Rise: How a House Built a Family(96)

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Drew said, angrier than I’d heard him in months. “Jada, you built your own damn house. You can do anything.”

If they said anything else, I didn’t hear, because I had just gotten an answer to the question that had plagued me.

Yes, it was worth it.

Yes, they were better for it.

Yes, they got it.

They had learned that little bit of fearless that changed everything. And anytime one of them forgot, or let the shadow of the old life creep back over their mind, they would remind each other.

You built your own damn house. You can do anything.

*

While I was writing the first draft of this book, I remembered how to be afraid again. Adam had not found us at Inkwell Manor, and I worried what would happen to me and the kids if his memory was refreshed by the book. In fact, I had started and stopped writing the book repeatedly for five years because of this fear. While I worked on the latest draft, and tried to figure out how I would handle renewed contact from him, Adam parked his car at a coffee shop and committed suicide with a knife. We hadn’t heard from him directly in several years. It was a horrific end to a tragic, tortured life. And I realized only then how often during an ordinary week I had been afraid and watching over my shoulder for him.

Sometimes people do learn from their mistakes. They do change. Matt came to understand some measure of the trauma he had caused in our lives. He learned. He grew. He became a better person and we are no longer afraid of him.

My dad continues to gather unusual items and find new purposes for them. He visits every year to add a new level of Rube Goldberg–like complexity to the act of starting my lawn mower with his improvements and adjustments. He still brings turkey and cheese but has also added unfathomable quantities of rhubarb to the mix.

Hope graduated number one in her high-school class and was awarded a spectacular scholarship package. By the time she was nineteen she had interned for a former president of the United States and fourteen United States congressmen. She now owns her own consulting agency, which specializes in events, marketing, and online business.

Drew spread his wings all the way to Alaska, where he pursued a degree between snowboarding and climbing mountains. He continued the adventure in Denver while managing an electronic-repair shop. He is now working in the technology industry and will undoubtedly continue planning adventures near and far.

Jada spent time on an off-grid farm, working as the volunteer manager for their sustainable-living organization and gathering knowledge to someday build her own off-grid home. She now creates personalized physical training plans with a focus on people with disabilities, encouraging a healthy lifestyle for those who are often left out while their peers are active on sports teams and neighborhood activities.

Roman is rocking elementary school, with enough confidence to display his own style. He runs his own YouTube channel and has a line of T-shirts and a business plan to become a YouTube gamer star. He is a big part of our family business, and we all suspect we’ll be working for him one day.

I write in my library. The window overlooks some of my gardens that are loaded with plants my mother loved, even some that belonged to her parents. I fight with my lawn mower but ultimately enjoy mowing our acre and taking care of everyday household problems. I’ll never stop marveling over what we continue to accomplish.

Our dinnertimes and movie times are often interrupted with business chatter and heated discussions. But mostly, we laugh a lot.

It isn’t that we aren’t afraid of anything, but rather that we are no longer afraid of failure.

What’s the worst-case scenario? Yeah, we can handle that.

People often comment on how much Inkwell Manor must mean to us, that we could never possibly sell it. But in the end, the most important thing we learned is that this story—our story—was never about a house.