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

‘Coward!’ I yelled at his blinking taillights as he took the turn off my street, blowing through the stop sign with barely a pause.

I stomped all the way back to the house, ready to call Noah to give him a piece of my mind. I wondered if he had changed his phone number, considering the text I received came from a blocked number. It wouldn’t matter; I still had his parents’ digits memorized. When I blew into the living room, slamming the front door behind me, a faint whimper echoed from the dining room. I peeked in and found Harper crying at the dining room table, a piece of paper soaked in tears beneath her elbows, and a bottle of wine with only a mouthful left swirling around the bottom. No wine glass? This was bad. It was hard to stay angry at a sobbing woman.

‘Hey, you okay?’ I asked, grabbing a box of tissues from the pantry and pulling out a chair beside her.

She shook her head. I passed her the tissues. She pulled out two.

‘What’s going on? You’re not pregnant too, are you? Because I’ve never cried more in my life.’ I grinned weakly and she chuckled drunkenly. We were quite a pair of emotional messes.

‘Yeah, pregnancy hormones are a bitch.’ She blew her nose and glanced over at me, her eyes rimmed in drippy mascara. ‘But no, I’m not pregnant. I’m just having a hard day. Nix that – a hard week.’

‘Is this about your mom’s visit with the cops last night?’ I knew the feeling well, wondering if my mom was okay. My entire childhood was spent worrying about my mother.

‘Yes, partly that, and this.’ She turned her gaze to something in her hand. A pen. She examined it, then set it down. ‘The stupid pen.’

‘Please tell me you’re not crying because you ran out of ink.’

‘It’s not that. I’m just … dealing with a lot of memories lately. And this pen brought them all up … again.’

I picked up the pen, flipping it over so I could read the print.

‘The Durham Hotel. Was that a special place for you and Ben?’

She sniggered, a harsh, bitter sound. ‘No, it wasn’t a special place for me, but it was for Ben.’

‘What do you mean?’

She didn’t speak, not at first. Then the sounds formed words and the words formed sentences as the story poured from her lips. ‘It was at this hotel where I … I found … him … Where I found out for sure that Ben was cheating on me. I saw him there with another woman. It shook my world.’

‘Oh no.’ I rested my hand on her shoulder, almost afraid to touch her through her grief.

We sat in silence for a long time, so long I shifted to get up, figuring the conversation was over. She needed time alone. Then she spoke, her story forcing me back into my seat.

‘It started with a strange credit card charge from this hotel. I didn’t even usually check the credit card statements, but that particular day I did. So I called, thinking it was a mistake. We hadn’t been to a hotel in ages, and never that one. When they told me that it was accurate – they even line listed the extra room charges for me – I thought maybe the credit card had been stolen. Never in a million years did I think my husband would cheat on me. Not after everything I’d been through, all we’d been through together. So I activated alerts on my credit card in case it was used again. Then one day I get a notification text that the card had been charged. Same hotel.’

Harper raised the pen to eye level, fixated on it.

‘I needed to know for sure, so I went there. I had to see for myself. There I am, standing at the front desk asking the check-in lady what the person who used the card looked like, when she pointed him out. Across the room in the lounge stood my husband, arm in arm with another woman. A young, blonde homewrecker with a tight body. How cliché is that? Well, I couldn’t face him, not like that, so I ran outside and down the sidewalk. I ran and ran and ran until I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die that day. Part of me wishes I would have. That was the last time I saw my husband alive.’

‘Oh my goodness, Harper. I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine …’ And yet I could.

‘It’s unimaginable.’ She lifted the wine bottle to her mouth and emptied the remnants in one long gulp. ‘To discover the man you love with all your heart has betrayed you in the worst possible way. It’s … worse than death. I thought I’d been through the worst after losing a child. Well, I was mistaken. That day I met parts of myself I never knew existed, and I could only feel darkness inside of me. Now I have no idea who I am anymore. I lost the best parts of me because he took them from me. I’ll never be able to trust someone ever again.’ She paused. ‘Other than Lane, that is.’

‘I understand.’ And I truly did. ‘Betrayal changes you.’ It was like falling into a pool. The initial shock is cold and unfamiliar, but as you get used to it, it starts to become part of you, soaking into you. ‘I feel terrible that you had to go through that.’

‘If it would have ended with Ben’s death I might have been able to move on. But it didn’t. I ended up doing something terrible that I can’t fix, and now I don’t know what’s going to happen. The irony is that Ben’s cheating was nothing compared to what I’ve done.’

‘What do you mean?’

She stopped. Realization sparked in her eyes. She hadn’t meant to share that, had she?

‘Sorry, I don’t