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

entire meal over not having any personal space, begging to move back home.

Home. What was home these days? Because nothing felt like home without Ben.

Jackson sits up and watches me all night, Elise complained. He makes weird scratching sounds while I sleep, she whined. No matter how much I tried to understand Jackson, what he was going through, he simply wouldn’t tell me what thoughts rattled around in his head. I was almost afraid to find out.

I wanted to believe these were typical kid problems, but the truth was that all sense of normal had died along with their father. I had no clue how to help them or return to the place we couldn’t return to – our old life. Our happy life. A life that only existed in my mind.

Because what husband killed himself unless things weren’t what they seemed?

I sent the kids to the living room to watch television while I finished cleaning up. Just one more hour to go before I fell into my bed and into a book that would hopefully seduce me into its pages and release my chains to this world. If only I could stay within the chapters, in a story I love instead of the reality that I hate. These days, I counted down the minutes to my nightly solitude. All day I pushed the feelings down, just below the surface, but at night, alone in my bedroom, I could let it rise and feel it all. The sadness, the loneliness, the heartbreak, the anger, the questions I wanted answers to: Why? Why? Why?

All the stages of grief were coming back in a single hit: isolation, anger, asking every what-if, giving up. Everything but acceptance. I wasn’t there yet; how could I accept that he took his own life? Especially when he knew how hard I worked to break through the grief before. Damn you, Ben! As my hands slid up and down the casserole dish – sudsing, sudsing, sudsing – my mind wandered and slipped into a dark place. I needed a cigarette.

I didn’t smoke. I never had, not other than the occasional cigarette over drinks with friends, and definitely not since I fell for Ben and he told me he’d never date a girl who smoked. But Ben wasn’t here, and I needed a hit of something, anything, to numb me. I didn’t know where Lane kept the hard liquor, so the pack of cigarettes I had bought the day after Ben died would have to do.

I slipped outside into the cool night air, the cigarette smoke contaminating the fragrance of roses that hung by the back porch. Every puff coursed through my lungs and into my bloodstream, my own little act of rebellion against the traumas of death and single motherhood. How did women do it? A woman was like calm water on the surface, but underneath the water’s edge she was a gliding, hunting shark. I wanted to be a shark, but I was a jellyfish that lazily floated along, ready to be someone’s dinner.

An eddy of smoke, with an undertone of burning leaves, clung to the fibers of my shirt. I’d need to remember to change clothes when I got inside.

The swimming pool glistened under a full moon. I looked up and met its hollow gaze, remembering how fascinated four-year-old Jackson had been with the man who lived in one of its many craters. I never had the heart to tell him the truth, that the stories were lies we told our children as we patted ourselves on the back for parenting well done. Yet those lies cultivated their imagination. If only all my lies had such a silver lining.

I traced Ursa Major with my eyes; my need for dark solitude was as insistent as the stars.

In the alcoves of my thoughts I heard the back door slide open, then closed. I didn’t turn to look; I could sense my brother when he was near because he possessed a kind of calm that was almost tangible. I imagined it was like being in the presence of one of the Twelve Apostles. You just knew he was goodness. Lane must have sensed my dark mood and come to find me.

‘Hey, Harp. You okay?’ Lane sat beside me, blood speckling his scrubs, and held his hand out for a drag.

I passed the cigarette over to him, nodding at the bloodstains dotting his clothes. ‘Tough day at work?’

Lane took a drag and coughed. ‘Mm, smooth.’

I chuckled. ‘Shut up. I should have warned you that they’re an old pack.’

‘No, Betty White is old. This is archaic.’ He handed the cig back to me.

I gestured to his clothes. ‘You kill someone?’

He glanced down at his shirt, as if only just now noticing it. ‘I didn’t have a change of clothes in my work locker. I need to catch up on laundry.’

‘Isn’t that Candace’s job? You know, since she’s home all day doing nothing.’

‘It’s not a big deal for me to do it.’

‘You know how I feel about that. Anyway, I washed your clothes so you don’t need to. What happened at work?’

‘Eh, same old, same old. One of my patients fell and cracked her skull on the floor. Lost a lot of blood, but she’s okay. I’m more concerned about you, though. You don’t smoke.’

‘I do today. I don’t know what to do with myself anymore, Lane. I feel so alone.’

Wrapping an arm around me, he hugged me into his side. ‘You’re not alone. I’m always here for you.’

I straightened and pulled away from him. ‘Not anymore, Lane. We both know it. You’ve got your wife who needs you. There’s not enough of you for the both of us.’

He nudged me with his shoulder. ‘That’s ridiculous. You and I are a package deal. Our lives will always twist around each other; we’re twins separated by a year. Besides, I can be a husband and a brother at the same time. Millions of people do it every day.’

‘Not really, Lane. Not the