"What?" she stammered, shaking violently. This was completely impossible. Wasn't it?

"Shame on you girl, yelling at someone like that," she scolded her.

"You're dead. What are you doing here?" Cairo asked, shocked more than she ever had been before. Oh, there were moments, like catching Brad in bed with her sister, but this was definitely the most shocking experience she had ever been in.

"Dead? Who is this, Kay?" Lacey asked, concerned for her friend.

"This woman is…She's Maggie Williams. My grandmother," Cairo said slowly, as if to herself. She was glad that Lacey had said something, she was afraid that she was just seeing things.

"Yes, that I am. And I am living, my dear. How are you enjoying my house?" she asked, as if it were the most common thing in the world, for her to show up ten months after she had supposedly died.

"You are supposed to be dead! What the hell is going on?" Cairo snapped.

"Don't use that tone with me, young lady," she ordered. Cairo looked at her as if she had lost her mind. Deciding that her temper would get her nowhere, she took deep breath, and tried to check her anger.

"Why did you let everyone believe that you were dead? Why would you do such a thing?"

"Because it set the stage for the greatest drama I've ever seen play out. I only wished I had let it alone longer, but Meagan was about to crack," she said.

"Drama?" Cairo asked.

"I discovered why nothing I've ever written has been well received. I create the situations, but they never seem real because I don't know how human nature works. I cannot realistically recreate human reactions."

"What does this have to do with anything?" Cairo asked, still confused.

"Don't you see, Carrie? She needed a real-life situation that would be dramatic, so that she could recreate the reactions - our reactions - into a book," Brian said softly.

"An uncharacteristically astute assumption."

"That's impossible, Brian. Isn't it?" Cairo asked, looking like a lost child. It was not possible that her own grandmother could have had a hand in causing what she considered to be the greatest tragedy of her life.

"I'm almost sorry I had to stop my finale from playing out. Other than that, I have a masterpiece," she breathed.

"What you have is a cheap romance novel that no one would ever buy because there is way to much insanity within it," Lacey called out.

"How?" Cairo asked, looking blank. This was too much. She could handle the reappearance of her supposedly dead grandmother, but that she could have possibly had caused…no, it just wasn't conceivable.

"I just had to die. Well, I had to hire a correspondent to get history and inside information before you came here, but once in Brickwood, you found the ingenious part of the entire plot, and everything else fell into place."

"Masterpiece?" Lacey questioned.

"The journal…that was you!" Cairo yelled, a slow rage beginning to burn.

"Katherine, she did exist. I do have her real journal, dear, but she did not live that tragic life. My friend in the pub told it well, didn't he?"

"Why in God's name, why did you do this? Why did you do this to me? Why did you destroy what I had?" Cairo asked quietly.

"It wasn't her that destroyed it. It was you, Cairo, but you just won't take responsibility for your actions," Nick said, speaking for the first time since Maggie had appeared.

"Haven't you been listening? Meagan is not who you think she is. All this time, she's been pretending to be your friend, lover, whatever. The entire time, she's been a spy, an instrument in her game. What happened that night was caused by her. She drugged us, Nick. She made you hate me," Cairo yelled.

"I don't believe that," he said simply.

"It's true. I hired her with that set agenda," Maggie said.

"No! That's not all it was, Nick. You know it was more than that," Meagan protested, sobbing through her words. The sight was disgusting, and Cairo had to look away.

"The entire time she was with us, all she was doing was keeping us apart, telling you things to make you not trust me. To make you think you didn't love me," Cairo said, shocked. She was loosing her strength, and she had to get out of that room before she completely fell apart. And she would rather die than fall apart in front of them. They were not going to see her cry. She backed away from them all, and walked out of the foyer, seeking refuge.