The Sister-in-Law: An absolutely gripping summer thriller for 2021

by Pamela Crane

  Her tears dripped from her chin, melting into the pool water puddling at her knees.

  ‘He fell on purpose, Mom. Tell her, Jackson.’ Elise’s voice held an edge of anger.

  Jackson fixed his eyes on the concrete.

  ‘Is it true, Jackson? Did you fall on purpose?’

  He ignored me, so I placed my finger under his chin and lifted his face to mine. He looked up at me sadly.

  ‘Tell me the truth.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. It was his answer for a lot of the strange things he had been doing lately.

  ‘Did you mean to fall into the pool?’ I needed to know.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why?’

  He didn’t answer at first. Just stared at me with blank, lifeless eyes. ‘Because I wanted to know what it felt like to drown.’

  That one sentence brought a torrent of emotion. Did Jackson want to die too? Kissing his mop of black hair again and again, I pressed his head to my chest and wept. Elise wept. But Jackson … nothing. ‘Jackson, don’t ever do that again. Promise me you’ll never hurt yourself. You could have died … and Mommy can’t take another death. Please, Jackson.’

  I begged, I pleaded, I needed his word …

  ‘I promise.’

  … And he gave it to me.

  ‘Mommy loves you too much to lose you. It would break me forever.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  We sat for a long moment, three soaked bodies sprawled on the concrete among the weeds, while the breeze licked our skin dry. My body felt weak from the post-adrenaline rush. I needed a moment alone. ‘Elise, take your brother inside and both of you put on some fresh clothes before we head back over to Uncle Lane’s.’

  As we all rose to our feet, Jackson sidled ahead into the house while I fumbled with the gate lock, securing it while Elise hung back at my side.

  ‘Mommy?’ Her voice was tiny, exhausted. Only moments before she had transformed into a life-saving hero. Now she was back to my little eleven-year-old girl.

  ‘Yes?’

  She didn’t speak at first, a tell that something serious was on her mind.

  ‘What is it, honey? You can tell me.’

  When I looked down at her, her eyes were glassy, wet.

  ‘Part of me wishes I would have let him drown.’

  As her words fell between us, I saw my reflection in her eyes. And I wondered if part of me wished that too.

  Chapter 7

  Candace

  I wake up to exist for you. I open my eyes to see you. I breathe to inhale you.

  You are my reason for each moment.

  The scent of rain tangled with my organic patchouli essential oil pillow spray, nudging me toward consciousness. Somehow my body knew a moment before my alarm when the day was supposed to begin. I sat up at the sound of ‘Easy Street’ by Collapsable Hearts Club playing on my cell phone. A touch of irony because life was anything but easy, and it sure didn’t feel neat, but the song featured in The Walking Dead was the perfect get-up-and-go I needed this dreary morning.

  I snoozed the music before it woke up Lane (he was lucky he slept so soundly, something I hadn’t experienced in weeks), then flung off the covers, the chill of the floors seeping into the soles of my tattooed feet. The tattoos had hurt like a mother when the needle stabbed the bony tops of my feet, but the images represented empowerment … so I’d be damned if I didn’t power through the pain as the artist stamped my skin. Thai characters spelled ‘live this life’ on one foot, and a lotus flower adorned the other – a symbol of purity, strength, and grace. I needed hefty doses of all of the above in order to carry out my plan.

  Although I didn’t drink coffee, I always set the coffeemaker the night before so that I could bring Lane his first cup of the morning. Little details like that mattered, they meant something. I might be a terrible cook and a disastrous housekeeper, but I always took care of my man where it mattered: delivering his morning cup with a kiss, and satisfaction in the bedroom.

  This morning it took extra self-will to give a crap about Lane’s needs. The guilt trips over the past few days regarding Harper’s stay had been long and exhausting. Lane had made it abundantly clear that I was being selfish by wanting him all to myself. Harper wasn’t just family, but his sister – his only sister – and he would open up his home for anyone in my family too. That was exactly the problem, though, that Lane would open his home and his heart to everyone and anyone, when those things should have been devoted first to me. To us. By Lane’s logic, us could include the homeless guy who stood at the corner of the freeway underpass begging for change.

  House guests were like fish – they were only good for about three days. We were now officially past the expiration date.

  ‘The right thing to do is to give to those in need,’ Lane kept reiterating. Except that Harper needed nothing but to crash into our lives with her noisy daughter, her creepy son, and her persistent nagging.

  I never dusted enough. When I cooked, the meals were over-processed. The dirty laundry was piled too high. No matter what I did – or didn’t – do, I couldn’t do right by that woman, and according to her, I wasn’t good enough for her brother. She hated our unconventional relationship, the fact Lane and I shared the homemaking responsibilities. It made sense for us – he was a better cook and I had never really learned how to make anything other than prepackaged meals. So sue me for not having parents who taught me basic homemaking skills.

  When it came to laundry, I didn’t keep up with it daily. Not even weekly. Lane had plenty of scrubs to get through the week without me running the washing machine ragged with constant loads. And who swept the floors daily? It wasn’t like we had a pack of dogs running around and shedding everywhere. So this morning, as my alarm went off at six o’clock, the sun still sleeping and the coffee brewing, I decided to show Harper just how homemakery I could be.

  I was doing my best for Lane, hiding my demons. It wasn’t until I pulled free from my past that I had finally been able to name those demons: Fear. Anxiety. Worry. Paranoia. The past had shaped me, made me stronger, so that I could appreciate what I had now even more. No one knew just how dark my life before Lane had actually been, not even Lane. I was entitled to a few character flaws because of it, one of which was being extra possessive of Lane. If you lost every good thing you ever touched, wouldn’t you hold a little tighter, too?

  What Harper didn’t understand was that I wasn’t a chameleon like her. I didn’t bend and fold into suburban bondage like she did, allowing Mom Groups and Book Clubs and the PTA to squeeze the identity out of me. I was happy living in my own shadow, not theirs.

  I shivered in my drapey Cyndi Lauper T-shirt and hiphugger panties, closing the window beside my bed where last night’s rain had left dewy droplets along the windowsill. After slipping on a plush robe and slippers, I piled my hair into a top-knot, then headed downstairs, greeted by … nothing.

  No scent of coffee brewing.

  No gurgling of hot water pouring over coffee beans.

  Someone had unplugged the coffeemaker and instead plugged in a cell phone. Harper’s cell phone.

  Ripping her cord from the outlet, I jammed the coffeemaker plug in and pressed the brew button, cursing her under my breath. Last night’s dinner dishes were already cleaned and put away – thank-Harper-very-much – but the drying rack was full of clean pots and pans. If she’d carelessly unplug my coffeemaker, then I’d carelessly put the pots and pans away. After clattering them loudly into the cupboards and slamming the cabinet doors shut, the house returned to deathly silence.

  It hadn’t worked.

  So I headed for the closet and lugged the vacuum out. It didn’t matter that the floors were mostly hardwood and a mop would work better; vacuuming would be so much more fun. I plugged it in and with the click of a button it roared to life. Zooming around the first floor, I made sure to bump into tables and floorboards, scraping chairs across the floor as I moved furniture around. It only
took a couple minutes of this before Harper tiptoed down the stairs, waving her hands at me to stop.

  I turned off the vacuum and smiled. ‘Good morning!’ I doused my tone with plenty of morning chipper. ‘Just getting a head start on the cleaning.’

  ‘At six in the morning?’ She cocked an eyebrow at me.

  How dare she cock an eyebrow at me in my own home!

  ‘I figured I was already up, so why not get started on the chores? The early bird gets the worm and all that.’ A saying I never agreed with. Birds found worms at all hours of the day; why did only the early risers get the credit?

  ‘The rest of us are trying to sleep, Candace. Can’t you wait until after the kids are up? They need their sleep.’

  ‘First you criticize me for not playing house, and now you criticize for doing it? What the hell do you want from me, Harper?’

  She exhaled, either in irritation or retreat. ‘I just want you to show some consideration. We’re trying to sleep and you’re purposely making a bunch of noise.’

  Apparently Harper’s voice carried louder than the vacuum, because Elise’s whining traveled through the closed door, landing on my ears. ‘Mommyyyyyyy, you woke Jackson up!’

  ‘Sorry, sweetie,’ Harper called back to her. ‘Try to go back to sleep.’

  ‘I caaaaaan’t,’ Elise answered with the same annoying pitch. ‘Jackson’s hitting himself again!’

  ‘Thanks a lot. Now the kids are up, and Jackson will be such a treat, thanks to your sleep deprivation,’ Harper mumbled as she stormed up the stairs. ‘I hope you like loud cartoons.’

  By the time Harper reached the top landing, both kids were crying and screaming at each other … and having a wrestling match, I wagered, from the thumping sound of something – or someone – hitting the floor.

  Mission accomplished.

  Half an hour later, Lane rolled out of bed – had I mentioned he was a deep sleeper? – as I placed a skillet of scrambled eggs beside a plate of buttered toast and crispy bacon on the kitchen table, just how Lane liked it. I preferred my bacon a little chewy and made of pig, not turkey, but this was all about Lane, not me.

  ‘Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey! Breakfast time,’ I sing-songed over the migraine-inducing SpongeBob SquarePants theme song. Of course Harper had picked the loudest show she could find to entertain the kids.

  It was on, bitch.

  The kettle whistled as the kids sat around the kitchen table spooning eggs onto their plates. I picked out a mint chocolate oolong tea – my current favorite – and set it to steep. Beside me, Harper poured a cup of coffee into an oversized mug, no cream, no sugar. It figured that Harper liked her coffee bitter, just like her personality.

  When the scent of mint reached my nostrils, I knew my tea was ready. I added a dash of cream, two spoonfuls of sugar, and sipped it. Perfection.

  ‘No coffee this morning?’ Harper asked me, lifting her mug.

  ‘I prefer tea. I’ve just never taken to coffee. It stains the teeth.’

  She scrunched her upturned nose. ‘That’s what whitening toothpaste is for. And who doesn’t like coffee? That’s just wrong.’

  I could have retorted with everything wrong with her, like how her voice scratched my eardrums, or how her caked-on foundation wasn’t doing her fine lines any favors or fooling anyone. Or that God-awful hairstyle that looked like a monkey with scissors cut it. But no, I kept my mouth in check. Not for her, but for Lane.

  When I escaped to the breakfast nook, I picked the chair furthest from the children and their bickering over who had more bacon. The table followed a long window that overlooked the backyard. I usually enjoyed the daily visits from the hummingbirds that hovered by the feeder that I’d hung from the back porch. But not even their cute squeaks or vibrating wings could cheer me up today.

  Harper followed me, sitting cattycorner to my chair. I had no desire to make idle chitchat with a woman who could care less about respecting me in my own home, so I returned to sipping my tea and nibbling my eggs while Harper scrolled through her phone. The cursed thing was like an extra appendage, always at her fingertips.

  At last her eyes broke contact with her device and she glanced up. ‘I searched for you on Facebook but I couldn’t find you. What name are you under?’

  Searching for what, exactly? I wanted to ask but didn’t. Because I knew she didn’t want to be Facebook buddies. ‘I don’t have Facebook.’

  Her mouth dropped open. ‘Are you serious? Only sociopaths don’t have Facebook.’

  ‘Judge me all you want, Harper, but social media has proven to be addictive. And it’s a time suck. You’re not even aware of how rude it is to have your face in your phone instead of actively conversing with the people you’re around.’

  Harper lifted her brows and glared at me. ‘Is that a dig?’

  ‘Only if you’re too involved with your fake news to make eye contact with the person you’re sitting next to. In fact, I think people who are on Facebook are sociopaths. You can be offensive, but not held accountable. The things people post on there with no consequences for their words is the problem with today’s society. A person’s likability is based on how many likes a post gets. It’s fake life. Detachment from real emotions or connections – that pretty much sums up social media.’

  Harper rolled her eyes at me, then slammed her phone on the table – facedown, as if that made any difference – with an exaggerated smirk.

  ‘My phone’s down and my eyes are on you. Better?’

  I turned to her, propping my chin on my knuckles. ‘What is your problem with me? I let you into my home and you treat me like garbage. I don’t appreciate it, Harper, and I don’t have to let you stay. I only agreed to it for Lane, because he cares about you. But me? I couldn’t care less if you were homeless. In fact, maybe you’d grow some character if you suffered a bit.’ I tossed my fork down, my appetite gone along with my patience.

  ‘You want to know my problem with you?’ She jutted her finger at my face, inching toward my nose. ‘You and Lane have known each other for, like, a minute, and are suddenly married. Why? This isn’t the 1800s – no one does that without an agenda. What exactly do you want from my brother?’

  I swatted her pointer away. ‘Isn’t it possible that I fell in love with him quickly because he’s a great guy, we’re not getting any younger, and there’s no reason for us not to get married? We both wanted to start a life together; it wasn’t just me. So you can put the accusatory tone away because I’m not going to run off with Lane’s retirement fund, or whatever it is you think I want from him.’

  ‘Whatever. People don’t just have whirlwind marriages unless it’s to hide something.’

  ‘Well, Lane and I have nothing to hide, especially our love for each other.’

  Harper made a gagging sound that made me want to gag her for real. ‘You’re too naïve to understand this yet, but you can’t just walk into a marriage and live happily ever after.’

  ‘Oh really? Enlighten me then.’ I couldn’t wait to hear her explanation.

  Her eyes shifted to the window with a distant gaze, like she was watching an old memory replay against the sky. ‘Real love smothers you and burns you. It takes everything from you and gives back very little. It changes who you are.’ Then she returned her focus on me. ‘Are you sure you’re ready for that? To give up everything for my brother?’

  ‘I already have, haven’t I? I’ve given up my home. I’ve given up my voice. Because God forbid I say no and turn you and your spoiled kids away. So don’t preach to me about marital sacrifice. What I want to know is why you’re really here. Because you have a huge house with your name on the deed. You’re perfectly capable of getting a job. There’s no reason for you to be here, and we both know it.’

  ‘Why is it such a big deal that I’m here? I’m grieving, Candace. I don’t want to be in the same house where my husband just died. Show a little empathy.’

  I admit, empathy didn’t come easy to me. It was hard to practice somet
hing so foreign to me. I was trained in ruthless survival growing up. My father’s favorite life lesson was: show no mercy. I was taught to eat or be eaten. My boo-boos weren’t kissed better; instead Dear Old Dad told me to toughen up or rub some dirt on it. When you’re at the hands of a violent father and a helpless mother, you learn quickly that the weak don’t survive.

  Empathy was for the weak because compassion required trust, and trust got you killed. Ask my mother, God rest her soul, exactly where sympathy got her. It got her dead. As my father would say, if you wanted sympathy, look in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.

  ‘Your husband died over a month ago, Harper. I’m not saying grief is a quick process, but why do you need to dig your claws into Lane in order to work through it? Go to a therapist. Join a support group. Talk to your friends. Lane isn’t your crutch anymore, so lose the obsession with him.’

  Harper jumped up from her seat, slamming her palms on the table. The silverware clattered and the kids scrambled out of the room. ‘I’m not obsessed with my brother! He happens to be my best friend, and right now the only friend I have. Maybe if you actually had a heart you’d see that and want to reach out to me. Clearly you’ve never lost someone you loved or you might be more understanding.’

  Now I felt a little bad. Because I had lost someone, a someone I had tried to replace over and over again but never could. When you love someone, a piece of your heart takes their shape. When they’re gone, so goes that piece of your heart. And nothing, no one, can ever fill it quite right. I knew exactly how she felt.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be callous about your loss.’

  ‘Have you?’ Harper looked at me intensely, and I suddenly felt uneasy.

  ‘Have I what?’

  ‘Ever lost someone you loved?’

  I didn’t want to answer her. It was none of her business. But as much as I disliked her, we weren’t so different. We both knew love, and we both suffered heartbreak. Maybe my walls could use a little chipping away. Who knew what I’d find on the other side. Maybe a friend, not a foe.