I offered my sister-in-law two nights in my guest room while exterminators cleared her rental, and came home the next evening to her clothes in my dressers and her five children's toys covering every inch of my floor.
When she smiled over her coffee and told me they weren't leaving, I didn't argue, I didn't cry, and I didn't beg my husband to take my side, because I already owned the one thing in that house nobody else could touch.
But the plan I set in motion that Saturday uncovered something far worse than an entitled sister-in-law, because it turned out the person who had invited them to stay forever was sleeping right beside me every night.
CHAPTER 1: TWO NIGHTS
When I married Shane Coleman three years ago, I wanted to get along with his family.
Especially his older sister, Monica.
Shane and Monica were close. Their dad left when they were kids, and Monica, four years older, practically raised him while their mother worked double shifts. Her opinion mattered to him more than anyone's. Sometimes, I thought, more than mine.
At our first family dinner, I brought a homemade lemon tart. I'd practiced it three times.
Monica took one bite and smiled.
"Cute," she said. "Shane always liked women who tried too hard."
I laughed. I didn't know what else to do.
That became our relationship.
I'd compliment her dress. She'd say, "You should try something like this, Maya. It might make you look less tired."
I'd bring presents for her kids at Christmas. She'd say, "Oh, you didn't have to. Really. You really didn't have to."
I'd offer to help in her kitchen at Thanksgiving. She'd hand me a dish towel and say, "Don't touch anything important."
I'd grown up an only child. My mother died when I was nineteen, and my father remarried and moved across the country. When I met Shane, his loud, crowded family felt like something I'd been hungry for my whole life. Sunday dinners. Birthday parties with too many cousins. A mother-in-law who called me sweetheart.
I wanted to belong to them so badly.
So I tried. I tried with Monica harder than with anyone.
My best friend, Denise, used to watch me at those family dinners and shake her head. "You know you don't have to audition, right?" she said once. "You already got the part. You married him."
"I just want her to like me," I said.
"Maya," Denise said, "some people don't like anybody they can't use."
Still, I stayed friendly. I told myself she'd warm up. Families take time.
Monica and her husband, Troy, have five kids. Twins who are eleven. A nine-year-old. A six-year-old. And a toddler who's two. They rented a four-bedroom house across town in Millbrook. Troy worked in "sales," which nobody could ever quite explain. Monica stayed home.
I own a small house in Cedar Hollow. Three bedrooms. A big backyard with an oak tree. I bought it six years ago, two years before I met Shane, with every dollar I'd saved from eight years as a hospital pharmacist. My name is the only one on the deed. When Shane and I got married, we talked about adding him. We never got around to it.
I didn't think about that much. Not until that Saturday.
One Tuesday afternoon in March, Monica called me at work. She'd never called me at work before.
"Maya. I need a favor."
