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

by Pamela Crane

  ‘I want to start putting the nursery together. For our baby.’

  He didn’t reply at first, then he chewed his lower lip. ‘Okay. Let’s do it. I will ask Harper to leave. I think you’re right, that we need time together, alone. It’s been one problem after another since she arrived; I think we’ve earned a break. I’ll talk to her about it in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you, Lane.’ I nearly jumped into his arms I was so happy.

  I grabbed his cheeks and pulled his lips to mine, ripping his shirt off as I scraped my fingers down his chest. Little blossoms of pink budded everywhere my kisses touched. Licking down his naval, his body was my canvas and I wanted to paint it with my tongue. He was the purpose for my hungry lips, my grazing fingers, my bated breath. The sex was intense, passionate, full of apologies and forgiveness. As we sat up, heaving and sated, he looked at me and laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked, laughing but not knowing why.

  ‘You look like a zombie.’

  I sat up, checking my reflection in the mirror. Mascara trailed down both cheeks, along with smears of eyeshadow across my temples.

  ‘I’m thinking of trying out goth. You like it?’

  Cupping my hand, Lane led me to the bathroom, then held a washcloth under the faucet until the water ran hot. After soaking the washcloth, he pressed it against my face, wiping away the salty residue of tears and makeup. Lane polished me clean, inside and out.

  When we returned to the bedroom hand in hand, I scooped up the pile of hair from the floor and the dresser. Only then did I notice that the scissors were gone.

  Chapter 22

  Harper

  There was no light where we were going. Only darkness ahead. At 6:42 I bolted awake with the residue of a nightmare clinging to me. In my dream, the police had arrested me, charged me with murder, and my children had to watch me get hauled off in handcuffs. At 8:26 I finally put my phone down after exhausting every possible Internet search for news updates on Ben’s investigation, Michelle Hudson’s testimony, and affordable criminal defense attorneys. At 9:03 I was officially asked to move out, with nowhere to go.

  Nothing I said could convince Lane to leave Candace, my sister-in-law from hell. She was bitter, scheming, and selfish. He saw broken, passionate, and unloved. She was completely untrustworthy, and yet when I came downstairs to find them flirtatiously making pancakes together – a dollop of batter on the tip of her nose, a smear across his cheek, then licking it off each other – my stomach dropped.

  I’d overheard enough last night to know that Candace had mastered the art of manipulation. I couldn’t weed the truth from the lies, the woman was that skilled. A true politician, she’d earned the sympathy vote. Knowing how my brother could overlook an abundance of sins – I knew from personal experience testing this – I decided I’d do my own digging. See for myself what the truth was if Lane wasn’t going to bother.

  First thing first was this Noah Gosling character. Who was he really? Candace had painted him as an abusive ex-lover, the father of her baby. But I knew there were always two sides to every story. I wanted to hear his side, and I would.

  ‘Want some breakfast?’ Candace asked between giggles as I made my way to the cupboard behind them to grab a coffee mug. I’d need it extra strong today.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘No thanks. I see you both dipping your spit-soaked fingers in the batter.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon. We’re family. It’s not like we have cooties,’ Lane teased.

  ‘God only knows what you both have,’ I muttered.

  Carrying my java in a laughably large soup-bowl-like mug, I headed outside to the back porch and sat on the swing I had bought Lane as a housewarming gift. It was Amish made, from the foothills of Dutch country Pennsylvania. I wondered if that was anywhere near where Candace grew up … allegedly. Mockingbirds chattered as they scattered across the sky. A pair of cardinals hid in a Japanese maple tree, their red bodies blending with the leaves.

  Three gulps later, I was ready to do some research. I opened my Facebook app and did a cursory search for Noah Gosling. Several accounts popped up, so I narrowed it to Pennsylvania. Two accounts, but one looked like an aged version of the boy from Candace’s picture. Cute guy. Tattooed. Lip piercing. Bingo. Bare-chested in his profile picture, and I wasn’t looking away. He lived up to the Gosling name.

  I clicked to message him, not sure what to say. So I began typing without thinking:

  Hi, Noah. You don’t know me, but I think I know your ex-wife, Candace Moriarty. I was wondering if we could talk sometime? I have a couple questions I’d like to ask you. Thanks, and I hope to hear from you.

  As May was nearly over, we were leaving spring and heading into summer, and already the air was ripe with thick heat. Southern heat was moist and suffocating, with a persistence that stalked you in the shade. Through the open windows upstairs I could hear Elise yelling at Jackson about something or other. While her grievances always changed, the volume of her yelling stayed the same.

  Except this time, it was different. Two unified shrieks cut through the air. I jumped up and ran inside, taking the stairs two steps at a time and throwing open their bedroom door.

  ‘Mommy, Mommy, Frankie winked!’ Elise screamed and ran behind my legs while Jackson idled at my side.

  ‘What happened? Frankie … what?’

  ‘The doll, Mommy.’ Jackson’s fingers trembled as he pointed to an old doll.

  ‘Where’d you find that?’ I asked.

  ‘In the attic above Uncle Lane’s bedroom. There’s a secret entryway in their closet,’ Elise confessed.

  ‘You’re not allowed in their bedroom, let alone their closet. If Candace would have caught you, it’d be off with your heads!’

  At least with the mess Candace made of her closet there was little chance she’d notice that two kids had rummaged through it. The doll appeared old, and could be valuable, so I didn’t want to toss it out, no matter how creepy it was.

  ‘You named him Frankie after Pappy?’

  ‘Yeah, before we knew he’s possessed,’ Elise muttered into my side.

  The kids had named it Frankie, my grandfather’s name. They’d never met him but I’d spoken about him and they had seen pictures of him throughout our house.

  ‘The doll is not possessed.’

  ‘It winked at us! Jackson saw it!’

  Okay, this was getting ridiculous. First, ghosts in the house, now, possessed Chucky dolls.

  ‘Calm down, guys. I assure you that Frankie did not wink at you on his own. You probably moved him. Look.’ I walked over to the doll, its eyes half-open. I lifted the doll and tilted him backward and forward, showing them how his eyes blinked as I moved him. ‘See?’

  ‘But we were both on the other side of the room when his eyes moved, Mommy. I think the old lady lives in him now.’ Jackson’s lower lip twitched, as if undecided whether to curve up or down.

  ‘Mom, that doll is scary!’ Elise insisted.

  ‘How about I take the doll and put it in my closet. Problem solved, okay?’

  ‘What if he comes out at night and tries to kill us?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘That only happens in scary movies, not real life. I promise he won’t come alive. I’ll put him in a place he can’t get out of.’

  The kids seemed satisfied enough with my solution as I took the doll and headed into my bedroom. As I pushed it up on the top shelf, I could see how it creeped the kids out. One glassy blue eye remained half-closed and sleepy, the other wide with half the lashes missing. The plastic lips, a pink worn by time, pouted for a bottle or binky or thumb. It wasn’t a thin plastic doll, either, like the cheap ones you might find at the store. This doll had substance, weight. Almost like it was full of something. The old lady, perhaps?

  I shook the notion away. The therapist had explained some of the symptoms of traumatic grief; we had been down this road before, but it seemed to be getting worse. Post-bereavement hallucinations. Night terrors. Paranoia. And now I was cat
ching it too.

  My Facebook Messenger app beeped. I sat on my bed and opened the app. A reply from Noah:

  Candace Moriarty? Do you mean my ex-wife Candace Wilkes? And you’ve been misinformed. We’re legally still married.

  And the plot thickened. Candace was apparently still married. Which meant she wasn’t married to Lane. Which meant he had no obligation to her! I couldn’t wait to tell him he was free, free at last! There was no mention of Noah’s unborn baby. Perhaps Candace never told him.

  Well, she supposedly married my brother. Any idea why she would lie about who she is?

  I waited while three dots ran across the message bar as he typed:

  No idea, but tell that bitch to return what she stole from me.

  Was the baby what she had ‘stolen’ from him? I typed a hasty reply:

  She stole from you?

  Three dots blinked across the screen as he continued. Then his reply came through:

  What she took doesn’t matter anymore. I would have reported her to the police, but I figured I was better off without her. Where is she now?

  Damn, the man was bold. If I told him, it’d lead him straight to Lane, and God only knew what kind of person Noah was. I didn’t want to answer in case he really was as dangerous as Candace made him out to be, so I lied:

  I don’t know.

  He didn’t buy it:

  Yes you do. You said she married your brother.

  Crap. What had I gotten myself into? I was about to close the app when another series of dots ran across the screen:

  I already know everything I need to know about you, Harper Paris from Durham, North Carolina. It won’t be that hard to find you and get her myself.

  He was becoming more aggressive by the reply. I was only trying to protect my brother from his psycho wife, not get everyone killed in the process. I may have hated her, but I didn’t want her dead. Unless she had made it all up and Noah was the victim, not her? Who was lying and who was telling the truth?

  Tell her I’m coming for her.

  In a panic I closed the app and set the phone down. What had I done? Now Noah only had to look up my address – he had my first and last name, my city and state, probably even Lane’s name via Facebook now – to find out where I lived and come after me to get to Candace. What had she stolen? And how was I going to tell Lane what I had done? If Noah didn’t kill me, Lane certainly would. He had already given me a warning shot about causing any more girl drama. As if we were two teenage girls fighting over who got to use the bathroom first. This was serious. I had set off a shit storm, and there was no way we weren’t all going to get dirty.

  I needed my mom.

  Chapter 23

  Harper

  ‘You look terrible, Harp.’ My mother had never been one to bite her tongue and I rarely appreciated her brutal honesty.

  My body was exhausted from trying to claw myself out of the grave I had buried myself in. It was only a matter of time before the police came knocking on my door. I had researched every possible outcome for myself, and it all ended the same: jail, and a fine that would throw me into bankruptcy. The judicial system didn’t take kindly to tampering with evidence and insurance fraud. Of course I’d refute Lane’s involvement and spare his future, since he’d be the one taking custody of the kids. God forbid I let my mother spoil them worse than I already had.

  ‘I’m sure I look as terrible as I feel, Mom.’ You know you’re in it deep when your mother is the only person left that you can trust.

  Elmo’s Diner was packed as usual, but it was always worth the wait. They had a menu that catered to Mom’s insistence on meals that she couldn’t make at home, coupled with my preference for tried-and-true dishes; it was the happy medium one rarely found in life. Across the austere table, Mom looked overdressed in a silk blouse with a cream blazer. Her blond hair was styled up in full waves, her go-to style when her gray roots were growing out, and it framed a face perfectly made up. The woman literally put her face on when she applied her makeup.

  ‘Would you like a refill on your tea, ma’am?’ the waitress asked me, carrying a sloshing pitcher full of southern sweet tea.

  I definitely shouldn’t. I didn’t need the extra calories.

  ‘I’d love a refill, thanks.’

  Outside of our booth’s window the sky brooded, like acid-washed jeans. I pushed my home fries around my plate, my stomach already full after eating the quiche and drinking two – now three – glasses of sweet tea, which Mom had clucked at. Sweet tea this early in the morning? she had scoffed when I placed my order. But it could be the last time I enjoyed sweet tea, because who knew if they offered it in jail? So I drank my fill, with Mom tsk-tsking in the background.

  While I overindulged on tea, Mom picked at her salmon cake and eggs, a slow-eating trait she must have passed down the line. I lost count of how many times Jackson came home with notes from his teacher saying he needed to start eating lunch faster at school. Eventually the teacher sat him at a table by himself so he’d stay focused on his food, but he still took his sweet time eating, like a grazing cow with nothing else to do. When I found out my little boy sat all alone in a buzzing cafeteria packed with energized kids, my heart broke a little and that’s when I had started popping by the school for lunch to join Jackson.

  ‘Thanks for meeting me today. How’s your meal?’ I asked Mom.

  She held up a finger, a gnarled twig tipped with cherry blossom pink nail polish, while she finished swallowing her bite. ‘Delicious, thank you. How’s yours?’

  ‘Good.’ But there was no good transition into what I wanted to tell her.

  ‘Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do with your house?’ Mom could always fill the dead air between us.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Certainly you don’t want to keep it … after what happened there.’

  I swallowed a bite. ‘I’m renting it out. I have a family getting ready to move in.’

  ‘Rent it? Why not sell it?’

  ‘I’m not ready to part with it. All our family memories are there. I still feel Ben there, in the cushions of the sofa and the reflections of the mirrors.’

  ‘But it’s been almost two months since he died, honey. It’s time to start healing and moving forward with your life.’

  ‘I know, but he hasn’t disappeared yet, no matter how many times I clean the rooms. I’m not sure I want to move on yet.’

  ‘Harp, you can’t do this to yourself again. Hasn’t enough bad happened there? It’s time to let go.’

  ‘How can I? I’m not sure I want to say goodbye forever. Besides, I’ll be getting monthly rent checks to help pay the mortgage, so that gives me time to see how I feel about it a year from now.’

  Mom slapped the table and my half-empty glass of tea trembled. ‘You want the burden of that house for a whole year? Renting is a pain, let me tell you. And it rarely turns a profit. Why weigh yourself down with the bills and maintenance of a large house like that when I could sell it quickly for you? It’s a seller’s market right now. I could get you top dollar for it.’

  She grew more heated with each word, as if me holding onto my house was a personal affront to her.

  ‘To be honest, Harp, I don’t think you should ever return to that murder house. It’s not safe. What if the killer comes back? And besides, why would you want to be surrounded by the ghosts of the past? That sounds terribly painful.’

  ‘Just stop, okay? I don’t know why you’re so quick to forget Ben and—’ I stopped, unable to say her name, or else I knew I’d break down into tears that wouldn’t stop. ‘I know you never really liked Ben, but he was a good husband and a good father. We might have had our rough patches, but what couple hasn’t?’

  ‘What you two went through wasn’t a rough patch. It was a devastating loss, and he never truly supported you through it. I never even saw the man cry after she died. What kind of man doesn’t cry at his own child’s funeral? Especially when he’s to blame!’r />
  ‘Enough! I’m done talking about this. You blame him for what happened, but it was just as much my fault as his.’

  ‘Nonsense. The blame lies solely on him for her death. You know that, I know that. And at least you didn’t go cheating on him afterwards. The man deserved to die, if you ask me. Clearly whoever killed him felt the same way.’

  A diner was no place for this conversation. And I was in no emotional state to keep it civil.

  ‘What about me? Did I deserve to lose my husband? Did the kids deserve to lose their father? No, because even if he made mistakes at the end, it doesn’t erase all his goodness before that. I don’t know how you can be okay with the fact that he’s dead. Because I’m not.’

  She shook her head and fingered the collar of her blouse. She looked just as uncomfortable with this argument as I felt. ‘Maybe you should be okay with his death. It’d help you move on with your life. Find someone better, who doesn’t destroy everything he touches. I just want to see you happy, that’s all. And getting rid of that house of haunts could be part of that process.’

  And we were back to the house again. ‘I’m not saying I won’t eventually sell. But unloading that house is the least of my worries. Right now, my focus is to find a job, find a place to live, and get my family back on its feet.’

  She huffed. The same huff she always did when the topic transitioned to me working. ‘What kind of job does a girl with no degree or career path find? Maybe working at a garden center or plant nursery again? I just don’t want you ending up like me.’

  ‘What’s wrong with how you ended up? You’re a successful real estate agent, Mom. That’s something to be proud of.’

  The corner of her lip curled up in a doubtful look. ‘But it wasn’t my dream. I want better for you. You know, it’s never too late to go to college and pursue your passion, which you could have done if that husband of yours hadn’t pressured you to start having kids instead.’

  It was I who wanted kids right away; it was my choice, not Ben’s. But Mom never missed a chance to guilt me about it, as if college was going out of business.