It buzzes. A text.

I look down. It’s from Cora. Just three words.

What the fuck?

I have no idea what she means or even if I’m the one she intended to text. I reply simply:

?

Seconds later, she texts again.

The book. Your book. U at home?

I tell her I am. She says she’s coming over. That we need to talk.

A slow panic begins to rise in me and I push it down.

It’s fine. It’ll be fine.

Laptop screen closed. I can forget about my free hour. I make another coffee and contemplate adding Kahlúa to it. I don’t. Instead, I walk up to my bedroom and to the box I received a few days ago. Fifteen copies of my latest novel, The Child of the Steps. The book doesn’t release until January, and these are just advance-reader copies intended for reviewers and the media, as well as a few copies the publisher always sends for my own use.

Cora stopped by a few days ago, saw the box, and grabbed a copy for herself. If she’s read any of my other books, it would be news to me. But this book, of all of them, was the one she expressed mild curiosity over. I think it was because they were sitting there in front of her, ripe for the taking.

Or maybe because the cover shows a staircase.

Based on her text, I’m guessing she read the book.

Ten minutes later, I hear the front door open, then slam shut. I can feel my sister’s presence, like a tumor my doctor told me was growing inside my guts.

“Rose?”

“Coming,” I say.

I walk downstairs, taking slower steps than usual.

She’s in the foyer, perfectly put together for whatever she does during the day. She has the copy of my book in her right hand, clutching it like a fire-and-brimstone preacher would a Bible. Weapon-like.

I don’t even make it to the bottom step before she unleashes.

“What the fuck, Rose?”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what you texted me. I think you need to be more specific.”

“I mean, what…the…fuck…with this book?”

“It’s a novel, Cora. ‘Novel’ means ‘fiction.’” She’s still staring at me with saucer-sized eyes. “Fiction means it’s not real.”

“I know what fiction is,” she says. “This isn’t fiction. This is our lives.”

“No, it isn’t,” I say. “Not even close.”

“But one element is. The main part of the story.” She raps on the cover of the book, as if I don’t see it in her hand. “The main fucking event is very real. It happened here. In this house.” She glances over my shoulder, and I know what she’s looking at. The stairs. The solid wooden stairs, hard and unforgiving.

I say nothing, and this enrages her.

She slams the book to the floor, as if she could shatter it. It thunks down unharmed, all the words in the same order as they were before.

“You can’t publish this,” she says. Her tone shifts from outright anger to fear, betrayed by the crack in her voice. “You have to stop this. Give the publisher something else.”