The Sister-in-Law: An absolutely gripping summer thriller for 2021, Pamela Crane [reading eggs books .txt] 📗

and say, Bigger! Tickling him, I’d compare my love to the moon, the earth, the sun … and at last to the ever-expanding universe, because that was our love. Ever expanding. Endless. Our whispers would float through the night-lighted bedroom while his spider legs wrapped around my waist.

I missed my boy who wore superhero underwear, who chewed his bottom lip in concentration, who moved in a whirlwind of motion, who laughed endlessly at his own fart jokes. Where did my son go, and what sad creature had taken over his body? His flame had been extinguished too soon, his passion and zest for adventure and color gone before it had fully arrived.

After several breaths, I headed upstairs, readying myself for a conversation with the son who blamed me for his father’s death, who thought a killer was after us. I needed to set things right with him before he recklessly pieced more faulty bits together. His bedroom door was shut when I got there, and when I jiggled the handle it was locked.

‘Jackson,’ I spoke against the wood, where curls of white paint flaked off. ‘Can we please talk?’

The doorknobs in the house were outdated glass, lacking modern safety features. Kids back in the day could lock themselves in and you’d have to bust the whole door down to get through.

I knocked lightly. ‘Please unlock the door, or I’m going to have to take it down.’

A moment later I heard the approach of footsteps, then the click of the lock. When he opened the door, I smelled the faint scent of smoke.

‘What’s going on in here? Why do I smell smoke?’

I dashed past him into the room, as Jackson wrapped his short arms halfway around my waist, begging me to stop. I charged through his tiny bodily blockage.

‘Please don’t be mad, Mommy!’

Behind his bed, in a cheap plastic – and meltable! – garbage can, I found the remnants of a photograph burning to ash.

‘What is this?’ I screeched, blowing it out. ‘You could have burned the whole house down! Was that you who set off the fire alarm last week?’

Jackson broke into tears, muttering something about ghosts visiting him in his dreams. I picked up what was left of the photograph; only half of our smiling faces were intact, but I recognized the image immediately. The day was still fresh in my mind. Taken a year and a half ago, it was one of the last pictures of our family whole and happy. In this perfect moment on a nature hike at the Cape Fear River Trail, we had no idea what horror was to come.

‘Calm down, honey.’ In a pile at the bottom of the garbage can were other pictures, some depicting people I didn’t recognize. ‘Why are you burning these?’

He caught his breath before speaking, his words quivering with his body. ‘The ghost told me to.’

‘What ghost? The old lady who died here?’

He nodded. ‘She told me if I burned the pictures I wouldn’t have to remember Daddy anymore.’

‘Why would you want to forget Daddy?’

‘Because it makes me sad.’

‘Oh honey.’ I pivoted him toward me, his body stiff and unwieldy, and held his hands. They were the only part of him I could hold. ‘It’s okay to be sad. You’ll always remember him, and you should. It’s good to remember the people we love. Daddy is just waiting on the other side for us, so you don’t need to be sad. We’ll see him again in heaven someday.’

We stood together in angsty solitude, his fingers locked in the grooves of my knuckles. Eventually he wilted onto the floor, and I lifted him into bed, pushing aside Elise’s notebook and Nancy Drew mystery she was in the middle of reading. My mother had lent Elise a copy she had grown up on, the cover cartoony and faded. After settling Jackson in, I kissed his forehead, my lips warm against his cool skin.

‘It’s going to be okay, bud.’ I clung to the promise that it would, fighting against the probability that it wouldn’t.

Grabbing Elise’s notebook, the lined page that it was open to had two words on it. A username and password. More specifically, my Facebook username and password. How had she even found that? And more importantly, why?

‘Do you know why Elise has my Facebook login information, Jackson?’

‘She got it off your phone to talk to a boy she likes.’

‘What boy?’ My little girl was into boys already? When had I missed this? I was a worse mother than I thought, oblivious that my daughter was growing up and I couldn’t see it beyond my own self-importance.

‘I dunno.’

Any boy on Facebook would be too old for her. We hadn’t even had the birds and the bees conversation yet. Was she even ready for that? Or was I?

I set the notebook down, tucking the bedspread around Jackson’s tiny frame. ‘Do you know if Elise ever posted anything?’

He chewed his bottom lip in thought. Ben used to do the same thing. ‘I know she let Miss Aubrey post something that day she was babysitting, ’cause they wouldn’t let me see.’

‘Was that the day I went out shopping with Aunt Candace?’

He nodded. ‘Before you left. I remember ’cause it made Elise cry real bad but Miss Aubrey couldn’t delete it before you left.’

Shoot. I had been wrong. I had been so certain it was Candace, so quick to blame. I felt horrible about my accusation. Even worse that Elise knew and was afraid to tell me – about the post, about the boy crush, about everything going on in her life, apparently.

Once Jackson had drifted off, I remembered that Elise was still watching television, so I headed down the hallway toward the stairs, passing the bathroom. Behind the door I heard sobs – but not a child’s sobs. A grown woman’s.

‘Candace?’ I whispered to the closed door. ‘Are you okay?’

I knocked softly, unsure if I should intrude. It went quiet within, except for a gasp and the shuffle of feet. A moment