As promised, after dinner Maura formally invites me into her office and gives me the grand bookshelf tour. She has an impressive collection of stand-alone commercial thrillers, but also several successful series. Much like the trade-paperback thing, she tosses out terms that go over my head, like cozies and cooking mysteries, but I gather she has multiple series set in the town of Alder Cove, a facsimile of our very own Seaview.

“My fans are my lifeblood,” she says as she pulls books from the shelves, thrusting them at me one by one. “They started a fancon about fifteen years ago, which I keynote every year. It’s next weekend at Hotel Seaview. You should come, see your ole grandma in action.”

I’ve got a stack of eight books that threaten to topple onto the floor. I have to use both hands to keep them steady.

“That’s so cool,” I say. Then I clear my throat, asking the question that’s been itching up my esophagus. “Do they do it that weekend because of the Caroline Quinn murder? It seems like a big deal in this town.”

Maura snorts. “That’s an understatement. Caroline’s murder changed this town forever, in more ways than one. But really it’s my books and their popularity in the nineties that put us on the map. That’s when the tourist trade started, and once they made the Killer Queen movie and filmed it here…just you wait, girly. It’s a wild week for you to arrive. Great timing.”

I want to ask more, about the homecoming-court picture, since Maura clearly knew the murdered queen she based her book on, but I hold back. I hate when people ask me prying questions about my mom. They want every grim detail, and all I can manage are top-line platitudes. Anything deeper is too much, too soon.

Maura must see my face fall; her grandmotherly instincts kick in as she frowns with concern. “I’m glad you’re here, sweetheart. Not under the circumstances, of course, but you’re family. I’ve got you.” She rubs my back, pulls me in for a tight hug. It’s uncomfortable, and not only because it presses her paperbacks to my chest; I’m not accustomed to her smell, the feel of her. She’s not my mom.

I swallow down a sob, focus on anything but my emotions. Maura’s shelves are packed with her books, but at the bottom left corner of one of them, I spot an anachronistic set. An assortment of tall, alternately cream-colored, black, and red leather volumes, with embossed retro lettering on the spines: Vikings 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970. Yearbooks.

I pull out of the hug. “Thanks, Grandma.” The name feels foreign in my mouth, but I try it on. Maura grimaces, and I correct myself. “I mean, Maura.” No grandma-related monikers, then. All Maura, all the time.