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“Please stay,” she whispered, grabbing one dangling pumpkin charm on my sweater and looking at it. She said it low enough that she probably figured her father hadn’t heard, but he had. I saw it in the way his shoulders stiffened, his hand curling at his side.

I had little choice. My bank account had less than sixty dollars in it. Our rent was due in five days, and I also needed money for my mother’s medication. I’d called my publisher’s accounting department before I’d come over here to find out when I could expect my advance payment, but they were closed. The advance for my Moonlit Mistakes series was still processing. I needed this job right now as much as I needed oxygen.

“I’ll be here at seven.” I told her.

Sophie didn’t smile; she simply nodded and disappeared down the hallway.

Everett watched her go, his eyes following her until she turned the corner. Then his phone buzzed again.

“I take it you’ll want to pack some things to bring here with you for tomorrow, so seven is fine for tomorrow, but it will always be six in the future. Don’t be late.”

He walked out of the room and went back in the direction he’d come from, leaving me standing in the living room. I heard a door close somewhere down the hall, and I sat alone in the cold, but beautiful living room.

My phone buzzed, causing me to jump. I glanced at the screen to see a text from my best friend, Jules.

Jules: How’d the interview go?

I glanced over at the pumpkins, and at the bare mantle where I was certain decorations hung at one point because I could see tiny holes in the wood.

Ember: I think I’m in trouble.

Jules: Why?

Ember: Should have asked many more questions. I’ll fill you in later.

I sat there for a moment before I got up and let myself out of the house. The cold hit me the moment I stepped outside. Down the street, I could see the trees turning color, and somewhere in the distance I could hear music playing, probably the live performer at the Maple Lane Cafe. I sat in my car for a few minutes before starting the engine. I reached into my bag and pulled out my notebook, and wrote in the dark by the glow of my phone screen.

Ethan Blackwood stands in his living room as if he’s guarding something. Not the house or the child, but the space where someone used to be.

I re-read the opening lines before closing my notebook and shoving it back in my bag. I’d deal with the fact that I was basing my next hero on the man I met only a few moments ago, my new boss. Right now, this was a starting point. I was fourteen chapters behind in writing Moonlit Mistakes. The first draft was due to my editor by Halloween, so I had little choice but to get started on it. I had less than sixty dollars to my name, and a seven-year-old who’d looked at me and whispered, please, as if it were a prayer. What choice did I have but to take the job?

Chapter Two

Everett

September 21st

The first three weeks had gone by smoothly. Ember had settled in nicely, and things were once again being taken care of. Unlike the other nannies, I’d barely had to speak to her about anything, which had been a welcome change. I was certain I’d maybe found the right person until I stood in my office and stared at the security monitor on my desk, uncomfortable with the scene before me.

Ember had been working for a little over six hours, and my kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off. She was rearranging my kitchen. There was a stack of mixing bowls I didn’t even know I owned sitting on the counter. A bag of flour sat open next to the stove, a fine dusting of white across the black granite. There were also multiple jars of candy sprinkles in all different colors in tiny glass jars lined up on the windowsill and a bunch of baking supplies and groceries she’d bought that were waiting to go away.

The cameras were a security measure. I wasn’t spying. I’d had them installed in the first house when Sophie was born, and I’d done the same here. It had been Rebecca’s idea. When we hired our first nanny so Rebecca could return to work, she wanted to be able to check in from work. When she got sick, she loved it because she could watch from bed on her bad days. I had six cameras covering the main living areas, all feeding into a panel I could pull up at any time on my desktop or laptop.

I let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of my nose. Was I really watching Ember Wilde teach my daughter to make paper bats, after I’d explicitly told her no Halloween?

Only I was. There they were on Camera three, sitting at the kitchen island, Sophie standing on her stool with her safety scissors in one hand and a piece of black construction paper in the other. Her tongue was poking out the side of her mouth, the way it always did when she was concentrating on something.

I bent down and looked closer at the monitor. Sophie’s hands appeared to be covered in glitter. Her face too. There was glitter on the counter and on the floor. Where the hell had she gotten glitter from?

Ember said something that I couldn’t hear that made Sophie giggle. The cameras didn’t have audio, which was something I regretted. I watched as Sophie put the scissors and black paper down and instead held up an orange paper leaf, and Ember clapped, dancing around the kitchen, making her laugh again.

And Sophie….

My chest ached.

She was smiling and laughing, something I hadn’t seen in a long while.

It wasn’t the polite smile she often gave to her therapist, nor the careful one she’d worn for my mother or Grammy during our video calls. This was a genuine smile. It lit up her entire face in a way I hadn’t seen in…since her mother had been alive.