The Sister-in-Law Read online

  Harper flashed a wide, toothy, Anne Hathaway smile. But Candace’s scowl from the living room sofa said it all. She knew this wouldn’t be a short-term stay. And it wasn’t a welcome stay either.

  I had to admit, I didn’t hate the idea of Harper living with us. Not that I didn’t want alone time with my new wife, but it would be nice to have someone cleaning the house, making home-cooked dinners, doing laundry. Those weren’t things Candace did, and mothering came naturally to Harper. She’d had years of practice after our father died – when I was eleven and Harper was ten – and our mother was working two jobs, most of the time leaving us to fend for ourselves. Even though Harper was a year younger than me, she had always taken care of me like a smaller, more available version of Mom. It wasn’t that Mom wanted to heap all that responsibility on us; she had no choice. She was a widow with two kids. What options did she have?

  I remember one summer when Mom had hired an after-school babysitter, a neighborhood girl whose family had hit hard times, but the girl had set our stove on fire making mac ‘n’ cheese and that ended that. Since that summer Harper had stepped in to fill in the gaps; a girl born with a broom in one hand and a spatula in the other.

  I didn’t need Candace to be like Harper. Candace offered so much more than a clean house. She offered me a love that colored in my gray heart, then made me want to tear it out just to prevent her from breaking it. Our fights nearly killed me, but Candace was worth it.

  Candace made me wax poetic when I didn’t even know I had poetry in me.

  In an ideal world, my sister could teach my wife her favorite recipes or cleaning tips and they’d laugh over tea and scones together. But that was the same make-believe land where other fantasies lived, like half-naked college-girl car washes and sexy pillow-fight sleepovers. I knew better than to hope my sister and wife would ever get along.

  I turned toward the front door to grab what I hoped was the last of Harper’s belongings as Candace aimed a hushed ‘Lane’ at me.

  ‘What’s up, babe?’ Already I was preparing to defuse the bomb I anticipated exploding at any moment.

  She muted the television and sat upright. ‘This has got to stop – now. There is no reason she needs this much crap for a couple weeks. You know she’s moving in for good, don’t you?’

  I leaned down to kiss Candace’s reddening cheek, but she backed out of reach. I hadn’t seen this possessive, earnest side of her before, but it was kind of cute.

  ‘I promise it won’t be long. If she starts to get too settled, I’ll deal with it. But for now let’s not make a problem where there isn’t one. Please, honey?’

  ‘Don’t honey me. You put your sister before your wife. Not cool, Lane. I’m trying to handle this the best I can, but we’re only a couple weeks into our marriage and we already have live-in guests. We need time together. Alone. To connect. If you can’t give me that, then clearly we made a mistake getting married.’ She was quickly spiraling into un-cute.

  It almost sounded like she was threatening to leave me over this.

  ‘You want me to kick my own sister and her kids out on the street? When her husband just recently died?’

  Candace laughed with an unfamiliar coldness. I almost didn’t recognize her anymore. Where was my fluid, anything goes, live-in-the-moment wife?

  ‘The street? C’mon, Lane, she owns a house.’ She rose from the sofa and blustered into the kitchen as I followed her. ‘A huge house, by the way. And she has a mother with a spare bedroom. She’s got other options. You’re just too much of a doormat to stand up to her – to stand up for me. For us.’

  I sighed. ‘Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.’

  ‘I tried that, and you did what you wanted anyway.’ She picked up a ceramic plate, angrily slapping slices of cheese and crackers on it. ‘I asked you to say no but you didn’t. Now she’s already friggin’ moved her stuff in and my stuff out. I’m going to have to move my winter clothes into the attic. That dank, musty air is going to ruin the fabric, Lane! And there might be mice up there, ready to chew holes in everything.’

  I tried to take her seriously, but it was impossible when she was complaining like a raging teen.

  ‘You’re more concerned about your clothes than your family?’

  ‘Not my family. Yours.’

  ‘My family is part of the package, Candace. And what you’re asking of me is pretty selfish.’

  ‘Selfish? Because I want alone time with my new husband? Because I want my own space in my own house?’ She continued slicing cheese in a trembling rage.

  ‘Yes. Putting your needs above the needs of others is the very definition of selfish.’

  With a rush of motion, she whipped the plate across the room, sending a spray of broken ceramic and crackers along the floor. I jumped with shock … and fear.

  ‘I’m just going to warn you, Lane. You made a mistake. A big one. Maybe the biggest one of your life, because this might cost you everything. You know what I’m talking about.’

  I did know, and it was a horrible threat. One I would never forgive her for if she followed through with it. As a man, I knew better than to fight back; growing up with a sister and mother taught me that much about women. I’d do what I always did: Bend. Cave. Plead. Make everything better … somehow.

  Only, I wasn’t sure if this was fixable, because it was the worst kind of ultimatum. The kind that would cost me something important no matter what. Harper or Candace, my blood or my heart. I couldn’t live without either.

  ‘I’ll figure out a way to get Harper to leave,’ I vowed, grabbing her hand and kissing her fingertips. ‘Give me two weeks, that’s all I need. I’ll find her an affordable place and get her set up. Okay?’

  ‘Fine.’ It clearly wasn’t fine. ‘You can have it your way.’ But it wasn’t my way. ‘Two weeks, Lane. That’s it. Or else I’m gone.’

  Candace brushed past me in a huff, storming through the kitchen doorway between two small eavesdroppers I hadn’t noticed until now. Elise and Jackson looked up at me, Jackson’s eyes vacant, Elise’s filling with tears. The kids had heard everything.

  ‘You don’t care about us!’ Elise sobbed, then ran past me and out the back door.

  Jackson simply stood watching, then slowly turned and slipped upstairs.

  ‘Elise, come back!’ I called after her.

  I’d never felt like such an ass before. My wife had a temper, my sister was helpless, and my niece and nephew felt unwanted. Five people forced to share four walls, each at their wits’ end – how much worse could it possibly get? And this was only the beginning …

  Chapter 5

  Harper

  One month ago today I buried my soul under the weeping willow Ben and I had planted together in the backyard, and I had been digging at the patch of dirt ever since. Technically, Ben wasn’t buried where I had rested a stone plaque honoring him, because the police hadn’t released his body to me yet. A couple more weeks, they kept telling me the autopsy would take. By the time they finished, I wondered if there would be anything left of him to bury.

  We had called it a memorial service, but I didn’t want to remember. I wanted to forget. Forget that he was dead. Forget the lies, the cheating, the hollow left inside of me that led him to kill himself. If only the past year had never happened, I wouldn’t be standing in the bedroom that we had shared, packing up our things for storage, wishing I could erase Ben’s death from my mind and replace it with our happy life before.

  I was exhausted from missing Ben. It felt as if I had set down my heart and forgotten where I left it.

  I stood beneath the only picture that remained on our Hendricks Way bedroom wall, the one taken at our wedding. Both of us were barefoot, walking hand-in-hand down Sunset Beach, my white dress flowing behind me as it caught on the salty breeze, Ben’s hair ruffled into curls. A perfect day. The absolute best day.

  I lifted the frame off the hook and stared into the past. How could he strip me of all the good memories by lea
ving me with only the bad ones? All the hungry kisses, gone. The passionate nights as we explored each other’s bodies, gone. The weekend getaways and night swimming and reveling at each child’s birth, gone, gone, gone. Holding the frame above my head, I threw it across the room, watching with a morbid satisfaction as the glass shattered and wood splintered.

  ‘Mom, what was that?’ Elise’s voice echoed from down the hallway.

  ‘I, uh, I just accidentally dropped something, sweetie,’ I called back, stuffing the tremor in my voice down.

  The person I was before was different from who I became after. That’s what grief does, steals every ounce of joy and exchanges it for sorrow. It robbed me of my future and turned me hateful. I couldn’t even tell you what I was angry at. Myself? My kids? The mailman who accidentally switched my mail with the neighbor’s? The waitress who mixed up my dinner order?

  I yearned for my old life – the one where I didn’t grieve or lose my husband to another woman. But reality has a way of eroding such hopes. This vacant bedroom was the daily reminder that I was a widow too young, with no one to share my friends’ secrets with, or to make fun of television shows with, or to tease me about the gray hairs I fruitlessly dyed.

  Damn, I missed Ben. Wanting to wade in the grief, yet resisting the wallow, that was the irony of death. I wanted the pain, and yet I hated the pain. It had only been days and I already missed my house. The Colonial floor-to-ceiling windows. Lustrous, original oak floors. Large wraparound porch. Four-poster bed with a down pillowtop. Custom-made kitchen island. I appreciated my brother opening up his home to us, but Hendricks Way had been my home for so long that it was imprinted on me, the creaks of the floorboards a part of my lifeblood.

  I pressed my hand to the window overlooking the backyard. I was disgusted by the neglected state of my garden, but I simply couldn’t push myself to deal with it. Weeds crowded the black-eyed Susans, overshadowing their yellow petals that contrasted against their black centers. My poor hollyhocks had been a showstopper with their apricot and purple blooms, but now they wept of thirst with their heads bowed and leaves brown. I couldn’t bear to watch my passion flowers struggle for life, their bright purple tendrils a distant memory. Behind my fence the gentrified urban neighborhood sprawled out as far as I could see, homes hidden beneath ancient oak trees connected by winding footpaths where privileged children rode bikes and moms kept up at a fast jog behind them.

  Young and ambitious, Ben and I had picked this neighborhood and this house together. I had dabbled in architecture in college and instantly fell in love when I saw this rundown neoclassical Greek-revival style with a touch of Italianate – an architect’s dream. It had been built in the 1860s by an eccentric North Carolinian family of means with a knack for innovation. In a time when the concept of air conditioning wasn’t even a twinkle in inventor Willis Carrier’s eye, the home’s designer used nature’s solution. Floor-to-ceiling walk-through windows offered a consistent coastal breeze to maintain a comfortable room temperature. And for those brutal summer days, hot air would naturally rise up the grand staircase – up, up, up to the belvedere – where it exited through a row of small, open windows near the eaves. Louver vents offered an escape for the Southern heat, along with vents in each of the bedrooms. This avant-garde ventilation system was pure genius, if you ask me, though Ben still preferred the convenience of modern AC.

  By the time Ben and I found the house for sale – and on foreclosure! – much of the wood had rotted from the Carolinian humidity or been neglected to the point of disrepair. But that didn’t deter us or our dreams. With over 5,000 square feet to renovate, it had been quite a restoration project. It took a grueling two years of backbreaking work, but in the end we had rediscovered its beauty and made it our own.

  Four open boxes sat on the window seat, all of them full, all of them holding decades’ worth of memories. Next to the last box was a turquoise and gold urn caked in dust, a portable monument to the darkness inside me. I wondered when I’d be adding Ben’s urn to my collection.

  I’d almost cleaned out the entire master bedroom, minus Ben’s bedside table. I opened the top drawer and grabbed its meager remnants. A handful of handmade Father’s Day cards from the kids. Gaudy red leather handcuffs he had bought that we hadn’t even used once, the key to which was probably lost. A Stephen King book with a bookmark halfway through, which Ben would never finish. His work cell phone. And an envelope.

  A bulge crinkled from the bottom of the fold, so I opened it and peeked inside. A torn corner of paper with a street address 3 Summer Ln scribbled across it. A hardware store shopping list and rough sketch of the kids’ playset he had started building. And a jewelry store receipt. My nervous fingers dropped the paper and it fluttered across the dusty floor, like it was trying to scurry away. I picked it up and unfolded it, mumbling the description out loud:

  18-karat gold charm bracelet

  Engraved with: True love waits

  Waits for what? Was this an anniversary gift Ben had planned to give me? And where was the bracelet? Though the message was cryptic, it fit us. Ben and I spent a lifetime waiting. Waiting to get married until after he graduated with his master’s degree. Waiting to buy the right house until after we saved up. Waiting for Ben’s investment career to take off. Waiting to have a second child after years of fertility struggles. We knew all about waiting; it had been a part of our relationship since the very beginning, when I’d told him I couldn’t be his girlfriend, and if he cared enough he’d wait until I was ready. It took me almost three years to be ready, but Ben had waited. Maybe this bracelet was a tribute to that – to all the waiting. To all we had endured to be together.

  The stillness of the house haunted me, the silence cut by the drip of the master bathroom faucet. Ben had been meaning to fix that for months, but he simply never made the time. And then time ran out. I turned over the envelope and grabbed a pen sitting on Ben’s bedside table. It wasn’t Ben’s anymore, because Ben wasn’t here. I jotted down a to-do list, starting with fixing the faucet. Then I tossed the pen and envelope in my purse, grabbed a box, and left the mausoleum of memories.

  On my way down the stairs I saw the silhouette of a person standing at the front door. The frosted glass masked all features except for the dark attire of the visitor. Then there was a knock, the sound reverberating against the vast emptiness. And another knock before I reached the door.

  ‘Mooom! Someone’s at the door!’ Elise yelled from the bowels of the house.

  ‘I’ve got it. Stay upstairs and keep packing.’

  Although the solid oak door was wide enough to easily fit two grown men in the doorway, it swung open effortlessly. The detective who had been assigned Ben’s case stood on the front porch. By now I was used to his check-ins.

  ‘Good morning, Detective Meltzer. Come in.’ I stepped aside for him, a man who almost fit the girth of the doorway all on his own.

  Detective Levi Meltzer had missed his calling as a wrestler. At easily six foot two, this was the kind of guy you wanted on the streets fighting crime, because I was pretty sure his muscles were bulletproof. The man looked impenetrable. I imagined his ring name being Macho Mustache, or as Lane called him, Pornstache, a tribute to his Orange Is the New Black obsession. Lane had often quoted television shows as if he’d come up with the witticisms himself. And I always laughed as if I’d never heard them before.

  ‘How are you today, Harper?’

  Although I still called him Detective out of respect, for me he was on a first-name basis. That was how often I saw him. Right after Ben’s death it had been daily, sometimes multiple times a day, that he’d drop by or ask me to come down to the station for questioning. But now, being weeks into the investigation, his visits were becoming less frequent. Which was probably a good thing. Because that meant I was becoming less and less of a suspect.

  ‘I’m hanging in there,’ I replied.

  ‘I couldn’t help but notice the moving truck. You going somewhere?’ He cocked an
eyebrow.

  So he was following me, watching me. Perhaps I wasn’t as out of the hot seat as I thought.

  ‘I’m moving in with my brother for the time being. I’ve decided to rent this place out until the investigation is closed. I don’t have a job, and I can’t afford to keep paying the mortgage on this place in the meantime.’

  ‘I see. You know not to leave town until we find Ben’s killer, right?’

  Of course I knew. I had only been reminded by Detective Meltzer and my attorney a dozen times. ‘Yes, sir. I’m just moving across town. Not even ten minutes away. I’ll jot down the address for you so you know where to find me.’

  ‘That’d be great, thanks. Here you go.’

  He pulled out a pen and pad from his pocket and handed them to me.

  I scribbled a circle, but the ink had gone dry. ‘I’m sure I have a spare in my kitchen.’ I headed into the kitchen to find a pen, and Detective Meltzer followed me. ‘I haven’t heard from you in a while. Have they finished the autopsy yet?’

  ‘No, ma’am. We’re understaffed, and the coroner is backed up for weeks so, unfortunately, I can’t tell you how much longer until we have the autopsy results. It can take up to twelve weeks, in some cases.’

  ‘So you’re no closer to finding out who did this to my husband.’ I added a touch of annoyance to make it clear I was frustrated. The frustration was genuine – I needed the autopsy results to determine cause of death, and I needed cause of death to get my insurance payout. Who wouldn’t be frustrated by this lengthy process with closure out of reach?

  Detective Meltzer shook his head. ‘I’m afraid we found no DNA at the scene, have no witnesses, nothing to point us to the killer. I wish I had better news for you, Harper, especially given the unique nature of the crime.’ He paused, and I caught him watching me root through the junk drawer looking for a pen. When I found one, I wrote down Lane’s address and handed him his notepad back.