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“What the fuck are you doing in the burbs?”

“My mom has been sick and hasn’t been able to take care of my dad. You know how he’s been since the accident. She needs my help. Trust me, I’m not thrilled about it either.” Her throat clearsas she redirects the conversation. “Anyway, listen, Char. I love the intensity, but this is the last book in the Ferryman series. Your readers want, and quite frankly, deserve, a neater ending.”

I pace my home office. “First of all, it’s horror. Since when does a horror ending need to be neat or wrapped up in a pretty bow? Horror should creep into the reader’s mind. It should linger and fester and make the person think. I’m not going to spell it out for them. I still have the—”

She cuts me off. “Let me guess. An epilogue, because God forbid, you write anything without an epilogue.” The annoyance in her tone is rubbing me the wrong way. What the fuck does it matter if Ialwayshave to write an epilogue? It’s my style, and they’re arguably my favorite thing to write since it signifies the end. Everyone deserves a good ending, the same applies to books.

“Well, yes, I have an epilogue. Maybe even two for this one.” I stick it back to her.

“Just hurry up. The publisher wants me to give it to them next week. I don’t know what you’re waiting for. All of your other stories you've handed in before the deadline.”

I interrupt her.

“Calm your tits. Have I ever missed a deadline?”

A scoff disguised as a giggle sounds from her.

“Have I?”

Now a sigh sounds, probably because she realizes I’m right. “Well. No.”

“Exactly.

“Fine,” she concedes. “Just make sure it’s done on time.”

Walking out of my office and to the bedroom, I go to grab my notebook, since I wrote the rest of the chapter by hand before bed. “Will do. Besides, whoever said I wasn’t done? You know what they say when you assume. You make an ass out of you and—”

“Me,” she finishes my sentence. “Yes, I know.”

“I just stopped reading from my computer. I wrote the rest by hand.”

Now Beth scoffs. “By hand? Jesus—” she interrupts herself. “I meant to say, who does that anymore?”

Me, that’s fucking who.

“By the way, do we have a title yet for this story?”

I round the corner to my bedroom about to walk down the hall. The bathroom on the main level, the one that I never use because the water pressure sucks, grabs my attention. Stopping me in my tracks, and a gasp that bellows from my mouth feels like an out-of-body experience.

“Char,” Beth says my name and a bunch of other things that I can’t focus on.

My notebook is on the floor. Not on my nightstand where I know I left it.

Carefully, I navigate the bathroom. Shattered glass and lumps of hardened wax line the tile by the tub.

“Char,” Beth repeats my name. “Are you okay?”

No.

No. I’m not fucking okay.

I’m the opposite of okay.

I’m in shock.

As I bend to retrieve my notebook. I see the part of the story I started in bed, not in the bathroom, above handwriting that does not belong to me.

“You can run from the truth, but you can’t run from me.”