The Wife Upstairs

by Rachel Hawkins

  “I like everything,” I reply. I don’t mean for the words to sound sexy, but they do, and when the dimple in his cheek deepens, I wonder what else I can say that will make him look at me like that.

  Then his eyes drop lower.

  At first, I think he’s looking at the low neckline of my dress, but then he says, “That necklace.”

  Fuck.

  It had been stupid to wear it. Reckless, something I very rarely was, but when I’d looked in the mirror before leaving, I’d looked so plain with no jewelry. The chain I’d taken from Mrs. McLaren wasn’t anything fancy, no diamonds or jewels, just a simple silver chain with a little gold-and-silver charm on it.

  A bee, I now realize, and my stomach sinks, fingers twisting in my napkin.

  “A friend gave it to me,” I say, striving for lightness, but I’m already touching the charm, feeling it warm against my chest.

  “It’s pretty,” he says, then glances down. “My late wife’s company makes one similar, so…”

  Eddie trails off, and his fingers start that drumming on the table again.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I … I heard about Southern Manors, and it’s—”

  “Let’s not talk about it. Her.” His head shoots up, his smile fixed in place, but it’s not real, and I want to reach across the table and take his hands, but we’re not there yet, are we? I want to ask him everything about Bea, and forget she existed, all at the same time.

  I want.

  I want.

  As the waiter approaches with our expensive wine, I smile at Eddie. “Then let’s talk about you.”

  He raises his eyebrows, leaning back in his seat. “What do you want to know?” he asks.

  I wait until the server has finished pouring a sample of the wine into Eddie’s glass, then wait for Eddie to take a sip, nod, and gesture for our glasses to be filled, a thing I’ve only ever seen happen in movies or on reality shows about rich housewives. And now it’s happening to me. Now I’m one of the people who has those kinds of dinners.

  Once we have full glasses, I mimic Eddie’s posture, sitting back. “Where did you grow up?”

  “Maine,” he answers easily, “little town called Searsport. My mom still lives there; so does my brother. I got out as soon as I could, though. Went to college in Bangor.” Eddie sips his wine, looking at me. “Have you ever been to Maine?”

  I shake my head. “No. But I read a lot of Stephen King as a teenager, so I feel like I have a good idea of what it’s like.”

  That makes him laugh, like I’d hoped it would. “Well, fewer pet cemeteries and killer clowns, but yeah, basically.”

  Leaning forward, I fold my arms on the table, not missing the way his gaze drifts from my face to the neckline of my dress. It’s a fleeting glance, one I’m used to getting from men, but coming from him, it doesn’t feel creepy or unwanted. I actually like him looking at me.

  Another novelty. “Living here must be a big change,” I say, and he shrugs.

  “I moved around a lot after college. Worked with a friend flipping houses all over the Midwest. Settled in California for a bit. That’s where I first got my contractor’s license. Thought I’d stay there forever, but then I went on vacation, and…”

  He trails off, and I jump in, not wanting another loaded silence.

  “Have you ever thought of going back?”

  Surprised, he pours himself a little more wine. “To Maine?”

  I shrug. “Or California.” I wonder why he stays in a place that must have so many bad memories for him, a place in which he seems to stick out, just the slightest bit, to be set apart, even with all his money and nice clothes.

  “Well, Southern Manors is based here,” he replies. “I could run the contracting business from somewhere else, but Bea was really set on Southern Manors being an Alabama company. It would feel … I don’t know. Like a betrayal, I guess. Moving it somewhere else. Or selling it.”

  His expression softens a little. “It’s her legacy, and I feel a responsibility to protect it.”

  I nod, glad our food arrives just at that moment so that this conversation can die a natural death. I already know how important Southern Manors is to him. In my Google stalking, I found several articles about how just a few months after Bea went missing, Eddie fought for a court order to have her declared legally dead. It had something to do with Southern Manors, and there was a lot of business and legal jargon in it I hadn’t understood, but I’d gotten the gist—Bea had to be dead on paper for Eddie to take over and run the company the way she would’ve wanted it to be run.

  I wondered how that had made him feel, declaring his wife’s death in such a formal, final way.

  As he cuts into his steak, he looks up at me, smiling a little. “Enough about me. I want to hear about you.”

  I provide a few charming anecdotes, painting Jane’s life in a flattering light. Some of the stories are real (high school in Arizona), some are half-truths, and some are stolen from friends.

  But he seems to enjoy them, smiling and nodding throughout the meal, and by the time the check comes, I’m more relaxed and confident than I’d ever thought I’d be on this date.

  And when we leave, he takes my hand, slipping it into the crook of his elbow as we exit the restaurant.

  It’s ridiculous, I know that. Me, here with him. Me, with my arm linked through his.

  Me, in his life.

  But here I am, and as we make our way to the sidewalk, I hold my head up higher, stepping closer to him, the edge of my skirt brushing his thighs.

  The night is warm and damp, my hair curling around my face, streetlights reflecting in puddles and potholes, and I wonder if he’ll kiss me.

  If he’ll ask me to stay the night.

  I’m going to.

  He’d ordered a piece of pie to go, and I think about eating it with him in his gorgeous kitchen. Or in his bed. Is that why he’d ordered it?

  I think about walking into that house at night, how pretty the recessed lighting will be in the darkness. What the backyard will look like when the sun comes up. What his sheets feel and smell like, what it’s like to wake up in that house.

  “You’re quiet,” Eddie says, tucking me closer to his side as we wander, and I tilt my head up to smile at him.

  “Can I be honest?”

  “Can I stop you?”

  I nudge him slightly at that, feeling how solid and warm he is beside me. “I was thinking that it’s been a long time since I’ve been on a date.”

  “Me, too,” he replies.

  In the streetlights, he’s so handsome it makes my chest ache, and my fingers rub against the softness of his jacket, the material expensive and well-made. Nicer than anything I own.

  “I’m—” I start, and he turns his head. I think he might kiss me there, right there on the street in English Village where anyone might see us, but before he can, there’s a voice.

  “Eddie!”

  We turn at almost the same time, facing a man on the sidewalk who looks like Tripp Ingraham or Matt McLaren or Saul Clark or any of the other pastel guys in Thornfield Estates.

  He’s got his face screwed up, that expression of sympathy that twists mouths down and eyebrows together. His thinning blond hair looks orange in the streetlights, and when he lifts a hand to shake Eddie’s, I catch the glint of a wedding ring.

  “Good to see you, man,” he says. “And so sorry about Bea.”

  Eddie’s body is stiff against me. “Chris,” he says, shaking the man’s hand. “Nice to see you, too. And thank you. I really appreciated the flowers.”

  Chris only shakes his head. He’s wearing a light gray suit, and there’s a Mercedes parked against the curb just behind him. A woman is still sitting in the passenger seat, watching us, and I feel like her eyes land on me.

  I don’t tug at the skirt of my dress, the only nice one I have, but my fingers itch at my side.

  “Awful thing, just awful,” Chris goes on, like Eddie doesn’t know that his wife drowning is a
bad thing, but Eddie just grimaces and nods.

  “Thanks again,” he says, because what can you say, I guess, but then Chris’s eyes flick briefly to me.

  “She was a helluva woman,” he adds, and I can feel the questions that are clearly burning a hole in the roof of his mouth.

  Who the hell am I, is this a date, is Eddie seriously going to replace Bea with me, this pale-faced plain girl in a dress that’s one size too big?

  “She was,” Eddie replies, and I wait for it, the moment he’s going to introduce me.

  Chris is waiting for it, too, but it passes with an awkward smile from Eddie and a firm pat on Chris’s shoulder. “See you around,” he says. “Tell Beth I said hello.”

  Then we’re moving down the sidewalk, and Eddie has not looked at me since Chris appeared, since Bea’s name rose up like a ghost between us.

  He doesn’t ask to walk me to my car.

  And he doesn’t kiss me good night.

  8

  Everything in the Ingraham house feels like it’s waiting for Blanche to return.

  I walk in the next morning, feeling heavy and slow, last night’s failed date with Eddie sitting like a rock low in my stomach. It somehow seems fitting that this should be the day I’d agreed to go over and start packing up some of Blanche’s stuff for Tripp.

  Bea’s ghost last night, Blanche’s today.

  It’s been months since she went missing, but one of her handbags is still sitting on the table in the foyer. There’s a pile of jewelry there, too, a coiled necklace, a careless pile of rings. I imagine her coming home from a dinner out, taking off all that stuff, tossing it casually against the wide glass base of the lamp, kicking her shoes just under the table.

  The pair of pink gingham flats is still lying there, too. It was July when she went missing, and I imagine her wearing them with a matching pink blouse, a pair of white capris. Women here always dress like flowers in the summer, bright splashes of color against the violently green lawns, the blindingly blue sky. It’s so different from how things were back East, where I grew up. There, black was always the chicest color. Here, I think people would wear lavender to a funeral. Poppy-red to a wedding.

  I’ve never tried to take anything from Tripp. Trust me, he’d notice.

  Unlike Eddie, Tripp has kept all the pictures of Blanche up and in plain sight. I think he might have actually added some. Every available surface seems overcrowded with framed photos.

  There are at least five of their wedding day, Blanche smiling and very blond, Tripp looking vaguely like her brother, and nowhere near as paunchy and deflated as he looks now.

  He’s sitting in the living room when I come in, a plastic tumbler full of ice and an amber-colored liquid that I’m sure is not iced tea.

  It’s 9:23 A.M.

  “Hi, Mr. Ingraham,” I call, rattling my keys in my hand just in case he’s forgotten that he gave me a key so that I could let myself in. That was back when he still pretended like he might go into work. I’m not even sure what he does, if I’m honest. I thought he was a lawyer, but maybe I just assumed that because he looked like the type. He doesn’t seem to own any other clothes besides polo shirts and khakis, and there’s golf detritus all over the house—a bag of clubs leaning by the front door, multiple pairs of golfing shoes jumbled in a rattan basket just inside the front door, tees dropped as carelessly as his wife’s jewelry.

  Even the cup he’s currently drinking his sad breakfast booze in has some kind of golf club insignia on it.

  There’s a photo album spread across his lap and as I step farther into the dim living room, Tripp finally looks up at me, his eyes bleary behind designer glasses.

  “Jan,” he says, and I don’t bother to remind him it’s Jane. I’ve already done that a few times, and it never seems to actually penetrate the muck of Woodford Reserve his brain is permanently steeped in.

  “You asked me to start on the second guest room today,” I tell him, pointing upstairs, and after a beat, he nods.

  I head up there, but my mind isn’t on Tripp and Blanche.

  It’s still on Eddie, on our dinner last night. The way he’d just nodded when I had said I’d walk to my car on my own. How we’d hugged awkwardly on the sidewalk, and how quickly he’d walked away from me.

  I’d thought—

  Fuck, it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’d thought something was happening there, but clearly, I’d been wrong, and the only thing currently happening was that I was heading into the “second guest room” at the Ingrahams’ house to pack up … who knew what.

  The bedroom was on the second floor, and it was relatively small, done all in shades of blue and semi-tropical floral patterns. There were boxes and plastic storage containers on the floor, but I had the feeling Tripp hadn’t put them there. He had sisters. Maybe they had come to prepare the room for me to pick up, a sort of pre-cleaning to maintain the fiction that Tripp had his shit together.

  Which he decidedly did not.

  I’d only been up there ten minutes before I heard him coming.

  I think that once in his life, Tripp had probably been a lot like John. Not as pathetic, of course, and blonder, handsomer. Less like something that grew in dark places behind the fridge. But there’s a similar vibe there, like he’d totally eat food with someone else’s name on it, and I bet more than one woman at the University of Alabama had turned around surprised to suddenly find Tripp Ingraham in the doorway, had wondered why someone who looked so innocuous could suddenly feel so scary.

  But all the drinking had foiled Tripp on the creeper front. I think he meant to sneak up on me there in the “blue bedroom,” but I could hear his tread coming down the hall even though he was moving slowly, and, I think, trying to be quiet.

  Maybe don’t wear golf shoes on hardwood floors, dumbass, I thought to myself, but I was smiling when I turned to face him there in the doorway.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked, and his watery hazel eyes widened a little. There was a sour look on his face, probably because I’d ruined whatever it was he’d hoped for. A girlish shriek maybe, me dropping a box and clasping my hands over my mouth, cheeks gone pink.

  He would’ve liked that, probably. Tripp Ingraham was, I had no doubt, the kind of asshole who had jerked steering wheels, jumped in elevators, pretended to nearly push girlfriends off high ledges.

  I knew the type.

  “You can pack up everything in here if you want,” Tripp says, rattling the glass in his plastic cup. “None of this really meant anything to Blanche.”

  I can see that. It’s a pretty room, but there’s something hotel-like about it. Like everything in here has been selected for just how it looks, not any kind of personal taste.

  I glance over beside the bed, taking in a lamp meant to look like an old-fashioned tin bucket. The shade is printed in a soft blue-and-green floral pattern, and I could swear I’ve seen it before. Wouldn’t surprise me—all the knickknacks in these houses look the same. Except for in Eddie’s house.

  It strikes me then that actually, everything in these houses seems to be a pale knockoff of the stuff at Eddie’s, a Xerox machine slowly running out of ink so that everything is a little fainter, a little less distinct.

  And then I realize where I’d seen that tin bucket lamp.

  “That’s from Southern Manors, isn’t it?” I ask, nodding toward the bedside table. “I was looking at their website the other night, and—”

  Tripp cuts me off with a rude noise, then tips the glass to his mouth again. When he lowers it, there’s a drop of bourbon clinging to his scraggly mustache, and he licks it away, the pink flash of his tongue making me grimace.

  “No, that lamp was Blanche’s. Think it had been her mom’s or something, picked it up at an estate sale, I don’t know.” He shrugs, belly jiggling under his polo shirt. “Bea Rochester wouldn’t have known an original idea if it bit her in her ass. All that shit, that ‘Southern Manors’ thing. All that was Blanche’s.”

  I put down the half-empty box
. “What, like she copied Blanche’s style?”

  Tripp scoffs at that, walking farther into the room. The tip of his shoe catches an overstuffed trash bag by the door, tearing a tiny hole in it, and I watch as a bit of pink cloth oozes out.

  “Copied, stole…” he says, waving the cup at me. “They grew up together, you know. Went to school at the same place, Ivy Ridge. I think they were even roommates.”

  Turning back to the stack of books on the bed, I start placing them in the box at my feet. “I heard they were close,” I reply, wondering just how much more info I can get out of Tripp Ingraham. He’s the only one so far who hasn’t talked about Bea like the sun shone directly from her ass, so I wouldn’t mind hearing more of what he has to say. But gossip is tricky, slippery. Pretend to be too interested, and suddenly you look suspicious. Act bored and nonchalant, sometimes the person will clam up totally, but then sometimes they’re like Emily Clark, eager to keep sharing, hoping to find the right worm to bait the hook.

  I don’t know what kind Tripp is, but he sits on the corner of the bed, the mattress dipping with his weight.

  “Bea Rochester,” he mutters. “Her name was Bertha.”

  I look up at that, tucking my hair behind my ear, and he’s watching me, his eyes bleary, but definitely focused on my face.

  “Seriously?” I ask, and he nods. His leg is moving up and down restlessly, his hands twisting the now empty cup around and around.

  “She changed it when she went to college, apparently. That’s what Blanche said. Came back to Birmingham one day all, ‘Call me Bea.’” He sighs again, that leg still jiggling. “And Blanche did. Never even mentioned her real name to people far as I know.”

  Bertha. The same sits heavily on the tongue, and I think back to those pictures I looked at last night, those red lips, that shiny dark hair. She definitely didn’t look like a Bertha, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to change it.

  Plus, it was another thing we had in common, another secret tucked against my chest. I hadn’t been born “Jane,” after all. That other, older name was so far behind me now that whenever I heard it on TV or in a store or on the radio, part of a snatch conversation as I walked by people, I didn’t even flinch or turn my head. I had buried that person somewhere in Arizona, so that name meant nothing to me now.