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

by Pamela Crane

  I picked up a photo, its edge burned and curled, holes roughly punched out where the eyes should have been. I realized it was Candace, with Noah’s arm around her. It looked familiar, but why?

  The memory congealed. The day I found Jackson burning up our family picture, I had seen this in the wastebasket, amid the pile of photos that Jackson was about to set on fire. That’s where I recognized Noah from; that’s why he looked so familiar to me when Candace showed me her old pictures. I had thought that Jackson aimed all his pent-up anger against me, but this pile of chopped-up pictures were mostly of Candace. The eyes were poked out in every single one. He hated her, probably more than I did.

  But why?

  It didn’t make any sense.

  Maybe Jackson knew something I didn’t. Maybe I’d find an answer in her bedroom.

  Taking the scissors with me, I headed down the hallway. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, but whatever it was, I’d know it when I found it. Something in my gut led me, directed me, urged me on. Her dresser was cluttered with magazines, makeup, and food remnants. I set the scissors beside an empty chips bag surrounded by a few tufts of hair clippings from when she had mutilated herself. I had a shot in hell of finding anything amid the junk.

  Her dresser mirror was scribbled with lipstick messages. I only have eyes for you, with a heart beside it. You’re mine forever, with a lip print. So that bathroom message that had shaken Jackson so bad was a message from Candace to Lane. It would have been sweet if it wasn’t so psycho.

  I opened drawers, flipped through papers, dug in her closet while minute after minute ticked by. On her bed lay a self-help book, which was odd, considering I never saw Candace read anything but the tabloids or something to do with Meghan Markle. I flipped through the pages, stopping to read an underlined passage she had made a note about:

  The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

  Beside this in the margin Candace had scribbled:

  Meaning: The blood shed in battle bonds soldiers deeper than family. Our marital vows are our covenant. If Lane’s family is against us, I must fight to push them out.

  So she had been plotting against me. I wasn’t overreacting after all. Glancing outside the window, I saw Candace had stepped out of the pool. I had a couple minutes of her drying off, maybe a few to spare if she laid out for a bit before she headed upstairs to change. As I turned from the window, I noticed her jewelry box, a gorgeous, antique, white piece with five drawers in the front, a mirrored top that opened up to a velvet-lined compartment, and two sides that swung open to hang necklaces. Not sure what I hoped to find, I lifted the lid, the mirror catching the light, and picked up a handful of bangled bracelets. So here’s where she kept all her noisy boho jewelry.

  Drawer by drawer, I opened one after the other, looking at rings and necklaces and bracelets. So much jewelry for one set of wrists. At the last drawer I almost didn’t bother, but my fingertip hooked on the curve in the tray and slid it open.

  That’s when I saw it. A charm bracelet. At first it seemed so ordinary, until the shine of gold caught the sun, and I read the words crossing the metal band:

  True love waits

  The letters crashed against my trembling fingers as I dropped it back onto the velvet pad.

  Why did that phrase sound so familiar? There was some sort of malfunction going on with how fast the earth was spinning. Minutes went by as quick as seconds once did. And then I remembered—

  ‘What are you doing going through my stuff?’ If my skin wasn’t attached, I would have jumped out of it as I caught Candace’s dripping reflection in the jewelry box mirror, standing right behind me. I turned to find her half-naked and burning with anger – or too much sun exposure – with her hands on her bony, bikini-clad hips.

  The floor creaked as she stepped toward me, almost into me. She was too close. I was scared. My skin told on me, erupting in embarrassed red splotches.

  ‘Why. Are. You. In. My. Room?’ She punctuated each word, growing more severe with each syllable.

  All I needed to think about was the bracelet to fuel my fire. ‘Where did you get this?’ I picked the bracelet back up and dangled it in front of her.

  ‘I found it.’

  No explanation. No excuse. No getting caught. She was a gifted liar.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Candace, not after all we’ve been through. I know where this came from. I just want to hear it from you.’

  ‘Hear what? That I found it at a pawn shop? You have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Candace tossed her towel on the floor and reached for a rumpled T-shirt on the bed.

  ‘You got this from Ben, didn’t you? You were the woman sleeping with him, the woman from the hotel. Except you were blond then. That’s what Noah meant when he said he liked your hair dark.’

  She cackled, and it was almost painful to watch her crumble. ‘So you’re snooping and spying on me. Wait until Lane hears all about your delusions.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I plan on telling him everything. About how you’re still married to Noah. And how you were Ben’s mistress. I can’t believe I’ve been sharing a home with the woman who tried to steal my husband! Did you kill him too?’

  She didn’t speak, and I couldn’t read if it was denial or blame on her face.

  ‘But why Lane? First you stole my husband, then you stole my brother. Was it a personal attack against me? What did I ever do to you?’

  Her eyes widened, her bottom lip trembled, and I knew I’d caught her. But she wasn’t giving up. She was a fighter, like me. ‘First of all, don’t flatter yourself. You are nothing to me, so all of this,’ she waved her hand in a circle, ‘is not about you. And secondly, I didn’t steal your husband. He came to me first. I didn’t even know he was married in the beginning. And by the time I found out, things were already pretty … serious between us.’

  Serious? No, it couldn’t have been more than a fling for Ben. Someone temporary to fill the emptiness. Unless …

  ‘Is Ben the father?’ I pointed to her stomach.

  I didn’t think she was going to answer me, until she did.

  ‘Yes, he’s the father.’

  ‘Oh my God. Is that … is that why you killed him – because he didn’t want the baby?’ Before everything I now knew about my husband, I would have never thought he’d abandon a child. But now I knew better. He had done it before with Natalie. And he had done it again with Candace.

  ‘Why would you assume I killed him? We both know it was a suicide … which you covered up. I saw the note.’

  ‘No, that suicide note – that wasn’t Ben. It couldn’t be.’

  Ben’s last words were engraved in my head. I had read the letter dozens of times, slept with it under my pillow even after Lane told me to burn it, because it was everything I thought Ben wanted me to know. I punished myself with his lyrics. And somewhere inside I knew it wasn’t his voice from beyond the grave, but I had doubted myself. One should never doubt instinct.

  ‘You want to know how I knew it wasn’t him?’ I continued in the fury of the moment. ‘Because I knew Ben, and you clearly didn’t. Ben didn’t say things like vanquish the cruelty of life. I always thought that was the weirdest thing for him to write, and now it makes sense. You killed him, then staged it as a suicide. How ironic, right? That you would stage it and I would unwittingly undo your handiwork.’

  I snickered, not at the humor of it, but at the paradox of life. Candace stood there, buttoning her shorts as if we were discussing the weather, waiting for more. So I gave her more.

  ‘And Michelle Hudson? It was a pointless murder because the poor woman hadn’t seen you after all. But framing my mother for it? That’s an all-time low.’

  ‘Oh, that was just too easy. It literally fell into my hands. You can thank the broken clasp on her necklace for that. I found it in the living room the night of our dinner. It was fate opening a door for me, I guess.’

  ‘Why my mother – your own
mother-in-law?’

  ‘Why’d she keep calling me Candy? Why did she hate me? Why did she try to push my buttons and tell Lane to leave me? There’s always reasons for everything we do, some understandable, others not so much.’ Candace didn’t flinch, didn’t move, didn’t show an ounce of remorse.

  ‘I understand all of that, I do. But Lane – why him?’ It was the only unanswered question I had. ‘I just want to know why you picked my brother. You owe me that much.’

  She waited a long minute, the gears shifting in her head, then she spoke, each word slow, sure, mindful.

  ‘I’ll tell you why I picked Lane. I think you both earned the right to know. You see, Lane and I have history. But before I get to that, I want to set the record straight about Ben, because you’ve misinterpreted most of what happened. You want to blame me, but you really should be blaming yourself.’

  ‘Oh really? How so?’

  ‘When I met Ben, he was in a really dark place. After we spent some time together he finally told me why. He had lost Kira and his wife in one fell swoop. While you wallowed in depression, he was expected to carry all of you on his own. But you never considered his loss. I did, though.’

  ‘You know nothing about our marriage!’ I screamed, spittle spraying.

  ‘I know I didn’t go to him looking for love; he came to me looking for healing. He never mentioned being married until later, so it wasn’t like we plotted the affair together. He got drunk at a bar, I made sure he got home in an Uber. When he came back to that bar looking for me to return the favor, I agreed to a dinner. Dinner turned into dessert. And well, after that … it’s hard to turn a rich, handsome, attention-starved man down. At that point I still thought he was single.’

  ‘So you’re saying you had no idea he was married? I highly doubt that.’

  ‘Believe what you want, but it wasn’t until after we started seeing each other that he told me about you and your daughter. He never gave me much detail – it was clearly too hard on him to utter it out loud – only saying that he blamed you. And that after it happened you changed. You wouldn’t touch him, or let him touch you. You were constantly angry, picking fights with strangers, even. You destroyed that man. I loved Ben because you wouldn’t. You were too wrapped up in your grief to notice him and his grief, so I did. I met the needs you weren’t willing to meet.’

  The sound of skin on skin stopped her accusations. I watched it happen, unable to stop it, as my hand connected with her face. Her head whipped back in a seamless response as her palm covered the mark on her cheek.

  ‘You know nothing about grief,’ I said, emotions flooding me. ‘You couldn’t possibly understand loss, because you love nothing but yourself.’ The tears were coming, and I wouldn’t hold them back. She needed to see my sorrow in the flesh. ‘When I held my lifeless child in my arms, all of my heart and all of my joy bled out of me. My hands will forever be painted red with her death, because I can’t forgive myself. I don’t want to forgive myself. Because love requires everything. Why do you think I took the blame instead of letting it fall on Jackson? I lied to everyone – the police, Ben, even Lane – about what happened, out of love for my son. I told everyone it was on my watch that she wandered to the pool, fell in, and drowned. I wanted to protect everyone else more than I wanted to heal myself. Love is sacrifice, Candace. What have you ever sacrificed for another person? Nothing!’

  ‘You don’t know me.’ Her arm – the one scarred by Noah – dropped to her side, and her eyes burned like hot coals. ‘Oh, I’ve had loss. More loss than you could imagine. So don’t claim the victim card all for yourself. Ben was grieving too, and you pushed him away because you didn’t want to share your misery. Well, congratulations, Harper, now you own it all. You lost your child and your husband … and this clingy thing you have going on with Lane? Well, that will be gone next.’

  ‘No,’ I shook my head, ‘Lane would never abandon me. Family sticks together.’

  ‘You have no idea what that man is willing to do for me. Or what I’m willing to do for him.’

  ‘You’re fighting for people who don’t want you, Candace.’

  As soon as the words left my mouth I saw the rage bubble up inside her. I had gone too far. Her gaze darted from the floor, to the door, to the wall, while I tried to keep up with it. She lunged toward her dresser, the motion so swift that my brain hung back. A heartbeat later she held the pair of scissors in her fist, aiming the point at me as she leapt forward. Covering my head with my arms, I ducked and shuffled back, but she bulldozed forward, her body slamming into mine. I screamed as the tip of the scissors bit into my stomach. I cradled the gushing open wound, trying to cup the blood back inside. When I looked up at her, she held the scissors above her head, aiming them at my face.

  ‘Mommy!’ The voice barely cut through the white noise buzzing in my ears. But it was loud enough to hold Candace back for the second I needed to scramble toward the bed. Behind Candace, Jackson pummeled her with his fists, but it was like a fly buzzing around her face. A mere annoyance, not a threat.

  Jackson rammed through her legs toward me, and protectively hugged me. His short arms cradled halfway around my body, as he screamed, ‘Mommy! Don’t hurt my mommy!’ My baby boy risked his life for mine. Everything I thought I’d lost – my heart, my soul – inflated fully, the love bigger than ever before. Pulling him under me, I kissed him and held him and wept into his hair as I shielded him from Candace and all the evils in the world. I would never let go again.

  I crouched over Jackson in the corner as Candace threw down another blow that grazed my back. I cried out at the surge of pain coursing through my body, begging her to stop. Her arm swung down again, the point hitting my forearm as I blocked her. Then, again, her arms rose, both hands clutching the hilt, this time aiming for my shoulder where I hunched over Jackson possessively. I couldn’t watch her stab me to death, so I tucked into a ball with my son in the center, waiting and bawling and calling for help.

  Waiting for the next strike … but it didn’t come. I dared a glance at her. With the scissors still in midair, a memory seemed to flash across her face. Tears filled her eyes, the blue irises becoming unnaturally bluer, then dribbled down her cheeks as some distant pain stayed her hand. But only for a moment. She blinked back to now, her arms trembled, and I saw the hatred return.

  When I should have felt the slice of metal into my flesh, I instead was hit with her full weight as she dropped onto me. I yelped and shoved her aside, crawling across the floor with Jackson scuttling ahead of me, only to bump into a pair of legs. My view traveled upward to find Lane standing above me holding the – now bloody – turquoise and gold urn containing Kira’s ashes.

  Chapter 35

  Candace

  There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.

  ‘You have no idea what that man is willing to do for me. Or what I’m willing to do for him.’ I meant every word of it.

  The incredulity on Harper’s face made me want to smack it right off. She had watched my life go up in flames while she held the matches. Not anymore. It was my turn to win. I had proven that I could take whatever I wanted of hers and make it into something better, more beautiful. Ben had been depressed with her, sullen, dull. I turned his misery into a work of art, passionate, colorful, and exciting.

  And wretched, doomed Lane, chained to obligation to his sister and mother. He lacked luster, and independence, and a zeal for life, and I hand delivered all of that to him. I reached into his lonely heart and pumped it back to life with my own hands. How dare Harper belittle all that I did for them, or question the love I was entitled to.

  Unlike Harper, I never had loving parents dote on me. I never had a man who adored me above everything else, tending to me like a beautiful flower. I never had children to look up to me like I was their sun and moon. Harper was so fortunate and she didn’t even see it. I did, and that’s why I deserved it, because I appreciated it.

  ‘You’re fighting for people who don’t want you, C
andace.’

  The bite of her words went deep. I didn’t know why I lunged at her. Anger at her truth. A fight for self-preservation. It was a familiar fury I couldn’t control – pure vengeance swirled into a tornado I couldn’t stop. I first felt it at the hands of Noah, but back then I was too scared to stand up for myself. Then when Ben rejected me and his unborn baby, the one still growing within me, that righteous anger resurged. I wanted him dead, because he had made me as good as dead to him. I felt it again when Michelle Hudson threatened my last chance at happiness when she’d gone to the police. And now I felt it with Harper. All I knew was that once that wildfire was lit, it burned out of control.

  I leapt forward, sinking the scissors into her body, slicing through muscle and sinew. The quick little coward scooted away, so I tried again.

  ‘Mommy!’ Jackson’s distraction took just long enough to pause the Red that blinded me as he thrust his tiny fists into my legs. I imagined those same little hands drowning his sister and my compassion for him was gone. He ran toward his mother, just as I dropped another swing that pushed her back. Another one hit her forearm. No more missing the mark. End it now, the Red commanded.

  A tinge of brief regret hit me as Harper wrapped Jackson up beneath her, cowering and begging for mercy. The image pulled me back into my memories of my father beating my mother while she covered me, protecting me from his fists. For an awful moment I had become my father, and my core trauma came to life. Only, this time, I was the villain.

  All I had ever wanted was to love and be loved. All I got was rejection and pain. I thought of how my father chose death over me. And how Ben chose Harper, then Lane chose Harper. Why wouldn’t anyone choose me? The Red returned, then just as swiftly it was snuffed out as something hit me against the back of my skull. Deafening silence, like high-altitude pressure, pressed against my eardrums at the same time darkness pressed against my eyes.