“Yes. I mean, well . . . no,” she said, bringing her tears under control. “Oh, Maggie. My life is such a disaster. And I’ve got scary things in front of me. I’m a grown woman, and now that my mom is gone, I’m supposed to be adulting, but it’s just too damn hard.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Maggie said. “I’ve got some stuff going on that will blow your mind. There’s a reason you can’t reach me unless you do it through Mama. My troubles might give yours a run for the money.”

“Hold on,” Quinn said. “I’m getting up. I need to make a cup of tea, because it sounds like this is going to be a long conversation.”

As she headed toward the kitchenette, Quinn felt that the weight she’d carried to bed was getting lighter by the second.

At half past five, Quinn finally hung up the phone and climbed into bed. She and Maggie had talked nonstop, catching up on the last few years as they ping-ponged information back and forth.

Maggie had a stalker. She called him the Ghost.

And not some high school crush pining after her. This was serious stuff.

It floored Quinn and filled her with guilt that Maggie had been dealing with such a horrible experience on her own, skipping from town to town and job to job as she stayed just steps ahead of the psychopath, with almost no help from law enforcement due to the fact that the weirdo hadn’t yet made physical contact. That was, until he broke into her home and was caught on camera.

Quinn was feeling goose bumps while Maggie told her story and only breathed normally when Maggie reported he was finally in jail.

“I can’t get into all the details right now,” Maggie whispered. “Charlie, my son, is here, and I don’t want him to overhear.”

When she said son, Quinn was speechless.

Maggie had a son!

Quinn instantly felt like an aunt—albeit a slack one. As Maggie bragged on and on, she made Charlie sound like an amazing kid, but imagining Maggie as a mom was difficult. She was always the free spirit, the one who Quinn thought would travel the world unencumbered as she tackled each experience on her bucket list.

But as life tends to go, that’s not how things played out.

It was all hard to even accept. Maggie had been dealing with some bad stuff without a best friend by her side. Quinn wanted to be there for her now.

She needed Maggie too.

Quinn told her about her mother’s earth-shattering deathbed declaration, the inheritance, Ethan’s cheating, and the mysterious possible relative.