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

‘Mommy?’

I whipped around at the sound of a faint voice and found Jackson standing in his doorway. Hadn’t he just fallen asleep?

‘Yes, sweetie?’

His gaze burned with intensity. ‘We’re not going to see Daddy in heaven. I don’t think God’ll let us in.’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Because I know you killed Daddy, just like I killed my sister.’

I couldn’t deny it, because I knew he was right. Some sins are unforgiveable.

Chapter 16

Candace

When you need to laugh, let me be your joker.

When you need to cry, let me be your shoulder.

When you need to yell, let me be your endless sky.

When you need to fall, let me be the arms to catch you.

‘Candace? Are you okay?’

I ignored the muffled question and subsequent rap of Harper’s knuckles on the bathroom door. She didn’t deserve to know why I cried. She would have judged me for it anyway. A grown woman crying from a bad dream. Only for me it wasn’t just a dream; I had relived one of the worst parts of my life. Harper wouldn’t understand; hell, even I didn’t understand it sometimes, how I let myself steep in the abuse, then again subconsciously chose to relive it.

In this moment I was glad for the inches of wood that separated us. I turned on the shower to make her go away. Staring my reflection down, I watched streaks of tears cut a snail’s trail through my makeup. I rested my hand on the mirror and leaned against it, the steam from the running water slowly spreading across the glass. Soon I began disappearing, the mist taking my shoulders, then neck, then finally my face. Then I was gone in the haze, merely a faceless shape.

Ever since I discovered I was pregnant, I couldn’t stop crying. Over every sappy commercial. Over the growing pile of laundry. Over a text message from Lane saying he was held up at the hospital. Over an argument with my sister-in-law who hated me. The saddest part was that I wanted her to like me, and I wanted to like her back. It was an unexpected want because, up until now, I had hated her from afar, eager to wedge distance between us. She was the competition, after all. But I empathized with her struggle against grief. We shared those same tears, that same loss, the same heartbreak. Kindred, anguished souls. Initially, I thought we could heal each other. They say to keep your friends close but your enemies closer. What happens when you want your enemy to become your friend?

After all the other pregnancies, and all the subsequent miscarriages, I had never experienced this part of pregnancy. It was like my sensations were heightened to superhuman capacity – my feelings, my sense of smell, my voracious hunger. Everything except for my physical strength, which felt sapped, like my body had been drained of all its lifeblood, leaving me limp and helpless and hungry and nauseous. How could I be both sick to my stomach and yet starving? Pregnancy hormones made no sense whatsoever.

Along with the unexplained weeping came anger. My rage became flesh. Sometimes I could visualize wrapping my fingers around a neck and squeezing the life out of the person. Harper had been my target audience for that whimsy. Countless nights I had crushed her throat to shut up the nagging and the criticism, imagining watching her eyes bulge until I choked out her words. The images slipped into my dreams. Then I’d awaken loathing myself for the hatred I couldn’t contain.

The dreams were another thing altogether. Some nights they featured strange sexual fantasies with my best friend from high school, a short, pimply, plump girl who looked just like you’d expect a girl named ‘Enid’ to look. Other nights were plagued with nightmares about losing the baby, me reaching down between my legs, my groin soaked in blood. All of it was so horrifyingly graphic. The wild cards were the flashbacks in time. I never knew what I was going to get, whether nostalgic or traumatic. The recurring theme of my pregnancy dreams tended toward reliving my worst experiences, scratchy sandpaper memories. Like the one I couldn’t shake out of my head.

After undressing, I felt the shower water running hot and stepped inside. The water sluiced down my back, and I sobbed until I didn’t know what was water and what was tears. Little streams of sorrow circled the drain, then were gone.

I closed my eyes as the water ran over my face, and let the memory wash over me … praying it would circle the drain and disappear with my tears.

***

I flinched as the front door slammed shut behind my love, now my hate, while my tears dripped on the yellowed linoleum floor. Noah had left, and knowing him, he wouldn’t be back for hours. Grime formed in the crease near my bare toes where the wall met the baseboard. This was my corner, where the dust and hair and grease settled into the edges of the kitchen. And me – the dirtiest of them all. This corner was my hiding place when Noah’s fists got riled up. Not that I could hide from him, but at least it protected me from the fullness of his wrath. Noah usually gave up when I cowered in the corner with a kitchen chair blocking me in and him out.

Noah Gosling believed in what he called the ‘Rule of Thumb.’ This was the width of a stick with which husbands were allowed to beat their wives. He’d read it on Wikipedia and felt the ancient practice was worth adopting as his own. If you thought the eighteenth century was long gone, you’d be wrong. Noah thought he was burying my will. He didn’t know I was a seed growing a backbone.

With Noah gone, I breathed. My hand rested on the barely noticeable bulge of my stomach, as if clinging