Empty. I checked the automatic backup folder. Empty. I checked the recycle bin. Empty. The cursor kept blinking, patient, like it had all the time in the world.

“Looking for something?” my dad asked.

I jumped. He was leaning in the doorway, ceramic mug in hand, steam curling up like it was laughing at me. The mug said BEST DAD IN AMERICA in navy blue letters, a Father’s Day gift I regretted more with every year.

He had that smirk on his face—the one that meant he thought he’d won something.

“My novel,” I said. My voice came out strangled. “Where is it?”

He took a slow sip of coffee, savoring the moment. “Oh, that. I deleted it last night.”

For a second, the words didn’t compute. They just hung there between us, like bad dialogue in a draft you haven’t edited yet.

“You…what?” My throat went dry.

“You left your laptop open in the living room.” He shrugged. “Very careless, Naomi.” Another sip. Another little victory in his eyes. “I did you a favor.”

Heat crawled up my neck. “You deleted my book. All four hundred pages.”

“All four hundred pages of that fantasy nonsense.” He waved his mug like he was dismissing smoke. “Dragons and magic and whatever else you’ve been wasting your time on for the last two years.” He snorted. “Honestly, I’m impressed you could waste that much time.”

I grabbed the edge of the table to keep my hands from shaking. “That’s two years of work. I have a meeting with a publisher today.”

“Had,” he corrected, setting the mug down with a little ceramic thud. “You had a meeting with a publisher. I saved you the embarrassment.”

The cursor blinked on the empty screen behind him. I wanted to throw the laptop through it.

“Good morning,” my mom said as she appeared beside him, tightening the belt on her floral robe. She glanced at the blank screen, then at me. “Oh, you told her?”

“Told me?” My voice cracked. “You were in on this?”

“Writers are just failed adults playing pretend,” she said, like she was explaining taxes. “It’s time you grew up, Naomi.”

“Grew up and did what?” My chest felt too tight. “That book was my job.”

“Your sister sells cosmetics and makes real money,” Mom cut in smoothly. “Sixty thousand dollars last year.” She raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to be impressed. “What did your little stories make?”

“Nothing,” Dad answered for me. “Because they don’t go anywhere. Because it’s all in your head. Hartfell Publishing probably meets with hundreds of delusional wannabes a year. At least now you can focus on getting a real job.”

I swallowed hard. “I haven’t published yet. That’s what today is for.”

“This meeting was a waste of time,” Dad said with finality. “We paid forty thousand dollars for that master’s degree in creative writing so you could sit in your room making up dragons like a child?” He shook his head. “Artists need time to create,” he added in a mocking falsetto, throwing my own words back at me. “Well, time’s up.”

He pointed vaguely toward the front of the house, toward the driveway where my ten-year-old Honda sat. “You’re twenty-eight years old, Naomi, and you’re still living in our house, eating our food, costing us money. Either get a real job or get out.”

The cursor blinked behind him. Blink. Blink. Like it was asking if I was going to write this scene down.

“The meeting is in six hours,” I said quietly. “This could change everything.”

Mom crossed her arms. “Nothing’s changing. You’re going to call them, apologize for wasting their time, and then you’re going to fill out job applications. Chloe’s company is hiring. So is the grocery store down the street. Even McDonald’s would be better than this…pretending.”

She said “pretending” like it was a dirty word.

“Did you tell her about the opportunity at my company?” Chloe sang as she swanned into the kitchen, all lashes and lip gloss and a designer purse that cost more than my car. “We need someone to pack orders. Minimum wage, but it’s honest work.” She dropped a glossy employee handbook on the table, right next to my laptop. The happy warehouse workers on the cover grinned up at me like a threat.

“I have a master’s degree,” I said, staring at the handbook like it was written in another language.

“Which cost us forty thousand dollars,” Mom reminded me. “For what? So you could sit up here making up stories like a child?”

“Stories that don’t pay the bills,” Dad added.

They had once raised me on bedtime stories, bought me my first notebook, clapped when I “published” stapled-together tales at the kitchen table. Somewhere along the way, wonder had curdled into contempt.

“Naomi,” Mom said, her voice softening into the tone she used when she wanted obedience, “this is reality. Chloe made sixty thousand dollars last year.”

Chloe smiled, already scrolling her phone to pull up the number. “Sixty-two, actually.” She turned the screen toward me like it was proof of concept. “See? Real money.”

“And you made what?” Dad asked. “Zero?”

I stared at the empty document. At the blinking cursor. At the coaster with the warped American flag, the plastic chipped right where the stars should be.

“This is for your own good,” Dad said. “You’ll thank us someday.”

I knew one thing with absolute, crystalline clarity: I would never thank them for this.

They thought they had killed my book. All they had really done was write themselves out of my story.

They left me sitting there, staring at the blank screen, the iced tea slowly warming beside my elbow. Two years. Seven hundred hours of writing. Characters I had lived with, breathed life into, loved like friends—gone because my father decided I needed a reality check.

They had no idea the book was already in print.

And they were about to find out what happens when you try to delete a writer’s dreams.

See, what my parents didn’t understand about modern publishing—what they had never bothered to ask in their crusade to make me “normal”—was that traditional publishers don’t hold meetings with random aspiring writers who email a Word doc and a prayer.

They meet with authors who already have deals.

They meet with writers who have signed contracts, cashed advance checks, survived months of revisions with editors.

My meeting at Hartfell Publishing at 2:00 p.m. today wasn’t a pitch.

It was a launch strategy session for a book that was already printed, already shipped to warehouses, already listed on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for pre-order. The book I had sold six months ago for a mid–six-figure advance I had never told my family about.

The cursor blinked on the empty document like it was in on the secret.

I closed the laptop, slid it into my bag, and pulled out my phone.

“Naomi!” Diane, my editor, answered on the second ring, her voice bright and already caffeinated. “Tell me you’re calling because you’re too excited to sleep. Marketing is over the moon about this afternoon.”

“Small hiccup,” I said.

“Oh?” Paper rustled on her end. “Please tell me it’s a good hiccup and not a we-lost-the-author hiccup.”

“My parents deleted my local copy of the manuscript,” I said. “They found my laptop open and decided to give me a reality check.”

There was a beat of silence, then Diane laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “They what?” Another laugh, incredulous this time. “How very 1990s of them.”

I slumped back in my chair. “They think they saved me from embarrassment.”

“Good thing we have it backed up in about seventeen places,” she said. “Plus the ten thousand physical copies sitting in the warehouse right now.” Her voice warmed, a smile I could hear. “Your parents are about ten thousand copies too late.”

Ten thousand. The number settled in my chest like a promise.

“They don’t know about the deal,” I admitted. “Or the advance. Or the tour. Or the fifteen emails from Marketing. Or any of it.”

“Ah.” Diane’s voice softened. “One of those families. That explains the P.O. Box.”

I’d insisted all my publishing correspondence go through a post office box downtown, not the house. At the time, I’d told myself it was for privacy. Really, it had been pure self-preservation.

“How do you want to play this?” she asked.

I thought about years of “When are you going to grow up?” About watching my parents praise Chloe for every bonus check while dismissing my publications in literary magazines like they were hobby certificates. About the contempt in their voices when they called me a failed adult.

I thought about the blinking cursor on the empty document and the ten thousand copies of my book that existed whether my parents approved or not.

“I’ll be at the meeting,” I said. “But I might be looking for temporary housing afterward.”

“Honey,” Diane said, “with your advance, you can look for permanent housing. See you at two.”

After we hung up, I opened my email.

Seventeen unread messages from my agent, each with increasingly excited subject lines about the launch: COVER REVEAL ROUNDUP!!!, PODCAST REQUEST, INTERVIEW WITH BIG SFF BLOG, FOREIGN RIGHTS OFFER—CALL ME.

Cover reveals from book bloggers who’d gotten advance copies. Interview requests from podcasts I actually listened to. One email in particular made me pause and smile.

Ms. Blake,

We’re pleased to confirm your book, The Last Dragon Keeper, will be featured in our Staff Picks display at all Barnes & Noble locations starting next Tuesday.

Ten thousand copies and a national Staff Picks table. Not bad for a “failed adult.”

I had six hours until the meeting.

Six hours to decide how to handle the people who had just tried to delete my life’s work.

I could tell them now. I could pull up the Barnes & Noble website, show them my cover on the front page, watch their faces slide from smug satisfaction to shock. I could make them grovel, apologize, beg to be part of my success.

Or I could do what writers do best.

I could control the narrative.

I showered, blow-dried my hair, and put on my “interview outfit”—the navy blazer and black trousers they’d mocked as “playing dress-up” when I’d worn them to author events. I packed a duffel bag with essentials: my laptop, my contract folder, the worn spiral notebook where The Last Dragon Keeper had been born in half-legible scribbles, and the few sentimental things I couldn’t replace.

Then I went downstairs for breakfast like nothing had happened.

Dad was at the table with the morning paper, coffee mug parked on top of a story about inflation. The BEST DAD IN AMERICA letters smiled up at me, oblivious. Mom stood at the stove flipping pancakes. The TV in the corner muttered about the stock market. The American flag magnet on the fridge was crooked again, its red stripes tilting uphill.

“There she is,” Dad said cheerfully. “Our new recruit to the real world.”

“Actually, yes,” I said, pouring myself coffee with hands that, miraculously, did not shake. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

Mom perked up like someone had just told her the pastor was coming to dinner. “Oh?”

“You’re right,” I said. The words tasted like cardboard on my tongue. “It’s time to face reality.”

Chloe, already in full makeup and athleisure, leaned her hip against the counter. “So you’ll come work for me?” She grinned. “The warehouse needs box packers. It’s not glamorous, but it’s honest.”

“I’ll go to that interview at Chloe’s company,” I said.

Chloe snorted. “It’s not an interview. You just show up and start packing boxes.”

“Even better,” I said. “When do I start?”

Everything in the room shifted in an instant.

Dad clapped me on the shoulder, all but glowing. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

Mom actually smiled. “I knew you’d see sense eventually.”

“Are you serious?” Chloe asked, suspicion crinkling her forehead. “You’re giving up the writing thing?”

“Writers are just failed adults, right?” I said lightly. “And I’m tired of failing.”

Dad laughed, delighted. “Exactly. Time to join the real world.”

“That publisher meeting was a delusion,” Mom said, sliding a pancake onto my plate. “You got carried away.”

“I know,” I said, cutting into the pancake like it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen. “I should go cancel it in person, though. Professional courtesy.”

“Waste of gas,” Dad muttered.

“It’s on the way to Chloe’s store,” I said. “I’ll fill out the application after I stop by.”

They were so pleased with their victory they didn’t see the duffel bag tucked by the door. They didn’t notice that I had my contract folder in my hand instead of a resume.

“This is wonderful,” Mom gushed. “We can finally tell people you’re doing something real.”

I swallowed the urge to ask what, exactly, had been unreal about writing a book that ten thousand strangers would soon be holding in their hands.

I let them have their moment.

Sometimes the best revenge isn’t slamming doors.

Sometimes it’s letting people cheer for the funeral of a career that is already very much alive.

I left the house with their blessing, Chloe’s employee handbook under one arm and my duffel over my shoulder. As I pulled the front door closed, the crooked American flag magnet caught my eye through the narrow kitchen window, clinging stubbornly to the fridge.

For the first time that morning, I smiled.

If their version of the American dream involved deleting their daughter’s art, they could keep it.

Downtown Portland wore its usual gray like a favorite sweater. Hartfell Publishing occupied the top three floors of one of those gorgeous old brick buildings with arched windows and a lobby that smelled like coffee and paper and old money.

I checked in at the front desk.

“Naomi!” Claire, the receptionist, lit up when she saw me. Her tortoiseshell glasses slid down her nose as she leaned forward. “Love the outfit. Very ‘author about town.'”

“Thanks,” I said, warmth blooming under my blazer. “Is everyone here?”

“Conference room B,” she said, tapping her keyboard. “They’re setting up the display copies now.”

Display copies.

Of my book.

The one my dad thought he’d deleted with a few smug taps on a keyboard.

Conference room B looked like every writer’s dream and every imposter syndrome nightmare.

Stacks of hardcovers filled the sideboard. A large poster of my cover stood on an easel by the window: a dragon curled protectively around a crumbling tower, moon rising behind dark mountains, the title The Last Dragon Keeper arcing over it in silver letters. My name—NAOMI BLAKE—stretched across the bottom in a font that made my heart stutter.

“There she is—our star,” Diane said, crossing the room in three quick strides to squeeze my hands. She was in her usual blazer-and-jeans uniform, a pen tucked behind one ear. “Ready to let the world meet your dragon?”

I glanced at the nearest stack of books. Fifty copies, maybe. A tiny visible fraction of the ten thousand already sitting in warehouses across the country.

“More than ready,” I said.

For the next two hours, my life looked nothing like the failure my parents had scripted for me.

We talked marketing strategies and social media plans, blog tour schedules and pre-order campaigns. The marketing director pulled up slides showing pre-orders already exceeding expectations. My agent joined via video call to talk about foreign rights negotiations.

“Kirkus gave us a star,” Diane said casually, flipping to a page in a packet and sliding it toward me.

I stared at the printed review, at the little black star next to my title. “You’re kidding.”

“Publishers Weekly called it ‘a fierce, tender debut with teeth,'” the marketing director added, reading from another sheet.

My heart did that weird double-beat thing again.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I saw my dad’s finger hitting the delete key.

Somewhere in the front of my mind, I saw the stack of hardcovers, weighty and real and utterly immune to his control.

“We’re thinking a thirty-city tour,” the marketing director said, tapping her pen against a map. “Start with Powell’s here in Portland, obviously. Then Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Fly you out to New York, Chicago, maybe Dallas. We’ll coordinate with the stores Hartfell already has relationships with.”

“That sounds…” I exhaled. “That sounds perfect.”

We signed papers, went over interview talking points, discussed the already-in-progress sequel. Someone snapped photos of me holding the book, laughing, pretending to be casual while my hands wanted to shake.

At some point, Diane pulled me aside by the coffee station.

“So,” she said, lowering her voice. “Housing situation.”

“I’ll figure it out,” I said. “I’ve got the advance money. I just need to find a place.”

“My sister’s looking for a roommate,” she said. “Nice apartment in the Pearl District. Writer-friendly. She’s a poet. Interested?”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Diane said. “We take care of our authors. Especially the ones whose families try to sabotage them. I’ll text her. Mention my name. You could probably move in this week.”

For the first time all day, something in my chest unclenched.

By the time I left the building, I was carrying a cardboard box full of my own books. My keys jingled in my pocket. My phone was buzzing nonstop.

Fifteen missed calls from Chloe.

Twenty texts ranging from WHERE ARE YOU??? to MOM IS LOSING IT to DAD SAYS GET HOME NOW.

I set the box of books carefully in the passenger seat of my Honda like a very dignified, very rectangular baby and drove across town to Chloe’s store.

Her cosmetics shop sat in a strip mall between a frozen yogurt place and a nail salon, a big banner in the window screaming GRAND OPENING and another one with a red, white, and blue “MADE IN THE USA” logo. Through the glass, I could see Chloe behind the counter, phone pressed to her ear, gesticulating as only she could.

I grabbed one of my books from the box, smoothed my blazer, and walked in.

The bell over the door jingled.

“I don’t know where she is,” Chloe was saying into the phone. “She said she was coming here, but—” She saw me. Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God. I have to call you back.”

She hung up without waiting for an answer.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “You’re three hours late. They gave the position to someone else!” Her voice dropped into a wounded whine. “Do you know how bad that makes me look?”

“That’s okay,” I said, setting the hardcover gently on the counter between us. “I had a meeting.”

“You said you were canceling.” Chloe’s eyes flicked down to the book, distracted. Then she froze. “What is this?”

She picked it up, fingers leaving faint smudges on the glossy jacket. Her lips parted as she took in the dragon on the cover, the title, my name.

“This is real,” she whispered.

“As real as your makeup sales,” I said. “More real, actually. This is my dream, printed and bound and about to be sold in every bookstore in America.”

She flipped to the copyright page, then to the author bio with my photo. Her face cycled through shock, anger, something like pride, then finally settled into the family default: resentment.

“You lied to us,” she said.

“I protected myself from you,” I replied, keeping my voice even. “There’s a difference.”

“Mom and Dad are going to—”

“What?” I cut in. “Delete it again? It’s a little late for that.”

I pulled out my phone and opened the Barnes & Noble website, scrolling until my cover filled the screen. The Last Dragon Keeper, pre-order now, Staff Picks.

“Check it out,” I said. “Though you could probably get the family discount if you asked nicely.”

She stared at the screen like it was in another language.

“Six months ago,” I said, “while you were bragging about your year-end bonus, I was signing a mid–six-figure book deal. While Mom was calling me a failure, I was working with editors. While Dad was plotting to delete my future, it was already printed.”

“Six…figure,” she echoed, like the words hurt. “I made sixty thousand dollars last year selling makeup.” She swallowed. “You made more?”

“Significantly more,” I said. “And that’s just the advance. There are royalties. Foreign rights. Maybe movie options.”

“Movie,” she repeated faintly. “Like Netflix or something?”

“Netflix is interested,” I said with a shrug I absolutely did not feel casual about. “My agent’s handling it.”

Chloe looked back down at the book. Her thumb traced the dragon’s wing.

“I used to write in high school,” she said suddenly. “Poetry. Remember?”

I did. Late nights in our shared room, her muttering over a notebook while I drafted my first terrible fantasy epics.

“Mom said it was stupid,” Chloe went on. “Said I should focus on things that made money.”

“Mom was wrong,” I said.

“Yeah,” she murmured.

Silence settled between us, thick and unfamiliar.

“Can I…” She swallowed. “Can I buy this? Not the family discount. Full price. I want to read my sister’s book. The real one, not the deleted one.”

Emotion stung the back of my eyes.

“Keep that one,” I said. “I’ve got a whole box in the car.”

She hugged the book to her chest like a shield.

“They’re going to lose their minds,” she said.

“Probably,” I agreed. “They’ll try to take credit. Say they pushed me to succeed.”

“They will.” Her mouth twisted. “They already started. Dad’s been saying if you do anything with writing, it’s only because he ‘forced you out of fantasy land.'”

I smiled, sharp and humorless. “Let them try. I’ve got two years of recordings of them calling me a failure. Hard to claim credit when there’s evidence.”

Chloe’s head snapped up. “You recorded them?”

“Writers observe everything,” I said. “We take notes. We remember. And sometimes we write barely disguised versions of our families into our books as the villains.”

Her eyes widened. “Did you?”

“Chapter twelve,” I said. “The Dragon Keeper’s family who try to sell her to the dark wizard because they think magic isn’t real. They burn her spell books.” I raised my eyebrows. “Sound familiar?”

Chloe gasped, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Dad’s going to sue you,” she said, half horrified, half delighted.

“He’s welcome to try,” I replied. “Parody is protected. Plus, he’d have to stand up in court and admit he’s the neglectful father in the story, on the record.”

For the first time since I’d walked in, Chloe actually laughed. “That’s kind of genius.”

“Writers are just failed adults,” I said. “We have nothing but time to plan our revenge.”

My phone started to buzz.

Dad.

I hit “answer” and set it on the counter between us, speaker on.

“Hi, Dad,” I said.

His voice came through low and controlled—the tone that had always meant danger. “You get to your sister’s store right now. We need to talk about this lying problem of yours.”

“I’m actually already here,” I said. “Chloe’s holding my book. Want to say hi, Chloe?”

Chloe made a strangled noise and lifted the hardcover closer like he could see it through the phone.

“Your little story?” Dad asked, trying for dismissive and landing somewhere closer to uncertain.

“My published novel,” I said. “The one you deleted. The one that’s already in warehouses. The one that paid me enough to move out, live comfortably, and never pack cosmetics boxes for minimum wage.”

Silence.

I could practically hear him Googling in his brain.

“That’s impossible,” he said finally. “Publishers don’t—”

“Publishers don’t what?” I asked. “Don’t publish fantasy? Don’t pay advances? Don’t work with ‘failed adults’ who refuse to grow up?”

Chloe snorted softly.

“If this is some self-published vanity project—” Dad started.

“One of the Big Five,” I cut in. “Check their website if you don’t believe me. Hartfell Publishing. I’m featured on the homepage today.”

There was a long pause, filled only by the faint hum of the store’s air conditioner.

I pictured him at the kitchen table, phone in one hand, other hand opening his laptop, fingers pounding the keys. I pictured the search results hitting his screen: my name, my cover, my face.

“You’ve been lying to us for months,” he said finally. “All these secrets.”

“You deleted my life’s work because you decided I was a failure,” I said. My voice stayed calm, but my hands were trembling now, adrenaline finally catching up. “You told everyone I lived in fantasy land. You called me a child. You tried to force me into a job I didn’t want. Who’s the real villain here, Dad?”

“We’re your parents,” he snapped. “We deserve—”

“You deserve exactly what you gave me,” I said quietly. “No support. No belief. No respect. So that’s what you get. No advance money. No reflected glory. No bragging rights at church about your successful daughter.”

“You can’t do that,” he said.

“I can,” I said. “I did. I am.”

The cursor blinked in my mind again, steady and sure.

“Get home now,” he ordered. “We’re going to discuss this.”

“I’m not coming home,” I said. “Ever. I have an apartment in the Pearl District to look at and a thirty-city book tour starting next week. I have interviews lined up and a sequel to write. I have a life, finally, one you can’t delete.”

“Naomi—”

I hung up.

The silence that followed was louder than his shouting would have been.

Chloe stared at me, still clutching my book.

“Sixty thousand,” she said numbly.

“What?”

“I made sixty thousand dollars last year,” she said. “Working myself into the ground selling lipstick. You made more than that with one book.”

“I made more than that signing my name on one contract,” I said. “And that’s just the beginning.”

She looked down at the dragon again, then back at me.

For a moment, I saw something crack in her facade. Not resentment. Not competition. Just…longing.

“They’re going to spend the rest of their lives rewriting this,” she said. “Telling everyone they always believed in you.”

“Good thing I’m the writer in the family,” I said. “I know how to control the narrative.”

My phone buzzed with a text.

Unknown number, Portland area code.

Diane says you need a place. I’m her sister. Two-bedroom in the Pearl. Rent is $900/month, utilities included. First chapter of your book made me cry (good tears). Can you move in tomorrow? Please say yes.

A laughing sob bubbled up in my chest.

“I have to go,” I told Chloe. “I have an apartment to look at.”

“What do I tell them?” she asked.

I picked up my phone and the now slightly smudged book.

“Tell them the truth,” I said. “Their failed daughter just became a published author. Their pretend writer just started a real career. Their disappointment just turned into someone they’ll spend the rest of their lives claiming they always believed in.”

“They’ll rewrite history,” she said.

“Let them,” I replied. “History’s just stories people agree on. And I’m very good at telling stories.”

She nodded slowly, hugging the book tighter. “Text me your new address?”

“I will,” I said.

“And, Naomi?” Her voice dropped. “I’m proud of you.”

That sentence did what a starred review and a six-figure check hadn’t quite managed. It loosened something in my chest that had been locked up since grad school.

“Thanks,” I said, my throat thick. “I’ll save you a seat at the Portland signing.”

I left her there behind the counter, my dragon on the laminate between us, the “MADE IN THE USA” banner fluttering slightly in the air conditioning.

The Pearl District apartment was on the fourth floor of a building with exposed brick and big windows and a view of the river if you leaned just right. My future roommate—purple hair, nose ring, a T-shirt that said POEMS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN—met me at the door with a hug.

“Anyone whose family tries to delete their art is welcome here,” she said, like it was house policy.

In the living room, a throw pillow embroidered with a tiny American flag sat on the couch, the stitches slightly crooked. It made me think of the magnet on my parents’ fridge, clinging to metal, insisting it represented the only version of success.

Maybe my version involved dragons and book tours instead.

That night, in my new room with its scuffed hardwood floors and sun-faded curtains, I stacked a box of my own books in the corner. Ten copies. Ten out of ten thousand. Ten little anchors tying me to a future no one could hit delete on.

I set my laptop on the thrift-store desk by the window and opened a new document.

For a moment, the screen was blank.

The cursor blinked, patient as ever.

I smiled at it.

“All right,” I murmured. “Let’s write this one together.”

My fingers hovered over the keys, then began to move.

Chapter One.

The day after her father deleted her book, Lydia Blake became a bestseller.

Sometimes the best revenge isn’t anger or confrontation.

Sometimes it’s ten thousand hardcovers sitting in warehouses your parents will never control, a Staff Picks table they can’t take credit for, a new life that doesn’t have room for people who only show up when there are bragging rights.

My parents thought they’d deleted my novel.

All they really deleted was my obligation to include them in its success.

The book was already in print.

Just like my new life.

Just like my future.

The first night in the Pearl, the apartment felt too quiet.

No TV drone from the living room. No dishwasher humming. No footsteps in the hallway outside my bedroom, no sudden knock followed by my mom’s voice asking if I’d applied for any “real” jobs that day.

Just the faint whoosh of traffic from the street below and the distant echo of someone’s music, a muffled bass line that rose and fell like breathing.

My new roommate, Tessa, knocked on my door around ten, two mismatched mugs in her hands. One said WORLD’S OKAYEST SISTER. The other had a tiny embroidered American flag decal that was peeling at the edges, like it had survived too many dishwasher cycles.

“Chamomile or peppermint?” she asked.

“Chamomile,” I said, closing my laptop. “Please.”

She passed me the flag mug and sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning her back against the bed frame like we’d been doing this for years.

“So,” she said. “Tell me the director’s cut.”

“The what?”

“The extended version,” she said. “Diane gave me the trailer. ‘Parents tried to delete her manuscript, we rescued it, now she’s moving in with you.’” Tessa took a sip of her tea. “I want the whole story.”

For a beat, I just stared at the steam curling over the tiny flag on the mug.

Then I started talking.

About being eight and reading The Hobbit under the covers with a flashlight. About Dad doing silly voices for bedtime stories, Mom tucking notebooks into my Christmas stocking because she said I “always had something to write down.” About the way they’d smiled when I’d announced in fifth grade that I wanted to be an author.

Then about high school college grad school, when “author” had slowly shifted from charming dream to personal flaw.

“They used to brag about me,” I said, rolling the mug between my palms. “Naomi’s such a reader. Naomi’s always writing. And then one day it was like a switch flipped. Suddenly I was ‘wasting potential.’ Suddenly reading was ‘hiding from life.’”

“What flipped it?” Tessa asked.

I thought about the unpaid internships, the adjunct positions that never materialized, the way bills had stacked up on the kitchen counter during my last year of grad school.

“Money,” I said finally. “Or the lack of it. Chloe started making real money selling mascara out of her trunk, and suddenly the only thing that meant anything was commission reports.” I huffed out a laugh. “They talk about her sales numbers at church. Like she’s some kind of…patriotic hero feeding the economy.”

The little flag on my mug stared up at me.

“Thing about money,” Tessa said, “is people will sell out anything for it. Even their own kids’ dreams.” She shrugged. “Ask me how I know.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“My dad burned my journals when I came out,” she said matter-of-factly. “Said he wasn’t going to ‘fund my lifestyle.’ I left, got two jobs, paid my own way through community college. Haven’t been back since.” She lifted her mug, a tiny, defiant toast. “Now he has to watch his ‘lifestyle’ daughter read poems on public radio sometimes. There’s justice in that.”

Something in my chest settled.

Maybe you didn’t have to be alone to be free.

“You’re allowed to feel all of it, you know,” Tessa added. “Anger, grief, relief. There’s no right way to lose a family you never truly had.”

The words hit somewhere deep.

Because that was what it felt like—not losing the family I’d wanted, but finally acknowledging the family I’d actually had.

“I’m mostly just…” I searched for the right word. “Done.”

“Done is allowed,” Tessa said.

We drank our tea. The city hummed around us. Somewhere below, a car horn blared once, annoyed and distant.

My phone buzzed where it lay on the nightstand.

Six new texts from Mom.

We need to talk.

This isn’t how family behaves.

Your father is very upset.

Call us back NOW.

Naomi, this is serious.

Running away solves NOTHING.

One from Dad.

We did everything for you and this is how you repay us? You humiliate us in front of Chloe after everything we’ve sacrificed. Get back here before you ruin your life.

And one from an unknown number.

Hi Ms. Blake! I got an advance copy of The Last Dragon Keeper at work today. Read it in one sitting. Cried three times. Thank you for writing Lydia. She made me feel less alone.

—M., Powell’s Books

I stared at that last message until the words blurred.

“Bad?” Tessa asked.

“Mostly predictable,” I said. “Plus one good one.” I turned the screen so she could read.

She smiled. “Print that one out. Tape it somewhere you’ll see it when the other ones get loud.”

I thought of the crooked magnet on my parents’ fridge, of all the years I’d measured myself against their version of success.

Maybe it was time to hang different symbols on my walls.

That night I slept better than I had in months.

Launch week came at me like a dragon in free fall.

First there was the Barnes & Noble Staff Picks display. Claire sent me a photo from the mall: a waist-high table draped in a navy cloth, a little cardboard sign that said STAFF PICKS in blocky white letters, and a neat pyramid of my books dead center. A tiny American flag on a toothpick stuck out of a nearby display of patriotic bookmarks, its stripes waving over the corner of my cover like it was saluting my dragon.

Then there was the article on a local book blog: LOCAL AUTHOR’S EPIC FANTASY LANDS NATIONAL DEAL. The reporter came to the Pearl to interview me, sitting on our sagging thrift-store couch while Tessa pretended not to listen from her room.

“What does your family think of your success?” the reporter asked, voice light, pen poised.

I thought of my dad’s finger hitting delete.

“It’s complicated,” I said, which was both the vaguest and truest answer.

The reporter laughed politely, probably assuming “complicated” meant a healthy amount of proud tears and framed newspaper clippings.

I didn’t correct her.

It was strange, this split-screen life.

On one side: emails from my agent with phrases like foreign rights and subrights and film interest. Zoom calls about bookplates and preorder campaigns. A calendar filling with store events: Powell’s, Elliott Bay, The Strand.

On the other side: my parents’ silence.

They didn’t call again after that first barrage of texts. Instead, they switched strategies.

Chloe sent me screenshots from the family group chat.

MOM: We’re all so PROUD of Naomi. We always knew she’d do something special with her writing.

DAD: I told the pastor she was a published author now. He wants to feature her in the newsletter.

AUNT LINDA: Didn’t you say she needed to get her head out of the clouds last Christmas?

MOM: That’s what good parents do. We pushed her to be her best.

AUNT LINDA: …By deleting her file?

MOM: That’s a private family matter.

Chloe added her own commentary under the screenshots.

CHLOE: Congrats, you’re officially the prodigal success story.

I typed and erased three different replies.

In the end, I just sent a dragon emoji.

“They’re rewriting the script,” Tessa said when I showed her.

“Of course they are,” I said. “They’re the heroes now. They always meant well. They only wanted what was best.” I could hear my mother’s future monologues like a bad audiobook. “They’ll say deleting the book ‘woke me up.’”

“You can’t stop them from talking,” Tessa said. “But you can decide what you give them to work with.”

That was the thing about narrative.

Everyone tells a version.

Only some people do it on purpose.

The night before my first official event at Powell’s, I stood in my little bedroom and practiced reading out loud. The passage I’d chosen from chapter three—the first time Lydia realizes her family doesn’t believe in her magic—sat printed on a sheet of paper in my hands.

“You’re doing that thing,” Tessa called from the hallway.

“What thing?”

“The thing where you read like the words might explode if you look at them too hard,” she said, stepping into my room. “Here.” She plucked the pages from my hand. “Again. But this time, you’re not defending them. You’re inviting us in. Big difference.”

I took a breath.

Tessa held up the pages like a script. “Tonight, the role of Naomi will be played by Naomi. Action.”

I laughed, tension breaking.

Then I read again.

This time, my voice didn’t shake.

Powell’s smelled like paper and dust and the best parts of my childhood.

A staff member led me through rows of shelves to a small stage tucked near the back, a simple setup of a lectern, two chairs, and a low table stacked with copies of The Last Dragon Keeper. On the wall behind it, a banner read AUTHOR EVENT in big, friendly letters.

“You’ve got a good crowd,” the staffer said, nodding toward the cluster of people already sitting in the folding chairs.

My stomach flipped.

Chloe sat in the second row, clutching her copy of the book like a talisman. Beside her, a girl with teal hair and a denim jacket covered in enamel pins bounced her foot nervously, glancing at the stage.

At the back of the room, near the door, two familiar figures stood stiffly.

Dad in his best church shirt. Mom in her “nice” cardigan. Both of them holding copies of my book with the price tags still on.

Of course they came.

They wouldn’t miss a chance to be part of the story.

“You okay?” Tessa whispered, appearing at my elbow.

“They’re here,” I said.

She followed my gaze. “Do you want them here?”

That was the question.

Did I?

My chest tightened. My fingers went cold.

I thought about the empty document on my laptop, the blinking cursor, the way it had felt like all my work had been erased.

Then I thought about the warehouse full of books, the Staff Picks tables, the emails from readers who already saw themselves in Lydia.

My parents couldn’t erase any of that.

I exhaled slowly.

“They can be here,” I said. “They just don’t get to run the show.”

“Then go run it,” Tessa said, squeezing my arm.

When the event started, I stepped up to the lectern, heart hammering. The little mic popped as I adjusted it.

“Hi,” I said, my voice echoing slightly in the small space. “I’m Naomi Blake, and apparently I wrote a book.” A nervous ripple of laughter rolled through the audience. “Thank you all for coming and for choosing to spend your Tuesday night with a dragon and a girl who won’t shut up about her.”

I read the passage from chapter three.

When I got to the part where Lydia’s parents tell her magic isn’t real, my voice wobbled once, then steadied. Chloe dabbed at her eyes with a tissue she pretended not to have.

During the Q&A, a teenager in the front row raised her hand.

“What inspired the family in the book?” she asked. “They felt…really real.”

The question hung in the air.

Behind the last row of chairs, my parents went very, very still.

I could have lied.

I could have said something vague about “universal dynamics” and “the tension between tradition and change.”

Instead, I smiled, just enough teeth.

“Short answer?” I said. “Years of people telling me that stories don’t matter.”

A soft murmur rippled through the crowd.

“Long answer,” I continued, “is that when I was drafting this book, I started noticing something: a lot of people love art as long as it’s safely on their terms. They love reading, but not the idea of someone close to them choosing to write as a career. They love music, but only if their kid studies something ‘practical.’” I let my gaze drift toward the back of the room without actually meeting my parents’ eyes. “So I asked myself, what happens when you give that kind of family real power over someone’s future? What happens when they decide they know what’s best and they’re willing to do anything to enforce it?”

My heart thudded.

“In my case,” I said lightly, “they tried to delete my book the week before this one launched.”

Gasps, then disbelieving laughter.

“Wait, for real?” someone called from the third row.

“For real,” I said. “They didn’t know about backups, warehouses, or ten thousand hardcovers, thankfully.” I spread my hands. “Turns out you can’t drag-and-drop a dragon into the trash.”

The room laughed.

On the back wall, my dad’s face flushed an alarming shade of red. My mom’s mouth pulled tight, but she stayed rooted to the spot, fingers white-knuckled around the book.

“Anyway,” I said, “Lydia’s family came out of that question: what happens when the people who are supposed to protect your dreams decide those dreams don’t count? And what does it take to choose yourself anyway?”

The teen in the front row nodded slowly, eyes shining.

That was the moment I realized the story wasn’t just mine anymore.

After the event, I signed books.

My name felt surreal under my hand, the ink still wet as the line of readers snaked past the table. Some were shy, some effusive, some shaking as they handed over their copies like they were afraid I might vanish if they blinked.

“Your parents really tried to delete it?” the teal-haired girl asked when she reached me. She had a stack of sticky notes in her hand with names scribbled on them. “My stepdad threw away my art portfolio when I said I wanted to apply to design school. I thought I was the only one.”

“You’re definitely not,” I said softly. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“I hid my new sketchbook in a guitar case,” she said. “He doesn’t know. I’m still applying.”

I wrote her name—Maya—in loopy script on the title page.

To Maya.

Hide your dragons where no one can reach them.

She blinked fast, then smiled.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

By the time the line thinned, my hand ached.

That was when my parents approached.

Chloe hovered a few feet away, nervous and watchful, my book clutched against her chest like a barrier she might deploy at any second.

“Naomi,” Mom said, plastering on her best church smile. “That was…very nice.”

Up close, I could see the strain around her eyes.

“Congratulations,” Dad said. His voice had the brittle brightness he used when talking to people from the homeowners’ association.

“Thank you,” I said.

He slid his copy of the book across the table.

“Just your name is fine,” he said. “No funny messages.”

Normally, I asked people who to make it out to.

Normally, I wrote something personal.

This time, I just signed my name.

“We’re proud of you,” Mom said. The words sounded like she’d practiced them in the mirror. “We always knew you had something special.”

Chloe made a small, incredulous noise behind her.

I capped my pen slowly.

“You deleted my book,” I said quietly. “Last week.”

Mom’s smile flickered. “We were worried about you. You were living in a fantasy world.”

“I was living in a world where I’d worked hard for something and you refused to see it,” I said. “You didn’t ask questions. You didn’t try to understand. You just decided you knew better and hit delete.”

Dad’s jaw tightened. “We did what we thought was necessary.”

“For who?” I asked. “For me? Or for your image?”

His gaze flicked around the store, at the people browsing nearby, at the staff member restocking a display of patriotic bookmarks, the same tiny flag on a toothpick stuck among them.

He lowered his voice.

“This isn’t the time,” he said. “We’re in public.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And I have a line of readers.”

It wasn’t the dramatic showdowns of my imagination. No raised voices. No cathartic tearful apologies.

Just a few quiet sentences and all the weight in them.

“If you want to be in my life,” I said, keeping my voice even, “we’re going to have to talk about what happened. Really talk. No pretending you always believed in me. No rewriting history.”

Mom’s eyes shimmered. “We just want our daughter back.”

“Your daughter’s right here,” I said. “She just doesn’t live according to your script anymore.”

For a second, I thought Mom might say she was sorry.

Then I watched the shutters come down behind her eyes.

“We’ll call you,” she said, picking up her book. “When you’ve had time to cool off.”

They walked away before I could answer.

Chloe stepped up to the table, eyes blazing.

“That was them cooled off,” she muttered. “You don’t owe them anything, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

Knowing and feeling weren’t always the same thing.

That night, someone posted a clip from the Q&A on TikTok.

A shaky phone video, captions hastily added: “Author says her parents tried to delete her book right before launch” over my face, mid-sentence.

By morning, it had two million views.

The comments were a flood.

My mom burned my manuscript.

My dad threw away my sketchbook.

My aunt told me singers are just “failed actors.”

Found family > blood family every time.

We are your readers now. We’re your people.

I scrolled until my thumbs hurt.

The video showed up on my parents’ phones too.

Chloe texted me a screenshot from Dad’s Facebook.

He’d posted a vague status about “kids these days” who “slander their parents online for clout.” Underneath, a comment from Aunt Linda:

Maybe if the parents didn’t delete their work, the kids wouldn’t have stories to tell.

“Aunt Linda is my favorite now,” Tessa said when I showed her.

“She always did like books more than people,” I said.

My email inbox exploded.

Read requests. Interview invitations. A note from a production company in LA asking if the rights to the TikTok story were available for a docuseries about artists and family.

For every business email, there were ten from kids, teens, adults who had been told their art was a waste of time.

Some of them were angry. Some just tired.

A thirteen-year-old from Texas wrote: My dad says art is for “people who can’t do math.” But your video made my mom cry and she told me we’ll find a way for me to take classes.

A forty-year-old nurse wrote: I gave up writing twenty years ago because my parents said it was childish. I think I’m going to try again.

Every message was a tiny flag planted somewhere in the world, each one saying, quietly but firmly: we’re here too.

My parents didn’t call.

Not that week, not the next.

Instead, my aunt sent me a photo from the church foyer. Someone had clipped the local article about my book and pinned it to the community bulletin board, right next to a flyer for the Fourth of July potluck. A little plastic flag sat in a jar on the table below it.

Under the photo, Aunt Linda had texted:

They’re telling everyone they always believed in you. I told them I read your book. Chapter 12 felt familiar.

I snorted.

Chapter 12, where the Dragon Keeper’s family tries to sell her to the dark wizard. Where they stand in front of the city elders and claim they only ever wanted what was best.

Sometimes fiction wasn’t subtle.

Months blurred.

The book tour began.

Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Denver, Chicago, New York.

Airports and rental cars and hotel key cards piled up in my backpack. I learned which chains had decent coffee, which airport bookstores actually stocked my book. I signed copies for cashiers on their lunch breaks and for kids clutching dog-eared paperbacks.

Everywhere I went, there was at least one person who came up after the event, waited until the line had thinned, and said some version of the same sentence.

“My family doesn’t get it, but your book made me feel seen.”

Every time, I thought about the blinking cursor and the empty document.

Every time, I thought about the warehouse full of ten thousand hardcovers.

Ten thousand copies.

Ten thousand chances for someone to feel less alone.

At some point, my parents’ silence stopped being a wound and started being…background noise.

Like the hum of an air conditioner you only notice when it shuts off.

Then, one afternoon in late fall, my phone rang while I was packing for yet another flight.

Caller ID: MOM.

I stared at it until it went to voicemail.

A minute later, a voicemail notification popped up.

“You going to listen?” Tessa asked from the doorway, one hand braced on the frame, the other holding a laundry basket.

“Eventually,” I said.

“Want company?”

I hesitated, then nodded.

We sat on the edge of my bed, the same bed I’d cried into the night my parents had deleted my file, and I hit play.

“Naomi,” my mom’s voice began. She sounded tired. Older somehow. “Your father and I saw you on the news. They did a segment on that video, the one about us.” A sigh. “We didn’t realize…that’s how you felt.”

Tessa made a face. I held up a hand, shh.

“We only wanted what was best,” Mom went on. “We were scared. We didn’t understand how publishing works. We thought you were…stuck.” Another sigh. “Anyway. The ladies at church keep asking when you’re coming home so they can meet you and get their books signed. Your father thinks you should do an event here. At the church. It would be nice for the community.”

There it was.

The pivot.

Not “We’re sorry.” Not “We were wrong.” Not “How can we make this right?”

Just “Come shine for us so we can be reflected in your light.”

Tessa snorted softly. “They want to borrow your spotlight.”

“Yeah,” I said.

My stomach clenched.

“You don’t owe them that,” she added.

I knew.

But part of me—the part that still remembered Dad doing goblin voices at bedtime, Mom clapping when I’d finished my first story—wanted them to show up, really show up, even just once.

“I’m going to write them a letter,” I said.

“Old-school,” Tessa approved.

It took me three days.

I wrote and rewrote, trying to find the line between honesty and cruelty.

In the end, it was simple.

Mom, Dad.

I heard your voicemail.

I’m glad you’ve seen some of what this book means to people.

I’m not interested in doing an event at the church.

I’m willing to have a real conversation about what happened—about the things you said, the way you acted, how that impacted me. But I’m not willing to pretend everything is fine for the sake of appearances.

If you can acknowledge what you did and sincerely apologize—not for how things “looked,” but for the harm you caused—I’m open to exploring what a future relationship might look like.

If you can’t, I wish you well from a distance.

Either way, my life is moving forward.

Naomi

I printed it, signed my name, and mailed it to their house.

No emojis. No jokes. No dragons.

Just the truth.

Weeks passed.

No reply.

Tour wound down. Holidays crept up. Stores filled with red and green and tinsel and yet more flags, this time on wrapping paper and snowman sweaters.

Tessa went home to her chosen family in Seattle for Thanksgiving. Chloe texted from my parents’ house: a photo of the turkey, the long table, my empty chair.

Underneath, she wrote:

Mom tried to toast you. Dad changed the subject. They’re talking about you like you’re both a success and a problem they can’t solve.

I wrote back:

That’s accurate.

On Christmas Eve, I stayed in the Pearl.

It was just me, Tessa, a half-burned cinnamon candle, and a stack of books that weren’t mine. Snow fell in soft flakes outside, dusting the streetlights.

We watched a black-and-white movie where everyone smoked indoors and solved their problems with dramatic speeches.

At midnight, my phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

Merry Christmas, it read. I finished your book tonight. Chapter 12 hurt. I’m thinking about a lot of things.

—Mom

No apology. No explanation.

But it was the first time she’d referenced the actual contents of my work, not just what it meant for her.

It felt like the slightest of doors cracking open.

I stared at the message for a long time, thumb hovering over the keyboard.

“You don’t have to answer,” Tessa said.

“I know,” I said.

In the end, I typed just two words.

Thank you.

Hit send.

Put the phone face down.

Sometimes progress was microscopic.

Sometimes, that was enough.

Spring brought news of a paperback release and a foreign rights sale to Germany. My agent sent me a photo of the German cover mockup: the dragon slightly different, the tower taller, my name strange and familiar in a new font.

“They want you to go to Frankfurt in the fall,” she said on the phone. “You up for that?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

I hung up and spun once in the middle of the living room, dizzy with the idea of flying across an ocean because of something that had once lived only in my head.

I walked into the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee.

The fridge stared back at me.

On it, held up by a magnet shaped like a tiny dragon, was a printout of the first email I’d gotten from a reader. The one from M. at Powell’s.

I’d taped it up the week after moving in, just where my parents kept their magnet, without fully realizing the symmetry.

I straightened the pages, smoothing the edges.

The dragon magnet held fast.

My parents had built their world around a crooked flag, convinced their version of the American dream was the only one.

I was building mine around a dragon.

One wasn’t more patriotic than the other.

One just left more room for other people’s stories.

On the one-year anniversary of my launch, Powell’s hosted a celebration event.

“Paperbacks and pastries,” Tessa called it, helping me carry in boxes of books and a tray of cupcakes iced with tiny sugar dragons.

The crowd was bigger this time.

More teens, more adults, more people holding not just my book but notebooks of their own, sketchpads, sheet music.

“I started writing again,” Maya told me in the signing line, her teal hair now streaked with purple. “I got into design school. My stepdad’s still mad. I don’t care as much.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said, and meant it.

Chloe came too, dragging a friend from the shop.

“We closed early,” she said. “I told my employees it was for ‘market research.’” She winked. “Which is technically true.”

Later, when the store had mostly emptied and staff were stacking chairs, Chloe and I stood near the window, watching rain streak down the glass.

“They asked about you today,” she said.

“Who?”

“Mom and Dad,” she said. “They came into the store. Bought your book. Again.”

“How many copies do they need?” I asked.

“Decoration, probably,” she said. “There’s one on the coffee table now. Front and center.”

I didn’t know what to do with that image.

“They’re not there yet,” Chloe added. “They still say dumb stuff. But they talk about you less like a disappointment and more like…a relative who moved to another country and sends postcards sometimes.”

“That’s oddly specific,” I said.

“You’re oddly specific,” she shot back.

We smiled.

“You know,” she said, “Mom asked if I still write. I told her about the poems. She didn’t roll her eyes.”

That, more than anything, made my throat tight.

“You going to show her one?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “Someday.” She nudged my shoulder. “You know you started that, right?”

“You started it,” I said. “When you asked to buy my book full price.”

We stood there, shoulder to shoulder, two daughters of the same house, looking out at a city that had become my home.

I thought of all the things my parents had tried to delete.

Manuscripts. Dreams. Parts of themselves, probably, once upon a time.

You couldn’t build a life on erasure.

Not one worth living in.

After everyone left, after the last cupcake was eaten and the last book signed, I walked back to the Pearl.

The apartment windows glowed warm against the evening.

Inside, my desk waited.

On it: my laptop, a half-filled notebook, a stack of foreign editions.

The cursor blinked on a new document.

Book two.

Lydia was older now, fiercer. Her magic had teeth. Her world had grown.

So had mine.

I took a breath and put my fingers on the keys.

Outside, somewhere in the city, a flag fluttered on a front porch.

Inside, on my fridge, a dragon magnet held fast.

My parents had tried to delete my novel.

All they’d really done was force me to back up my life somewhere they couldn’t reach.

The book was already in print.

Just like my new boundaries.

Just like the stories still waiting to be told.