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She said it so matter-of-factly, with no anger or tears.

“He threw a lot of stuff away afterwards.”

I stood up off the floor, not saying anything but feeling sad for Sophie, and picked up the strand of lights while Sophie continued talking.

Together we strung them around her headboard. Then we hung three decorations from her curtain rod with some ribbon I’d brought from home. We taped bats to her window along with some leaves that we’d made yesterday.

After we finished, Sophie stood in the middle of her room and slowly turned around, absorbing everything.

“What do you think?” I questioned.

“It needs more.” She mumbled. “It needs more pumpkins.”

“Okay! Let’s make more.”

Everett was still on the conference call when we’d gone down for lunch. I made Sophie a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup, and once she’d eaten, we sat down and read three chapters of a book about a girl who trained a dinosaur. As I finished the last chapter, I noticed Sophie had fallen asleep on the couch.

I should have used that time to clean up and do laundry, possibly plan tomorrow’s meals as well, but I was still behind where I needed to be on Moonlit Mistakes, so I pulled out my laptop and wrote instead.

Ethan Blackwood was in his study, staring at a photograph of his dead wife, wondering if the ache he still felt would ever shift from that sharp stabbing pain to a dull ache. Would dull be worse? Sharp aches meant you still felt something, and they reminded you that you were still alive. His daughter was asleep upstairs, and the new nanny, Rosie, was downstairs in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner.

I stared at the photograph of Sarah smiling back at me, her hair windblown from the day at the vineyard. It had been two years since I’d lost her, and every time I looked at this picture, the pain I felt hit like a knife between my ribs.

I put the photograph down and pulled up the first file on my list and began typing away. The study was warm tonight, or perhaps I was tired. I rolled up my sleeves and opened the top three buttons on my shirt. My fingers moved across the keyboard, and for a while, the only sound I heard was the clicking of the keys.

Occasionally the signet ring on my right hand caught the light. It was my father’s ring. He’d pressed it into my palm the day Lily had been born, and I’d worn it every day since, even though some mornings the weight of it felt like a reminder of every expectation I was barely holding together.

I stopped typing and pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose. My eyes burned, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept for longer than four hours.

The house settled around me, and I exhaled slowly, letting the tension drop from my shoulders. I never did this when anyone was watching. I couldn’t afford to because Ethan Blackwood didn’t fall apart. Everyone knew that. It was only here, alone, in the study, with the door shut tight, that I could allow the mask to slip. I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling.

Sarah would have hated this: all the late nights, the silence, the way I’d turned her loving home into something that ran purely on schedules. She would have walked in here, told me I was being ridiculous, and then climbed into my lap. The thought made my chest tighten. God, how I missed her.

Rosie

I finished the dishes ten minutes ago. The kitchen was now spotless. I’d wrapped the leftovers and put them away. I should have gone upstairs and crawled into my warm bed, but I stood outside his office with a mug of tea, watching Ethan through the crack of the door like a creep.

His hands moved across the keyboard in quick, precise strokes, and I watched the way his fingers stretched over the keys.

He’d taken off his suit jacket at some point and hung it over the back of his chair, rolled his sleeves to show off his forearms, and he’d undone the top three buttons of his dress shirt, showing off a splattering of dark hair on his chest. I stared, transfixed, as I watched the muscles in his forearms shift as he typed.

I took a sip of his tea and instantly regretted it as it burned my tongue.

Tension rolled off him; the careful composure he always held dropped away, as if he’d forgotten anyone else was in the house. I watched his shoulders fall, and he leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling with an expression I recognized. He was exhausted.

My chest ached for him. I couldn’t move, I stood there watching him, those hands, his arms, and his every breath.

I stared at the screen. I’d named the nanny Rosie because there was no way I was going to name the love interest Ember.

A wave of heat washed over me. There was no way I was thinking of Everett Stone’s arms. There was no way I was thinking about the way he’d looked this morning, walking into the kitchen with the top buttons of his shirt undone. The way he looked at the plate I’d made for him, confused, like no one had cooked for him in so long he’d forgotten that was something people did. No, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was my employer, and I was a professional nanny who looked after his daughter.

I closed down my laptop and got a drink, and picked up the book I was reading while Sophie napped. When she woke up. I cut up some apple slices for her and then started on dinner while she sat on the stool at the kitchen island working on her math.

After dinner, Sophie had her bath and brushed her teeth, and came walking into her room in her favorite dinosaur pajamas. She climbed into bed and looked at me.

“Ember, can the twinkle lights go on?” She questioned while I grabbed a book off her shelf.

“Of course,” I said, bending down to plug them in.