The first draft was chaos. The second, painful. By the third, I felt like I was bleeding truth. It was fiction, technically, but every page held a piece of Grandma and the versions of myself I’d buried. A year later, the book came out. No billboards, no launch party—just enough buzz to feel real. A podcast invite. A morning show. A librarian wrote to say a teenager in her town felt seen because of my story. That moment mattered most. Someone was listening.
Then my brother walked into the bookstore. No warning—just a tailored coat and that familiar grin. I nearly dropped a box of bookmarks.
“Hey, sis,” he said, like we hadn’t gone silent for months.
I braced for the pitch.
“To talk,” he said.
“I read your book.”
He said he cried.
