🔑 Deleted Scene
The Thirteenth Stair
Marla
The staircase has twelve steps. I have counted them every night for a year. Tonight there are thirteen.
It is not the sort of thing you can tell anyone. There is no phone number for a house that has learned to add. So I stand at the bottom and I count again, slowly, the way you would speak to something that might be listening.
Twelve. Thirteen. The new step is warm. That is the part I cannot stop thinking about — not that it is there, but that it is warm, as though something has only just stood up from it.
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