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“No, Pop-Pop, it wouldn’t. I love surprises,” she cried, hugging Margaret again.

I took their coats and invited them in. The five of us moved into the kitchen, where I watched as Margaret looked around, taking an inventory of all the decorations. She looked at the cookies I’d placed on a tray on the counter, at the bags of candy beside the coffeemaker for the trick-or-treaters, and at my laptop, which was open on the kitchen table.

She looked at me, then at Everett, and then back at me as Richard sat down at the table and pulled Sophie onto his lap.

“What is going on here?” She asked Everett, her voice quiet and controlled. “We got an invitation in our email for a party.”

Sophie, oblivious to the situation, climbed off Richard’s lap and came over, tugging on her grandmother’s hand.

“Come see the pumpkins, Grammy. We are going to carve them for the party. You have to see them! They are huge! Oh, and we are having a Halloween party, Grammy, a real one. That is why you got the invitation. It’s going to be exactly like the ones Mommy used to have.”

Margaret’s hand went to her mouth, and I was sure I saw tears in her eyes. She followed Sophie while Richard stepped forward, his gaze locked on Everett.

“We need to have a talk,” he barked. “Now.”

I stood in the kitchen, feeling the floor beneath me crack. All we had built, those stolen moments, the mornings we’d spent together before Sophie got up, the late nights in his. All the moments where I’d told myself things would work out, including the other night when I’d stayed after deciding I really should leave instead.

Everett looked at me, no doubt trying to reassure me as he left the kitchen and followed Richard into his office. I stood there, staring at the floor, listening to Sophie talk with Margaret in the next room. When I finally found the courage to step into the living room, I found Sophie telling Margaret how I’d taught her how to ice the cookies and how Everett had eaten three of them before they’d even cooled. Then she told her about the night at the fall festival and about the gift she’d given to Everett.

She was telling her dead mother’s mother about the family we’d accidentally become in a short time. Margaret stood there listening, her hand at her mouth. Sophie kept talking, totally oblivious to everything, but when Margaret locked eyes with me, a feeling of dread filled me. Somehow, I knew this time the bubble was going to burst for real.

I excused myself and went back to the kitchen to check on dinner. My heart was hammering in my chest from the way Margaret had looked at me. I pulled the roast from the oven and took my time basting it. I had just slid it back into the oven when I remembered I’d left my laptop open on the table where I’d been working on the final chapters of Moonlit Mistakes, and I’d forgotten to close it after Margaret and Richard had arrived.

I closed the oven door and went to close my laptop, but I froze instead. Margaret must have quietly followed me, but because I’d been busy, I hadn’t heard her come in. She stood behind the chair I’d been sitting on, one hand on the back, the other pressed flat against her stomach, reading my screen.

My blood ran cold.

“Margaret…” I started, moving toward her.

She held up her hand without looking my way as her eyes moved across the screen. I knew which chapter she was reading. It was the one where Rosie finds the photo albums in the hallway closet, the one where Ethan’s dead wife’s decorating style becomes the exact blueprint for bringing the house back to life. The chapter I’d written three days ago.

“What is this?” She asked, her voice barely above a whisper. She still hadn’t looked at me, instead she continued to scroll and continued reading.

“It’s my manuscript. It’s fiction. Margaret, please…”

“Ethan, a tech executive, a widower with a seven-year-old daughter named…” She scrolled up a bit. “Lily.” Her eyes were blazing as she glared at me. “Lily, who keeps her dead mother’s things in a box in her closet.”

I stood there, every part of my body on fire.

“It’s not what you think,” I continued, my voice cracking.

“Tell me what it is I’m thinking.” Margaret said, stepping around the chair and facing me. She was trembling, but her voice was so controlled. “Because what I’m thinking is that you came into this house, into my dead daughter’s family, and you turned their grief into a story. You took the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone and you put it into a book to profit from.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said, tears blurring my vision. “It started as fiction, and then the characters evolved and…”

“Evolved.” Margaret repeated, her lips thin. “His wife died of cancer. He stops celebrating holidays. He hired a young nanny. Tell me, Ember, at what point did this so-called fiction evolve? Before or after you climbed into my son-in-law’s bed?”

Her words landed like a blow.

“Sophie told me about your book,” Margaret continued. “The last time we were here, when her and I were alone. She told me you were writing a story about a daddy and a nanny who fall in love. She was so proud of it and she thought it was wonderful you were writing, just like her mother.”

I pressed my hand against my mouth, remembering when Sophie told me about Rebecca writing stories of Sophie. Sophie had known. I thought I’d kept it a secret, but I knew she loved to come into the kitchen and read over my shoulder. I’d caught her.

“Margaret, I wouldn’t…”

“What? Never publish it?” She said, taking a step closer. “From what Sophie mentioned to me, you have an editor. You have a publishing deal. This isn’t a diary entry, Ember. This is a product. My family’s loss is going to be packaged and sold for what? A spot on the bestseller list?”

“That is not what this is,” I said, my voice cracking. “I write romance. I wrote about two people coming together. I wrote about love after loss. I wrote about…”