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

inside, taking the stairs two steps at a time and throwing open their bedroom door.

‘Mommy, Mommy, Frankie winked!’ Elise screamed and ran behind my legs while Jackson idled at my side.

‘What happened? Frankie … what?’

‘The doll, Mommy.’ Jackson’s fingers trembled as he pointed to an old doll.

‘Where’d you find that?’ I asked.

‘In the attic above Uncle Lane’s bedroom. There’s a secret entryway in their closet,’ Elise confessed.

‘You’re not allowed in their bedroom, let alone their closet. If Candace would have caught you, it’d be off with your heads!’

At least with the mess Candace made of her closet there was little chance she’d notice that two kids had rummaged through it. The doll appeared old, and could be valuable, so I didn’t want to toss it out, no matter how creepy it was.

‘You named him Frankie after Pappy?’

‘Yeah, before we knew he’s possessed,’ Elise muttered into my side.

The kids had named it Frankie, my grandfather’s name. They’d never met him but I’d spoken about him and they had seen pictures of him throughout our house.

‘The doll is not possessed.’

‘It winked at us! Jackson saw it!’

Okay, this was getting ridiculous. First, ghosts in the house, now, possessed Chucky dolls.

‘Calm down, guys. I assure you that Frankie did not wink at you on his own. You probably moved him. Look.’ I walked over to the doll, its eyes half-open. I lifted the doll and tilted him backward and forward, showing them how his eyes blinked as I moved him. ‘See?’

‘But we were both on the other side of the room when his eyes moved, Mommy. I think the old lady lives in him now.’ Jackson’s lower lip twitched, as if undecided whether to curve up or down.

‘Mom, that doll is scary!’ Elise insisted.

‘How about I take the doll and put it in my closet. Problem solved, okay?’

‘What if he comes out at night and tries to kill us?’ Jackson asked.

‘That only happens in scary movies, not real life. I promise he won’t come alive. I’ll put him in a place he can’t get out of.’

The kids seemed satisfied enough with my solution as I took the doll and headed into my bedroom. As I pushed it up on the top shelf, I could see how it creeped the kids out. One glassy blue eye remained half-closed and sleepy, the other wide with half the lashes missing. The plastic lips, a pink worn by time, pouted for a bottle or binky or thumb. It wasn’t a thin plastic doll, either, like the cheap ones you might find at the store. This doll had substance, weight. Almost like it was full of something. The old lady, perhaps?

I shook the notion away. The therapist had explained some of the symptoms of traumatic grief; we had been down this road before, but it seemed to be getting worse. Post-bereavement hallucinations. Night terrors. Paranoia. And now I was catching it too.

My Facebook Messenger app beeped. I sat on my bed and opened the app. A reply from Noah:

Candace Moriarty? Do you mean my ex-wife Candace Wilkes? And you’ve been misinformed. We’re legally still married.

And the plot thickened. Candace was apparently still married. Which meant she wasn’t married to Lane. Which meant he had no obligation to her! I couldn’t wait to tell him he was free, free at last! There was no mention of Noah’s unborn baby. Perhaps Candace never told him.

Well, she supposedly married my brother. Any idea why she would lie about who she is?

I waited while three dots ran across the message bar as he typed:

No idea, but tell that bitch to return what she stole from me.

Was the baby what she had ‘stolen’ from him? I typed a hasty reply:

She stole from you?

Three dots blinked across the screen as he continued. Then his reply came through:

What she took doesn’t matter anymore. I would have reported her to the police, but I figured I was better off without her. Where is she now?

Damn, the man was bold. If I told him, it’d lead him straight to Lane, and God only knew what kind of person Noah was. I didn’t want to answer in case he really was as dangerous as Candace made him out to be, so I lied:

I don’t know.

He didn’t buy it:

Yes you do. You said she married your brother.

Crap. What had I gotten myself into? I was about to close the app when another series of dots ran across the screen:

I already know everything I need to know about you, Harper Paris from Durham, North Carolina. It won’t be that hard to find you and get her myself.

He was becoming more aggressive by the reply. I was only trying to protect my brother from his psycho wife, not get everyone killed in the process. I may have hated her, but I didn’t want her dead. Unless she had made it all up and Noah was the victim, not her? Who was lying and who was telling the truth?

Tell her I’m coming for her.

In a panic I closed the app and set the phone down. What had I done? Now Noah only had to look up my address – he had my first and last name, my city and state, probably even Lane’s name via Facebook now – to find out where I lived and come after me to get to Candace. What had she stolen? And how was I going to tell Lane what I had done? If Noah didn’t kill me, Lane certainly would. He had already given me a warning shot about causing any more girl drama. As if we were two teenage girls fighting over who got to use the bathroom first. This was serious. I had set off a shit storm, and there was no way we weren’t all going to get dirty.

I needed my mom.

Chapter 23

Harper

‘You look terrible, Harp.’ My mother had never been one to bite her tongue and I rarely appreciated her brutal honesty.

My body was exhausted from trying to claw