The Sister-in-Law by Pamela Crane (great books for teens txt) 📗

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.

‘Yes, in fact I have. So I do understand you. But you can’t let it swallow you, Harper. I learned that the hard way – you have to be stronger than death. If not for you, then for your kids.’

She stood for a long, quiet moment, staring out the window. ‘If only it were that easy.’

Her sadness touched me in a way that I could feel. Was this what empathy felt like? Harper didn’t quite seem like the enemy anymore. She was far too broken, like me, to be the bad guy. With a light caress of my hand against hers, we connected.

‘I don’t really know much about what happened to your husband other than what Lane told me – that he died unexpectedly. Please …’ I patted the chair, hoping she would sit back down so we could talk, so we could forgive. If we were destined to be sisters, I could at least try to get along. ‘Do you want to talk about him – your husband?’

She accepted my peace offering and sat stiffly in the chair, her hand under her chin. ‘What can I say about Ben? He kept me on my toes until the very end.’

I didn’t know what Harper meant by that, but I’d nudge until I found out. Maybe it was the clue to why she was the way she was. Controlling. Rigid. Anxious. Maybe it was the answer to how to fix everything between us.

‘How did he die?’ I asked.

The whisper in my ear and the breath on my neck crawled up my spine and jolted me out of my seat: ‘Daddy was murdered.’

I spun around to find Jackson at my shoulder, expressionless but observant. I recently noticed that about him; he avoided contact but was always watching with those shiny black beads.

‘Murdered?’

I didn’t mean for it to come out so loudly, so harshly, so insensitively. But everyone knew that when a spouse turned up dead … well, the living one was usually the one who had done it. Harper even looked like the textbook murderess, with the downward slash of her mouth, the stiffness of her jaw. Spotless on the outside, filthy on the inside. I imagined Harper more worried about the bloodstains on her floor than the bloodstains on her hands. Yes, Harper was a picture-perfect killer.

‘Yes, I’m working with the police to figure out who killed my husband.’

That’s the moment I realized just how urgently I needed to get Harper and her crazy family out of my house. Because killers shouldn’t live in homes; they should live in jail cells.

Chapter 8

Harper

If you’ve never woken up from a dead sleep to the sound of a house full of smoke alarms blaring, I don’t recommend it. Especially if you have a heart condition. Or anxiety. Or young kids. And if you don’t already have a heart condition or anxiety, you might find yourself suddenly acquiring one or the other after such a wakeup call.

My digital clock radio – which Lane teased was old-fashioned and had gone the way of the rotary telephone – blinked 4:43 in the morning. The bedroom was pitch-black, the only light being a sliver of moonbeam white slipping through the gap where the blinds didn’t quite meet the window frame. In this otherworldly gray was where the screaming started. First the piercing siren call of the smoke alarm, followed by the screeches of frightened children. I threw off the covers and ran to the kids’ room to find Elise sitting up in bed, hair in a knotted mess and eyes wild and wide. Jackson’s side of the bed was empty.

‘Where’s your brother?’ I screamed over the noise, my gaze racing around the room.

‘I don’t know! I just woke up. Is there a fire?’

‘I’m not sure. Help me find your brother!’

Dragging Elise into the hall, I checked the bathroom for Jackson. Empty. Where the heck was he? Gripping Elise’s hand like her life depended on it, I rushed carefully down the steps toward the front door as Lane darted out of his bedroom in a confused bustle.

‘What’s going on?’ Lane yelled over the alarm as he followed me downstairs.

‘Do you see smoke anywhere?’ I called behind me.

‘No. I’ll check the rest of the house.’

‘I can’t find Jackson.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll find him.’

Lane took off toward the kitchen while I ushered Elise to the front door, where I found Jackson standing by the coat closet, thank God.

‘Where were you, buddy?’ I asked as I pushed the kids outside to wait on the porch while Lane sorted everything out.

‘I was in the downstairs bathroom. Then the alarm went off.’

How odd, when the closest bathroom was only a few feet from his bedroom door.

‘Why didn’t you use the upstairs bathroom?’

Covering his mouth secretively, his voice lowered into a whisper. ‘Because the ghost lady looks at me in the mirror when I’m going potty.’ He said it so convincingly I almost believed him.

‘What do you mean, honey? What ghost lady?’

‘The lady who died in the house.’ His gaze darted around, as if the ghost could be eavesdropping on us. ‘I see her in the mirror.’

I felt a Sixth Sense vibe coming from Jackson. I wondered if perhaps he had seen the movie and his imagination was playing tricks on him. Though if Ben had let our six-year-old son watch that, I would have killed him … if he weren’t already dead, that is. ‘You’ve seen a dead woman in the mirror?’

‘Well, she writes things on the glass. Tells me she’s watching me.’

Was Jackson envisioning things again? We had been through this once before – the hauntings, the child psychiatrist had called it. Jackson had made such strides since then … until Ben’s death happened.

‘Remember what the doctor told you,