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

‘A little formal, don’t you think?’

‘I appreciate decorum. What’s wrong with that?’ Without etiquette, we might as well toss out our forks and knives and use our fingers instead!

‘Nothing.’

But I heard something else behind the word.

‘No, please tell me what’s so bad about being proper?’

‘It’s great if you want to come across as uppity and snobbish. Is that how you want to be viewed?’

‘It’s better than being seen as lazy and useless.’

Oops. I hadn’t meant for that to slip out. Or maybe I had. Sometimes the brain-mouth connection backfired and I said things I didn’t mean … or did mean but shouldn’t say. This was one of those times, particularly because I was at her mercy, living under her roof. Correction: Lane’s roof.

‘Are you calling me lazy and useless?’

I didn’t answer. I now knew better than to speak. That seemed to make her even angrier.

‘I’m creating life right now – your brother’s baby! The wiggling arms and legs, that’s me. The racing heartbeat, me again. The tiny nose and sleepy eyes, all me. It’s exhausting donating all of my energy and nutrients to the baby, and I deserve a little credit for what my body is going through.’

‘I’m well aware,’ I said. ‘But through all of my pregnancies, I still cooked and cleaned and did my part.’

‘Maybe you wouldn’t have lost a child if you cared more about your baby’s life than your homemaking.’

I stiffened, uncertain of what I had just heard. Then her accusation caught up to me. How did she even know about the baby I had lost? The silence was thick with her shame. Even Candace knew she had gone too far. Swiping my hand under the tray, I lifted it off the coffee table and flung it to the floor, spilling tea, cream, sugar, and ceramic splinters across the wood. Candace jumped up from the sofa, arms outstretched as if to hug me, but too afraid to come near me.

Stay away, Candace, lest I strike that fake remorse from your face.

‘I’m so sorry! I don’t know why I said that. Lane told me that in confidence and I never should have said anything. That was wrong of me on so many levels—’

I raised my palm, stopping her with a curt, ‘Enough! You know nothing about me. Get your own tea.’

Tears I didn’t want her to see collected in the corners of my eyes. I refused to be her target practice. As I stormed out of the room, Elise chased Jackson past me, screaming something about her diary. My brain buzzed too loudly to hear her accusations as she tugged on my arm, forcing my attention on her, while Jackson hid behind my legs.

‘Mommy, help!’ Jackson screeched.

‘Give it back!’ Elise shouted, reaching for him around my human shield.

‘What’s the problem now?’ I yelled over them. ‘You were both supposed to be doing homework, not screwing around.’ Not that the kids ever listened to me. My voice was my only tool, and it had grown dull.

‘I was doing homework,’ Elise whined, ‘until Jackson took my diary. Tell him to give it back.’

I glared at Jackson. ‘Is this true?’

‘She’s writing terrible things. Things about Daddy. Things we’re not supposed to talk about.’ The way Jackson said it, his tone an ethereal bass, worried me. What had she written? What had Jackson read? How much did they know?

There was an unspoken trust between parent and child when it came to a diary. A parent simply didn’t look. Period. No matter how sneaky, or dark, or secretive your child was behaving, the diary was off-limits. A breach of this simple rule created a chasm that you could never cross. But if crossing that line saved your child in the end, did the ends justify the means? Could trust ever be restored?

‘Hand over the diary.’ I held out my open palm, and Jackson dropped the book into my grasp.

The edges of the pages were crinkled and well worn, filled with all the thoughts and crushes and disappointments and secrets that passed through my daughter’s mind, then out through her pen.

‘Mom, you can’t read that! It’s personal,’ Elise whimpered.

‘I’m not going to read it.’ I wasn’t sure about that yet. Screw trust when my child’s life was at stake. ‘I just want you two to stop fighting for five minutes. Is that too much to ask?’

Handing the carrots to Elise, I pointed them to the breakfast nook, telling them to sit while I sliced an apple and spooned peanut butter into a dish.

‘Here, have a snack to tide you over until dinner.’ I set the plate between them.

The shift in the air behind me caused me to look up and find Candace tiptoeing toward the garbage can carrying the broken remains of her cracked mug. She paused and looked at me, as if holding back words that were insisting on pushing through her lips. If she was trying to avoid another fight, she was doing a crappy job of it.

‘What?’ I spat. ‘If you’ve got something to say, just say it.’

‘You’ll get angry,’ she said.

‘That’s never stopped you from speaking your mind before.’

‘I just … you want the kids not to fight, but then here we are constantly bickering. It doesn’t set a good example for them.’

‘How enlightened of you to notice.’

‘I think we’ll all be a lot happier if you and I learn how to get along and respect each other. Don’t you agree?’

I didn’t owe her respect, or an explanation of my parenting methods, but that urge to defend myself continued to surface. ‘You think we can just all play nice and suddenly everyone’s happy? I lost my husband and am living with my brother and a sister-in-law who hates me. There is no such thing as happiness when you’re going through what I’m going through.’

Add the guilt of what I had done to the list of miseries, and I would never truly be happy again, and I think Ben knew that. My misery