Ravi_Kumar_Reddy_4518

The House Across the Lane
A novel of hidden desires, bold awakenings, and the women no one saw coming.

Maple Lane is quiet. Picturesque. A place where porch lights flicker on exactly at dusk and the scent of lemon pie mixes with trimmed hedges and gasoline. It’s a neighborhood that prides itself on appearances — and silence.

But behind those closed doors, the women are changing.

Claire Turner, newly divorced and quietly unraveling, thought she knew what loneliness felt like. Until she looks across the street and sees Gloria Whitmore—elegant, unreadable, and entirely unapologetic. What begins as cautious curiosity becomes something else entirely when Claire steps into Gloria’s home... and finds a world she never imagined existed.

A circle of women — neighbors, wives, even mothers — are waking up from lives lived on auto-pilot. Their bodies, their secrets, and their truths have been hidden for too long. With every whispered confession and stolen touch, they begin to rebuild themselves, piece by piece.

But someone is always watching.

The husbands, distracted and distant, begin to sense something shifting. Some grow suspicious. Others intrigued. And one — Gloria’s own son — watches with obsessive hunger, recording what he shouldn't, until he's pulled into a game he doesn't understand.

In the glow of suburban streetlights, under the weight of years of silence, the women of Maple Lane are choosing each other. And no one—not their men, their children, or their pasts—can stop them now.

The House Across the Lane

It was almost midnight when Claire found herself staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her lipstick was smudged — not from kissing, but from biting her own lip too hard, fighting guilt.

Water dripped from the faucet.Her hand gripped the marble counter, knuckles white.The mirror didn't show a woman in love.It showed a woman being pulled apart by lust, shame, and something darker.

Nina lay asleep in the next room, her body still warm from their slow, silent intimacy earlier that night — an intimacy born of fear, not passion. A desperate claiming. A soft don't leave me woven into every sigh.

Claire had whispered "I'm yours" into her neck.

But her eyes had stayed open the whole time.

Across the neighborhood, Daniel sat in the dark, one screen open on his laptop.The night vision cam was angled just so — pointed at Claire and Nina's bedroom window.His breath came shallow, his pants already pushed down.

But something shifted on the screen.

He leaned forward. The figure was hooded, feminine, still — a silhouette with no fear. She raised a phone slowly, recorded a few seconds, then slipped away into the trees.

Daniel's pulse jumped. He wasn't the only predator here anymore.

Veronica stood under her shower, steam curling around her thighs.

She didn't close her eyes.Didn't scrub hard enough to erase Claire from her skin.

She hated the ache.Hated the softness in her chest where cruelty once reigned.

She wanted Claire to hurt her.Not out of revenge, but because pain was the only thing she trusted as real anymore.

Claire picked up. Whispered, "You shouldn't be calling me."

"Claire," Veronica breathed, "tell me you didn't think about me when you were lying next to her."

Then a shuddered moan escaped her lips, barely audible, full of self-loathing.

She saw Gloria being dragged by masked figures.

She saw Evelyn's face flicker in the hallway mirror.

And in every nightmare, Claire stood still—watching, unmoving—as Nina reached for her.

Gloria stood in her garage, staring at a box labeled 1984 - Evelyn. She had burned Claire's folder, yes — but she hadn't destroyed everything.

Inside was a grainy black-and-white photograph.

Three girls.One of them Evelyn.One of them herself.And the third?

Gloria had never connected the dots. But now they screamed in her face.

Claire wasn't just involved.She was born into this web.

Evelyn stood in her greenhouse, trimming orchids with gold-plated scissors.Her phone buzzed once.

"Veronica is slipping. Claire's becoming unpredictable. Gloria knows too much."

She stared at the message and typed back:

"Good. Let them all fall into bed with each other. Then burn them where they lie."

Claire stood at her door, about to leave for work, when she saw the second note.

Folded neatly. Pressed into her mailbox like a lover's kiss.

"Last night was just a preview.I want to watch you break while she watches you love me."

It wasn't signed. But the lipstick smear at the corner said enough.

Watching her from behind the curtain.

The Edge She Chose