“She went back to school and made other friends. She was so very good at it. Oh, she and I were still friends, too, of course, but it wasn’t the same. It was never the same. Then she grew up and went away to college and met her husband. I was the only one who still remembered the fairy princess and the world cursed to darkness. I was the only one who still lived in the Dimwood, yearning for the day it would transform into the Goldengrove.”

“But—” Fina says, “I mean, why did you write the story?”

“She left the story!” Madeline cries. “She pulled me into it and made me believe. She finally gave me a world where I could belong. And then she left! So one day, I sat down, and I began to write. I invented a boy and a girl to go into the Goldengrove, and I used the tales your gram had spun to create their adventures. And then I—I sent it to a publisher.”

“You stole her story?” I whisper.

“I had nothing else,” murmurs Madeline, rocking again. “I didn’t know—I had no idea—what it would become. I didn’t think she would ever see it.”

“But she did,” Fina says. “Everyone saw.”

“Her copy of the book,” I say suddenly, another puzzle piece lodging in place. “There’s an inscription in it. ‘For my muse and best friend.’”

It had never even occurred to me that the inscription was from the author. That it meant that Gram was the muse for the book itself.

“She asked me to sign it,” Madeline says miserably. “I didn’t want to. It was the only copy I ever signed. You see why I signed no more. You see why no one can ever know the truth about R. M. Wildsmith.”

Madeline’s hand floats to her mouth as a sob escapes her lips.

“B-b-because there is no R. M. Wildsmith,” she says, hiccuping. “There was only a girl who was bitter in her loneliness and a better girl who found it in her heart to forgive the other. She was never even angry with me. After her parents died and she returned to Lanternwood, she came to see me. She told me she understood. She said she was happy for my success, as if it were ever really mine. I thought she had forgotten me, you see, but I was wrong. She was the only one who didn’t. Until the very end, she came. She visited. She kept my terrible secret. And now I am alone again.”

Tears are rolling down my cheeks, too. Because all at once, I understand why Gram kept so much from me. Not because she didn’t trust me, but because she didn’t want to betray Madeline’s secret. And my heart is nearly bursting with pride. Gram, my Gram, was the one who dreamed the Goldengrove and the Dimwood into life.