The Sister-in-Law

by Pamela Crane

  As Facebook sprang to life, the first thing I noticed when I opened my account was the countless notifications, all comments about a post I apparently had made. But I hadn’t posted anything. I clicked on my profile as thousands of pixels drifted into place, forming words that made me swell with horror. Shock soaked into every part of me.

  ‘What the hell?’

  Time-stamped this afternoon, an appalling post from Harper Paris, from my very own account:

  Living my best life husband free!

  #deadandgone #blackwidow

  The backlash went on for over two hundred comments and a thousand angry-faced emojis, the post shared dozens of times. Complete strangers from all over the globe told me what a murdering waste of space I was, questioned the state of my soul, insisted that I should rot in jail – wait, no, apparently I deserved the electric chair for what I’d done. And eternal hellfire. Some commenters with extra time on their hands to look me up even mentioned the baby:

  First she killed her child, now her husband. Child services needs to get her other kids safely away before they’re next.

  I heard her two-year-old died last year. Think she killed that child too?

  This woman needs to be behind bars before someone else turns up dead.

  Get this #babykiller and #husbandmurderer off the streets!

  The child died under suspicious circumstances. Then her husband turns up murdered. How have the police not arrested her already?

  There’s nothing more dangerous than a black widow who has everyone fooled.

  Comment after comment attacking my character, charging me with murder, bringing up the baby. Maybe they weren’t wrong. The two events were connected, after all. I was a killer in denial. Were my own children no longer safe with me as their mother?

  The phone slipped from my fingers, landing soundlessly on the mattress. I stifled a sob, but I couldn’t hold it back. The whole world hated me, despised me, called me a murderer. I could only imagine what the cops would think when they saw this. Because most certainly they would. And it would raise a whole slew of questions I couldn’t answer. About Ben. About the baby’s death – and the details of what had actually happened. I could never let that get out.

  I inhaled a steadying breath. Smell a flower, blow out a candle.

  Calm yourself. Don’t panic. Just think.

  Maybe I could fix this. They were just strangers, after all. Who cared what they thought of me? And yet I suddenly understood why teens were attempting suicide over social media bullying.

  Smell a flower, blow out a candle.

  I grabbed the phone and reopened the app, finding the post at the top of my feed. I clicked the corner icon to delete it, expecting the action to erase the hurt as well. A refresh later and it was gone – whoosh – into cyberspace. But the hurt was still there. No, it wasn’t hurt. It was anger that burned into my skin. Hatred for the person who did this. I’d already lost so much. Where my heart once lived was now an empty cavity, as if you could reach inside me and feel nothing but cool, damp air. Who would want to break what was already broken?

  No one came to mind, no one who hated me this much to pose as me and write something so evil. Had some anonymous scammer hacked into my account for fun, or was it personal, done by someone with access to my phone? I knew one thing – yes, this was personal. And that left only one person who could have done it. Who would have done it.

  Candace. She had motive and means.

  The motive: She hated me, for one. I was the thorn in her side, and the feeling was mutual.

  The means: I never kept track of my phone. I always left it sitting around, or sometimes even let Elise play Angry Birds or Escape Room on it. Candace could have easily grabbed it and posted to my account since I didn’t password protect my phone. Ben had often warned me about that. What if your phone gets stolen? he’d said a dozen times. I hadn’t listened to Ben back then, and now I regretted shrugging him off. Never again would he warn me about the dangers of not password protecting my phone. Never again would I get the chance to tell him he worried too much, or anticipated the worst in people.

  When would every thought stop leading back to Ben?

  Focus.

  The post was made sometime around my shopping trip with Candace. I couldn’t be sure about the exact time we left, but it was close enough. My phone had definitely been with me in the car and at the mall, in my purse the whole time. And Candace had a secret ability, a superhuman power to commit wrongs without guilt. I first noticed it when I caught her wearing a ring she had stolen. She didn’t think I had seen, or maybe deniability was a game for her. Whatever the case, she proudly wore that ring with a bold lack of remorse. If she could effortlessly pilfer jewelry, how much easier was it to borrow my phone and post something terrible? And just when we were starting to get along …

  I couldn’t imagine why Candace would want to hurt me to this extent. Sure, she came across a bit cold and aloof. But this was sociopathic. I needed to confront her about it, but I didn’t know how to outsmart her and catch her in a lie. Without proof, I had nothing but my word against hers.

  Sneaking down the hall toward Candace’s bedroom. I stood by the door, which was cracked open, and listened. It was quiet inside, nothing but the occasional ruffle of pages. As I knocked, the door swung in, giving me full view of Candace eating chips in bed, a copy of Us Weekly magazine in hand. I cringed at the thought of all those greasy crumbs making their way into her wrinkled sheets.

  She barely offered me a glance, her eyes remaining fixed on a page littered with pictures and celebrity gossip.

  ‘Can I speak with you a moment?’ I asked.

  She groaned and glanced up, only her blue eyes visible above the magazine’s horizon. ‘What’s up?’

  I hadn’t considered how to word this without blowing things up. I figured the simpler, the better. ‘Did you post something from my Facebook account?’

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Why would I do that? I don’t even have a Facebook account.’ There was no surprise in her eyes. No reaction at all.

  ‘I didn’t ask if you posted from your account. I asked if you posted from my account.’ The narrow glare she gave showed her clear dislike for my interrogation methods.

  Closing the magazine and tossing it down, she cocked her head and smirked. ‘No, I did not post from your account. I’m not some vengeful teenager who uses social media to passive-aggressively launch an attack on a girl who stole my boyfriend, or whatever. I’m not into drama, Harper.’

  She picked up her magazine and buried her face back in it. Conversation over, apparently.

  ‘I never said it was drama. I just asked if you posted something.’

  ‘I can only assume it’s drama, or else you wouldn’t be accusing me of doing it.’

  My face warmed with embarrassment. ‘It wasn’t an accusation. It was just a question. Someone posted something from my account, and the only person who could have accessed my phone lives in this house.’

  ‘Maybe one of the kids did it. I always see Elise on your phone.’

  I shook my head. ‘This isn’t something they would post. Plus it was posted when we were at the mall today. My phone was with me the whole time … and you were with me the whole time.’

  ‘So you think I would be that crazy to steal your phone while I’m with you? I have a life, Harper, and petty Facebook crises aren’t part of it. Are you sure you didn’t post whatever it is so that you could make me look bad to Lane?’ She lowered the magazine and raised her eyebrows at me.

  ‘What? That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘Is it really? Because ever since you met me you’ve been trying to break me and Lane up. Clearly you’re out to get me, and I wouldn’t put it past you to frame me so you can cry to Lane about what a mean girl I am.’ She rolled her hands into tiny fists, twisting them under her eyes, the universal sign for crying like a baby. Then she stopped and observed me, hard and cold, and I observed the floor, hard and cold. ‘B
ut I’m not that easy to scare, Harper. I’ve dealt with way worse than you before.’

  This was it, the beginning of the end. No more playing house, no rewind, no more shopping trips and selfie pics. We were now sworn enemies. I was speechless. And afraid. Something about the way she had said it shook me. This was not a woman I wanted to mess with … but she was also not a woman I wanted my brother chained to.

  ‘Are we done here?’ Candace’s gaze roved over me, unraveling me with her eyes. She sensed I was weak, and she preyed on that.

  ‘Yeah, we’re done.’ I nodded and left, but I had dealt with way worse too. As I shut the door behind me, I could have sworn I heard her mutter, ‘Black widow.’

  Like I said, it was only just beginning.

  Chapter 13

  Harper

  I loved laundry day. The solitude, the mindlessly busy hands. There was something relaxing and numbing about it. The idyllic repetition of folding and stacking, the soft strands of fabric running through my fingers. Sometimes I would put on my favorite show, hide in the bedroom, and fold the minutes – and the anxiety – away. My brain would shut down while I created tall, neat piles all over the bed. For me, laundry was a cheap, productive form of therapy. Certainly cheaper than the therapist I had stopped seeing months ago, despite what the judge ordered.

  The wicker laundry basket that matched the wicker bins I had gotten on sale at Pottery Barn last year – back when I enjoyed shopping, or enjoyed anything, for that matter – sat on one side of me, the other side of me filled with short stacks of clothes. Elise’s bottoms, Elise’s tops. Jackson’s bottoms, Jackson’s tops. Lane’s Windex-blue scrubs in matching sets. As I pulled out a button-down shirt from the bottom of the basket, I gasped.

  Ben’s Brooks Brothers Oxford work shirt, one of his favorites. Despite its $150 price tag, he said it was worth every penny. So I’d bought him ten. I laughed back then at the frivolity. Now it made me nearly cry because I was homeless, broke, and desperate.

  I set the shirt aside. I thought I had donated all of Ben’s clothes to Goodwill, where some lucky bastard would be dressed to the nines in designer wear for the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee. I must have missed this one at the bottom of the dirty clothes heap. Pressing the collar against my face, I inhaled the scent of clean linen fabric softener. Ben’s smell had been stripped by detergent, and maybe that was for the best. He didn’t have a particular scent, other than the pungent sweat he soaked the sheets with each night, which I teased him about almost daily. I’d tell him he stunk up the bedding. He’d blame the dog. I’d laugh and remind him we didn’t have a dog. It was our thing. Our banter. Ben was a hot, sweaty sleeper. What I would give for my sheets to be dank with his sweat again.

  I wondered if his pillowcase held traces of him. I wondered if I’d find more of him scattered throughout the laundry bins. I wondered when the wondering would end. I hated this part of death, when the ghost lived in your head.

  Reaching for another item, my fingers tangled in a pile of lacy underwear. A thong. Who in their right mind enjoyed the sensation of floss riding up their butt crack? Somehow Candace’s dirty clothes always ended up in my wash, which irritated me to no end. Didn’t she realize laundry required organization? Like colors with like colors. Whites with whites. Delicates handled, well, delicately! When she threw a red wool sweater in with the whites, it turned everything pink and shrunk the sweater. It had served her right, but of course I’d been blamed for the sweater that now fit a newborn.

  I laid the underwear on her stack of clean clothes, which was taller than the rest.

  ‘Candace!’ I yelled to a silent house.

  When I got no reply, I glanced out the window and saw her swimming laps. Back and forth, back and forth, in a fluid rhythm of splashing arms and legs. With it only being late May, it was still early in the season for swimming, but that’s what a pool heater is for! she had explained. Never mind that installing the heater had cost more than a car. Although summer was still a month away, it had arrived early this year with temperatures already in the 80s, but when the pool temperature hadn’t yet risen to a balmy warm owing to the chilly nights, Candace had insisted on a heater. And a new pool patio. And a custom pergola. Like every other whim of hers, Lane had obliged and paid extra to have it installed that week.

  I want to give her everything life has withheld from her. She’s never had anything of value. Let me spoil her if I want to spoil her, Lane tried to explain when I brought up her extravagant spending. Nothing I said would open his eyes to the truth. I smelled a gold-digger, but Lane only smelled her pheromones. At least it kept her out of my hair, her daily routine of sunbathe, swim. Sunbathe, swim. God forbid she spend the time washing her own laundry.

  Picking up her teetering pile of clean clothes, I carried it into her bedroom where the bed was a mess and the floor barely visible under all the junk. Clothes, shoes, towels, shopping bags … she was a shameless slob. I couldn’t stand my brother being forced to live like this, so I began tidying up her dresser so I could place the clothes on top. Opening her top drawer, I found it was crammed full of assorted clothing with no theme whatsoever. Socks, T-shirts, and shorts all mixed together. My God, the girl had no sense of organization.

  As I moved things around, folding and coordinating as I went, a piece of paper crinkled along the bottom of the drawer. Pushing the clothing aside, I pulled it out through the folds of fabric. An ultrasound image. Why would she put a priceless photo like this – the first glimpse of her baby’s face – in the bottom of her drawer? It deserved to be framed. Despite the war between us, our children would be cousins. Even if I couldn’t be a happy sister-in-law, I could be a doting auntie. It wasn’t the baby’s fault her mother was a devious leech.

  Maybe as a gesture of goodwill I would frame it for her. I already had an adorable ultrasound frame that would be perfect, a monkey swinging from a tree with the caption It’s a jungle in here! My mother had gotten similar frames for each of my kids – an elephant and a giraffe – but the monkey frame remained empty in a box in my closet.

  I examined the picture, remembering back when I had my first ultrasound with Elise. What an exciting day, seeing that blob floating around, a tiny head and arms and legs. And that heartbeat! Who would have known you could see it beating a mile a minute? It made everything inside me feel so … real. At that moment I had planned my home, my life, and my future around that tiny person growing inside me.

  Well, at least Candace wasn’t lying about the pregnancy. Initially I had my doubts, but this was a good thing. Finally, a truth amid the lies! I traced the speckled white image of the baby against the black background. My brother’s baby. I really was an aunt! If I was going to have a little niece or nephew, I didn’t want a schism. I needed to smooth things over. We did have fun shopping together, didn’t we? Anything was possible.

  Taking the ultrasound with me, I headed to my closet and rummaged through several boxes until I found the picture frame at the top, dusty with time. I slipped the thin paper inside, adjusting it just right. As I checked to see how it looked, I noticed the date: the ultrasound was taken the day they got married. I counted the weeks in my head. The math didn’t seem right. In fact, if the date was correct, it put her at almost three months pregnant. This meant she got pregnant a month before she even met Lane.

  This meant she lied about everything.

  This meant the baby wasn’t Lane’s.

  This meant I wasn’t an aunt.

  This meant war.

  I needed to tell Lane, but he was already overworked and stretched thin. I didn’t know how he was surviving on the four to five hours of sleep he barely got, but at the rate he was going, he was doomed to crash. And crash hard.

  I didn’t want to add more to his already full plate of night shifts and home project to-do lists. He’d been picking up double shifts at the hospital to pay for all of the extra baby ‘needs,’ as Candace called them. The weekly pregnancy massages, baby yoga classes, and $1,200 b
aby stroller were hardly necessities though. If it wasn’t a pair of Jimmy Choos that would last a lifetime, or diamonds that you could pass on to your kids, it wasn’t worth the money. If the baby would spit up on it, poop in it, or spill food on it, you didn’t pay $1,200 for it.

  All of these demands for a baby that wasn’t even his.

  Before burdening Lane with this new information, I decided I’d do my own digging. I would winnow the wheat from the chaff, the truth from the lies. There were so many puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together when it came to Candace, but what was her ultimate angle? I knew my brother was an easy target for any single woman looking to start a family. He made good money as a nurse, he was handsome and loyal, owned his own home, had saved a nice little nest egg, drove a reasonable car. Who wouldn’t want a guy like him? And his best trait also made him the best target: he was trusting to a fault. Even I had taken advantage of that a time or two. But I couldn’t let someone else, someone who wasn’t family, do that to him.

  I had two questions for Candace, and I suspected if I unraveled the answers to them, I’d unravel a lot more of her secrets. If the baby wasn’t Lane’s, whose was it? And why was Candace pretending it was Lane’s?

  Chapter 14

  Candace

  I could swim in your depths forever.

  If only I could promise you forever.

  In my previous life I didn’t have a pool, so as a child, during the most brutal beatings of summer heat, I often had to go in search of one. Back then I found a lot of things, and I lost a lot of things too. When food was scarce, I hit up local soup kitchens. When my parents had an overdue bill, I stole money from my friends’ parents to keep our electricity on. When I was lonely, I found love. But more often than not, I lost love. It was hard to love a rebellious, thieving orphan like me. Maybe that’s why I settled for the wrong man. Or maybe that’s why, when I found the right one, I wouldn’t let him go.