“Do not let her leave.”

Chapter 1: The Splintered Cake

My name is Madison Butler, and I am thirty-two years old. At my highly anticipated gender reveal party, my older sister leaned in close, her breath smelling faintly of peppermint and malice, and whispered, “Smash it, Sawyer. Make it go viral.”

My fourteen-year-old nephew gripped a small pink plastic baseball bat. He didn’t continue reading …