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The Last Dry Step
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 21 2026
Pages: 302
Weight: 0.77
Height: 0.68 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
She stays a year. She doesn't come back. And the water stays down.
Ninety-eight names are cut into the wall by the old boat launch. Nyssa Calder has read the newest one every morning for three years.
CALDER, MIRA. 2023.
Her sister. So when the year comes around again, Nyssa doesn't wait for the drawing. She walks into the hardware store and tells Dale Pruitt to write her name down.
The man in the house on the island has been there three hundred years.He never lies. He never asks her for anything. He listens to her like every word matters, and wanting him is the best feeling in the world.
That is the trap.
Every evening she goes down to him. Every morning she goes down the ninety-nine steps under the house to see how far the black water has dropped toward her sister's name. And every time she wants him, something else she wanted goes quiet. Coffee. Her dog. The swim she always meant to take. The face of the sister she came for.
She knows exactly what it costs. She counts anyway.
A gothic novel about a town that made a bargain, a sister who came to break it, and the one thing a monster can't eat.
Standalone. No cliffhanger. Every question the book raises, the book answers.
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