Isn’t she going to say anything about the fact that she just caught me reading mail that wasn’t mine? Or that Fina and I broke into her garden?

I pass the letter to Fina before I sit, giving her a meaningful look. She glances down, and her eyes widen as she starts to read. And then, for a long, extremely uncomfortable minute, no one says a thing. The fire crackles.

“Um,” Fina says finally, holding up the letter, “what is this?”

“Why do you have R. M. Wildsmith’s mail?” I ask.

Madeline leans forward just far enough so her face is lit in the orange glow of the fire.

“I think you can put it together,” she rasps.

And she’s right.

Madeline Mitchell suddenly transforms. She is not the Apple Lady anymore. She never has been. All along, she has been the fairy queen in beggar’s clothes.

“You’re R. M. Wildsmith?” Fina asks. “You wrote The World at the End of the Tunnel?”

Madeline flinches, like a spark from the fire has just landed on her skin. She begins to rock, back and forth, back and forth. “The answer to your first question is yes, technically speaking, I am R. M. Wildsmith. Or as close as anyone alive could be. The answer to the second is more complicated.”

“But I thought R. M. Wildsmith was a man,” Fina says.

“People are good at assuming things,” Madeline says quietly.

“But you didn’t correct them,” I reply. “You never told anyone who you were?”

“No.”

A thought strikes me like lightning. “Gram,” I murmur, thinking of the hours and hours we spent together reading The World at the End of the Tunnel. “Did she know the truth?”

Madeline Mitchell does the weird, flinchy thing again. Then she gives a bark of humorless laughter. “Know the truth?” she says. “She is the truth.”

Fina and I glance at each other. “Is that some kind of riddle?” she asks. “I mean, we know you two were friends.”

Madeline’s lips pucker. For the first time, she looks at me. Just for a second. “Friends,” she repeats, as if testing out whether her tongue can form the word. “Yes, I suppose we were. I am—I’m sorry for your loss, Emma. Your grandmother was a good woman. The best I ever knew.”

“She’s been reading me your book ever since I can remember,” I say. “But she never said anything about you.”

“She was protecting me.”

“From what? Why didn’t you want me to know? Why do you hide away from everyone?”