The Sister-in-Law, Pamela Crane [have you read this book txt] 📗

could have died … and Mommy can’t take another death. Please, Jackson.’

I begged, I pleaded, I needed his word …

‘I promise.’

… And he gave it to me.

‘Mommy loves you too much to lose you. It would break me forever.’

‘I know,’ he said.

We sat for a long moment, three soaked bodies sprawled on the concrete among the weeds, while the breeze licked our skin dry. My body felt weak from the post-adrenaline rush. I needed a moment alone. ‘Elise, take your brother inside and both of you put on some fresh clothes before we head back over to Uncle Lane’s.’

As we all rose to our feet, Jackson sidled ahead into the house while I fumbled with the gate lock, securing it while Elise hung back at my side.

‘Mommy?’ Her voice was tiny, exhausted. Only moments before she had transformed into a life-saving hero. Now she was back to my little eleven-year-old girl.

‘Yes?’

She didn’t speak at first, a tell that something serious was on her mind.

‘What is it, honey? You can tell me.’

When I looked down at her, her eyes were glassy, wet.

‘Part of me wishes I would have let him drown.’

As her words fell between us, I saw my reflection in her eyes. And I wondered if part of me wished that too.

Chapter 7

Candace

I wake up to exist for you. I open my eyes to see you. I breathe to inhale you.

You are my reason for each moment.

The scent of rain tangled with my organic patchouli essential oil pillow spray, nudging me toward consciousness. Somehow my body knew a moment before my alarm when the day was supposed to begin. I sat up at the sound of ‘Easy Street’ by Collapsable Hearts Club playing on my cell phone. A touch of irony because life was anything but easy, and it sure didn’t feel neat, but the song featured in The Walking Dead was the perfect get-up-and-go I needed this dreary morning.

I snoozed the music before it woke up Lane (he was lucky he slept so soundly, something I hadn’t experienced in weeks), then flung off the covers, the chill of the floors seeping into the soles of my tattooed feet. The tattoos had hurt like a mother when the needle stabbed the bony tops of my feet, but the images represented empowerment … so I’d be damned if I didn’t power through the pain as the artist stamped my skin. Thai characters spelled ‘live this life’ on one foot, and a lotus flower adorned the other – a symbol of purity, strength, and grace. I needed hefty doses of all of the above in order to carry out my plan.

Although I didn’t drink coffee, I always set the coffeemaker the night before so that I could bring Lane his first cup of the morning. Little details like that mattered, they meant something. I might be a terrible cook and a disastrous housekeeper, but I always took care of my man where it mattered: delivering his morning cup with a kiss, and satisfaction in the bedroom.

This morning it took extra self-will to give a crap about Lane’s needs. The guilt trips over the past few days regarding Harper’s stay had been long and exhausting. Lane had made it abundantly clear that I was being selfish by wanting him all to myself. Harper wasn’t just family, but his sister – his only sister – and he would open up his home for anyone in my family too. That was exactly the problem, though, that Lane would open his home and his heart to everyone and anyone, when those things should have been devoted first to me. To us. By Lane’s logic, us could include the homeless guy who stood at the corner of the freeway underpass begging for change.

House guests were like fish – they were only good for about three days. We were now officially past the expiration date.

‘The right thing to do is to give to those in need,’ Lane kept reiterating. Except that Harper needed nothing but to crash into our lives with her noisy daughter, her creepy son, and her persistent nagging.

I never dusted enough. When I cooked, the meals were over-processed. The dirty laundry was piled too high. No matter what I did – or didn’t – do, I couldn’t do right by that woman, and according to her, I wasn’t good enough for her brother. She hated our unconventional relationship, the fact Lane and I shared the homemaking responsibilities. It made sense for us – he was a better cook and I had never really learned how to make anything other than prepackaged meals. So sue me for not having parents who taught me basic homemaking skills.

When it came to laundry, I didn’t keep up with it daily. Not even weekly. Lane had plenty of scrubs to get through the week without me running the washing machine ragged with constant loads. And who swept the floors daily? It wasn’t like we had a pack of dogs running around and shedding everywhere. So this morning, as my alarm went off at six o’clock, the sun still sleeping and the coffee brewing, I decided to show Harper just how homemakery I could be.

I was doing my best for Lane, hiding my demons. It wasn’t until I pulled free from my past that I had finally been able to name those demons: Fear. Anxiety. Worry. Paranoia. The past had shaped me, made me stronger, so that I could appreciate what I had now even more. No one knew just how dark my life before Lane had actually been, not even Lane. I was entitled to a few character flaws because of it, one of which was being extra possessive of Lane. If you lost every good thing you ever touched, wouldn’t you hold a little tighter, too?

What Harper didn’t understand was that I wasn’t a chameleon like her. I didn’t bend and fold into suburban bondage like she did, allowing Mom Groups and Book Clubs and the PTA