The Wife Upstairs

by Rachel Hawkins

  Once he’s gone, I hunt through the cabinets for any food he hasn’t taken. Luckily, I still have two things of Easy Mac left, and I heat them both up, dumping them into one bowl before hunkering down with my laptop and pulling up my search on Bea Rochester.

  I don’t spend much time on the articles about her death. I’ve heard the gossip, and honestly, it seems pretty basic to me—two ladies got too drunk at their fancy beach house, got on their fancy boat, and then succumbed to a very fancy death. Sad, but not exactly a tragedy.

  No, what I want to know about is Bea Rochester’s life. What it was that made a man like Eddie want her. Who she was, what their relationship might have looked like.

  The first thing I pull up is her company’s website.

  Southern Manors.

  “Nothing says Fortune 500 company like a bad pun,” I mutter, stabbing another bite of macaroni with my fork.

  There’s a letter on the first page of the site, and my eyes immediately scan down to see if Eddie wrote it.

  He didn’t. There’s another name there, Susan, apparently Bea’s second-in-command. It’s full of the usual stuff you’d expect when the founder of a company dies suddenly. How sad they are, what a loss, how the company will continue on, burnishing her legacy, etc., etc.

  I wonder what kind of a legacy it is, really, selling overpriced cutesy shit.

  Clicking from page to page, I take in expensive Mason jars, five-hundred-dollar sweaters with HEY, Y’ALL! stitched discreetly in the left corner, silver salad tongs whose handles are shaped like bees.

  There’s so much gingham it’s like Dorothy Gale exploded on this website, but I can’t stop looking, can’t keep from clicking one item, then another.

  The monogrammed dog leashes.

  The hammered-tin watering cans.

  A giant glass bowl in the shape of an apple someone has just taken a bite out of.

  It’s all expensive but useless crap, the kind of stuff lining the gift tables at every high-society wedding in Birmingham, and I finally click away from the orgy of pricey/cutesy, going back to the main page to look at Bea Rochester’s picture again.

  She’s standing in front of a dining room table made of warm, worn-looking wood. Even though I haven’t been in the dining room at the Rochester mansion, I know immediately that this is theirs, that if I looked a little deeper into the house, I would find this room. It has the same vibe as the living room—nothing matches exactly, but it somehow goes together, from the floral velvet seat covers on the eight chairs to the orange-and-teal centerpiece that pops against the eggplant-colored drapes.

  Bea pops, too, her dark hair swinging just above her shoulders in a glossy long bob. She has her arms crossed, her head slightly tilted to one side as she smiles at the camera, her lipstick the prettiest shade of red I think I’ve ever seen.

  She’s wearing a navy sweater, a thin gold belt around her waist, and a navy-and-white gingham pencil skirt that manages to be cute and sexy at the same time, and I almost immediately hate her.

  And also want to know everything about her.

  More googling, the Easy Mac congealing in its bowl on John’s scratched and water-ringed coffee table, my fingers moving quickly, my eyes and my mind filling up with Bea Rochester.

  There’s not as much as I’d want, though. She wasn’t famous, really. It’s the company people seem to care about, the stuff they can buy, while Bea seemed to keep herself out of the spotlight.

  There’s only one interview I can find—with Southern Living, of course, big surprise. In the accompanying photo, Bea sits at another dining room table—seriously, did this woman exist in any other rooms of a house?—wearing yellow this time, a crystal bowl of lemons on her elbow, an enamel coffee cup printed with daisies casually held in one hand.

  The profile is a total puff piece. Bea grew up in Alabama, one of her ancestors was a senator in the 1800s, and they’d had a gorgeous home in some place called Calera that had burned down a few years ago. Her mother had sadly passed away not long after Bea started Southern Manors, and she “did everything in memory of her.”

  My eyes keep scanning past the details I already know—the Randolph-Macon degree, the move back to Birmingham, the growth of her business—until I finally snag on Eddie’s name.

  Three years ago, Bea Mason met Edward Rochester on vacation in Hawaii. “I was definitely not looking for a relationship,” she laughs. “I just wanted some downtime to read a few books and drink ridiculous frozen drinks. But when Eddie showed up…”

  She trails off and shakes her head slightly with a becoming blush. “The whole thing was such a whirlwind, but I always say marrying Eddie was the only impulsive decision I’ve ever made. Luckily, it ended up being the best decision I ever made, too.”

  Sighing, I sit back from my laptop, my back protesting, my legs slightly numb from how long I’ve had them folded up under me. The throw over my thighs smells like cheap detergent, and I push it away, wrinkling my nose.

  Hawaii.

  Why does that make it worse for some reason? Why did I want them to have met at church or the country club or one of the other five thousand boring and safe locations around here?

  Because I wanted it not to be special, I think. I wanted her not to be special.

  But she is. Beautiful and smart and a millionaire. A woman who built something all her own, even if she did come from money and the kind of background that made achieving shit a hell of a lot easier than it did for someone like me.

  I stare at that picture some more, wondering what her voice sounded like, how tall she was, what she and Eddie looked like together.

  Gorgeous, obviously. Hot. But did they smile at each other? Did they touch each other easily, his arm around her waist, her hand on his shoulder? Were there furtive caresses, brushings of hands under tables, secret signals only they knew?

  There must’ve been. Marriage was like that, even though most of the ones I’d seen hadn’t seemed worth the effort.

  So, Bea Rochester had been perfect. The perfect mogul, the perfect woman, the perfect wife. Probably had never even heard of Easy Mac or seen the inside of a pawnshop.

  But I had one thing over her. I was still alive.

  6

  Eddie isn’t there when I walk Adele the next morning. His car is missing from the garage, and I tell myself I’m not disappointed when I take the puppy from the backyard and out for her walk.

  Thornfield Estates is just up the hill from Mountain Brook Village where I used to work, so this morning, I take Adele there, her little legs trotting happily as we turn out of the neighborhood. I tell myself it’s because I’m bored with the same streets, but really, it’s because I want people to see us. I want people who don’t know I’m the dog-walker to see me with Eddie’s dog. Which means, in their heads, I’m linked with Eddie.

  It makes me hold my head up higher as I walk past Roasted, past the little boutique selling things that I now recognize as knockoffs of Southern Manors. I pass three stores with brightly patterned quilted bags in the windows, and I think how many of those bags are probably tucked away in closets in Thornfield Estates.

  What would it feel like to be the kind of woman who spent $250 on an ugly bag just because you could?

  At my side, Adele trots along, her nails clicking on the sidewalk, and I’m just about to turn by the bookstore when I hear, “Jane?”

  It’s Mrs. McLaren. I walk her dalmatian, Mary-Beth, every Wednesday, and now she’s standing in front of me, a Roasted cup in hand. Like Emily Clark, she wears fancy yoga clothes half the time, but she’s smaller and curvier than Emily or Mrs. Reed, her hair about four different shades of blond as it curls around her face.

  “What are you two doing all the way down here?” She asks it with a smile, but my face suddenly flames hot, like I’ve been caught at something.

  “Change of scenery,” I reply with a sheepish shrug, hoping Mrs. McLaren will just let this go, but now she’s stepping closer, her gaze falling to Adele.

&n
bsp; “Sweetheart, it’s probably not safe to have the dogs out of the neighborhood.” The words are cooed, sugar-sweet, a cotton candy chastisement, and I hate her for them.

  Like I’m a child. Or, worse, a servant who wandered out of her gated yard.

  “We’re not far from home,” I say, and at my side, Adele whines, straining on her leash, her tail brushing back and forth.

  Home.

  There’s a shopping bag dangling from Mrs. McLaren’s wrist as she steps closer. It’s imprinted with the logo of one of those little boutiques I just passed, and I wonder what’s in it, wanting to catch a glimpse of the item inside, so that when I see it lying around her house later, I can take it. A stupid, petty reaction, lashing out, I know that, but there it is, an insistent pulse under my skin.

  Whatever this bitch bought today, she’s not going to keep it, not after making me feel this small.

  “Okay, well, maybe run on back there, then?” The uptick, making it a question. “And sweetie, please don’t ever take Mary-Beth out of the neighborhood, okay? She gets so excitable, and I’d hate for her to be out in all this…” she waves a hand, the bag still dangling from her wrist. “Rigmarole.”

  I’ve seen maybe three cars this morning, and the only rigmarole currently happening is Mrs. McLaren stopping me like I’m some kind of criminal for daring to walk a dog outside Thornfield’s gates.

  But I nod.

  I smile.

  I bite back the venom flooding my mouth because I have practice at that, and I walk back to Thornfield Estates and to Eddie’s house.

  It’s cool and quiet as I let myself in, and I lean down to unclip Adele’s leash. Her claws skitter across the marble, then the hardwood as she makes her way to the sliding glass doors, and I follow, opening them to let her out into the yard.

  This is the part where I’m supposed to hang up her leash on the hook by the front door, maybe leave a note for Eddie saying that I came by and that Adele is outside, and then leave. Go back to the concrete box on St. Pierre Street, think again about taking the GRE, maybe sort through the various treasures I’ve picked up on dressers, on bathroom counters, beside nightstands.

  Instead, I walk back into the living room with that bright pinkish-red couch and floral chairs, the shelves with all those books, and I look around.

  For once, I’m not looking for something to take. I don’t know what it says about me, about Eddie, or how I might feel about Eddie that I don’t want to take anything from him, but I don’t. I just want to know him. To learn something.

  Actually, if I’m being honest with myself, I want to see pictures of him with Bea.

  There aren’t any in the living room, but I can see spaces on the wall where photographs must have hung. And the mantel is weirdly bare, which makes me think it once held more than just a pair of silver candlesticks.

  I wander down the hall, sneakers squeaking, and there’s more emptiness.

  Upstairs.

  The hardwood is smooth underfoot, and there are no blank spaces here, only tasteful pieces of art.

  On the landing, there’s a table with that glass bowl I recognize from Southern Manors, the one shaped like an apple, and I let my fingers drift over it before moving on, up the shorter flight of stairs to the second floor.

  It’s dim up here, the lights off, and the morning sun not yet high enough to reach through the windows. There are doors on either side, but I don’t try to open any of them.

  Instead, I make my way to a small wooden table under a round stained-glass window, there at the end of the hall.

  There’s only one thing on it, a silver-framed photograph, and it’s both exactly what I wanted to see, and something I wish I’d never seen at all.

  I had wondered what Bea and Eddie looked like together, and now I know.

  They’re beautiful.

  But it’s more than just that. Lots of people are beautiful, especially in this neighborhood where everyone can afford the upkeep, so it’s not her perfect hair and flawless figure, her bright smile and designer bathing suit. It’s that they look like they fit. Both of them, standing on that gorgeous beach, her smiling at the camera, Eddie smiling at her.

  They’d found the person for them. That thing most of us look for and never find, that thing I always assumed didn’t exist, because in this whole wide world, how could there ever be one person who was just right for you?

  But Bea was right for Eddie, I can see that now, and I suddenly feel so stupid and small. Sure, he’d flirted with me, but he was probably one of those guys for whom it was second nature. He’d had this. He certainly didn’t want me.

  “That was in Hawaii.”

  I whirl around, the keys falling from my suddenly numb fingers.

  Eddie is standing in the hallway, just at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall with one ankle crossed in front of the other. He’s wearing jeans today and a blue button-down, the kind that looks casual, but probably costs more than I’d make in a couple of weeks at the coffee shop or walking dogs. I wonder what that’s like, to have so much money that spending someone’s rent on one shirt doesn’t even register.

  His sunglasses dangle from his hand, and he nods at the table. “That picture,” he tells me, as if I hadn’t known what he was referring to. “That’s me and Bea in Hawaii last year. We met there, actually.”

  I swallow hard, shoving my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, straightening my shoulders. “I was just looking for the bathroom,” I tell him, and he smiles a little.

  “Of course you were,” he says, pushing off from the wall and walking closer. The hall is wide and bright, filled with light from the inset window above us, but it feels smaller, closer, as he moves nearer.

  “It was the one picture I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of,” he says now, and I’m very aware of him standing right next to me, his elbow nearly brushing my side.

  “The rest were mostly shots of our wedding, a few pictures of when we were building this house. But that one…” Trailing off, he picks up the frame, studying the image. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t throw it out.”

  “You threw the rest of them away?” I ask. “Even your wedding pictures?”

  He sets the frame back on the table with a soft clunk. “Burned them, actually. In the backyard three days after the accident.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say quietly, trying not to imagine Eddie standing in front of a fire as Bea’s face melted.

  But then he looks at me, his blue eyes narrowing just a little bit. “I don’t think you are, Jane,” he says, and my mouth is dry, my heart hammering. I wish I’d never come upstairs into this hallway, and I am so glad I came into this hallway because if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be standing here right now, and he wouldn’t be looking at me like that.

  “What happened was awful,” I try again, and he nods, but his hand is already coming up to cup my elbow. His fingers fold around the sharp point, and I stare down at where he’s touching me, at the sight of that hand on my skin.

  “Awful,” he echoes. “But you’re not sorry, because her not being here means that you can be here. With me.”

  I want to protest, because what a horrible thing to think about me. What a horrible thing for me to be.

  But he’s right—I’m glad that Bea Rochester was on that boat with Blanche Ingraham that night. I’m glad because it means Eddie is alone.

  Free.

  The fact that he sees that in me should make me feel ashamed, but it only makes me giddy.

  “I’m not with you,” I say to him, though, because that’s the truth. We may be standing here, his hand on my arm, but we’re not together. There’s still a big fucking canyon between the Eddie Rochesters of the world and me.

  But then he smiles, that slow smile that only lifts one corner of his mouth and makes him look younger and more charming.

  “Have dinner with me tonight,” he says.

  I like that. How it’s not a question.

  “Yes,” I hear myself say, a
nd it’s that easy.

  It’s like walking through a door.

  7

  I don’t let him pick me up.

  I’d be insane to let Eddie see where I really live, and the thought of him and John crossing paths is enough to make me shudder. No, I want to exist only in Eddie’s world, like I’d sprung from somewhere else, fully formed, unknowable.

  It’s true enough, really.

  So, I meet him in English Village, a part of Mountain Brook I’ve never been to, although I’d heard Emily mention it. There are lots of “villages” in Mountain Brook: Cahaba Village, Overton Village, and Mountain Brook Village itself. It seemed silly to me, using a word like village to mean different part of the same community—just use neighborhood, you pretentious assholes, we don’t live in the English countryside—but what did I know?

  I park far away from the French bistro where Eddie made a reservation, praying he won’t ask to walk me to my car later, and meet him under the gold-and-black-striped awning of the restaurant.

  He’s wearing charcoal slacks and a white shirt, a nice complement to the deep eggplant of my dress, and his hand is warm on my lower back when the maître d’ shows us to our table.

  Low lights, white tablecloths, a bottle of wine. That’s the part that stands out to me most, how casually he orders an entire bottle of wine while I was still looking at the by-the-glass prices, wondering what would sound sophisticated, but wouldn’t be too expensive.

  The bottle he selects is over a hundred dollars, and my cheeks flush at knowing I’m worth an expensive bottle of wine to him. After that, I put the menu away entirely, happy to let him order for me.

  “What if I pick something you don’t like?” he asks, but he’s smiling, His skin doesn’t seem as pale as it did that first day. His blue eyes are no longer rimmed with red, and I wonder if I’ve made him happy. It’s a heady thought, even more intoxicating than the wine.