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

would end. I hated this part of death, when the ghost lived in your head.

Reaching for another item, my fingers tangled in a pile of lacy underwear. A thong. Who in their right mind enjoyed the sensation of floss riding up their butt crack? Somehow Candace’s dirty clothes always ended up in my wash, which irritated me to no end. Didn’t she realize laundry required organization? Like colors with like colors. Whites with whites. Delicates handled, well, delicately! When she threw a red wool sweater in with the whites, it turned everything pink and shrunk the sweater. It had served her right, but of course I’d been blamed for the sweater that now fit a newborn.

I laid the underwear on her stack of clean clothes, which was taller than the rest.

‘Candace!’ I yelled to a silent house.

When I got no reply, I glanced out the window and saw her swimming laps. Back and forth, back and forth, in a fluid rhythm of splashing arms and legs. With it only being late May, it was still early in the season for swimming, but that’s what a pool heater is for! she had explained. Never mind that installing the heater had cost more than a car. Although summer was still a month away, it had arrived early this year with temperatures already in the 80s, but when the pool temperature hadn’t yet risen to a balmy warm owing to the chilly nights, Candace had insisted on a heater. And a new pool patio. And a custom pergola. Like every other whim of hers, Lane had obliged and paid extra to have it installed that week.

I want to give her everything life has withheld from her. She’s never had anything of value. Let me spoil her if I want to spoil her, Lane tried to explain when I brought up her extravagant spending. Nothing I said would open his eyes to the truth. I smelled a gold-digger, but Lane only smelled her pheromones. At least it kept her out of my hair, her daily routine of sunbathe, swim. Sunbathe, swim. God forbid she spend the time washing her own laundry.

Picking up her teetering pile of clean clothes, I carried it into her bedroom where the bed was a mess and the floor barely visible under all the junk. Clothes, shoes, towels, shopping bags … she was a shameless slob. I couldn’t stand my brother being forced to live like this, so I began tidying up her dresser so I could place the clothes on top. Opening her top drawer, I found it was crammed full of assorted clothing with no theme whatsoever. Socks, T-shirts, and shorts all mixed together. My God, the girl had no sense of organization.

As I moved things around, folding and coordinating as I went, a piece of paper crinkled along the bottom of the drawer. Pushing the clothing aside, I pulled it out through the folds of fabric. An ultrasound image. Why would she put a priceless photo like this – the first glimpse of her baby’s face – in the bottom of her drawer? It deserved to be framed. Despite the war between us, our children would be cousins. Even if I couldn’t be a happy sister-in-law, I could be a doting auntie. It wasn’t the baby’s fault her mother was a devious leech.

Maybe as a gesture of goodwill I would frame it for her. I already had an adorable ultrasound frame that would be perfect, a monkey swinging from a tree with the caption It’s a jungle in here! My mother had gotten similar frames for each of my kids – an elephant and a giraffe – but the monkey frame remained empty in a box in my closet.

I examined the picture, remembering back when I had my first ultrasound with Elise. What an exciting day, seeing that blob floating around, a tiny head and arms and legs. And that heartbeat! Who would have known you could see it beating a mile a minute? It made everything inside me feel so … real. At that moment I had planned my home, my life, and my future around that tiny person growing inside me.

Well, at least Candace wasn’t lying about the pregnancy. Initially I had my doubts, but this was a good thing. Finally, a truth amid the lies! I traced the speckled white image of the baby against the black background. My brother’s baby. I really was an aunt! If I was going to have a little niece or nephew, I didn’t want a schism. I needed to smooth things over. We did have fun shopping together, didn’t we? Anything was possible.

Taking the ultrasound with me, I headed to my closet and rummaged through several boxes until I found the picture frame at the top, dusty with time. I slipped the thin paper inside, adjusting it just right. As I checked to see how it looked, I noticed the date: the ultrasound was taken the day they got married. I counted the weeks in my head. The math didn’t seem right. In fact, if the date was correct, it put her at almost three months pregnant. This meant she got pregnant a month before she even met Lane.

This meant she lied about everything.

This meant the baby wasn’t Lane’s.

This meant I wasn’t an aunt.

This meant war.

I needed to tell Lane, but he was already overworked and stretched thin. I didn’t know how he was surviving on the four to five hours of sleep he barely got, but at the rate he was going, he was doomed to crash. And crash hard.

I didn’t want to add more to his already full plate of night shifts and home project to-do lists. He’d been picking up double shifts at the hospital to pay for all of the extra baby ‘needs,’ as Candace called them. The weekly pregnancy massages, baby yoga classes, and $1,200 baby stroller were hardly necessities though. If it wasn’t a pair of Jimmy Choos that would last a