The Sister-in-Law: An absolutely gripping summer thriller for 2021 by Pamela Crane (best romance novels of all time .TXT) 📗

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. ‘But 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