The Wife Upstairs

by Rachel Hawkins

  Do people here miss me? Do they miss Blanche?

  There has to be some way to get him to talk to me.

  I think if I don’t talk to someone soon, I’m going to lose my mind.

  * * *

  Today, finally, a breakthrough.

  Thanks to a shirt, of all things.

  When Eddie came to bring me supplies, I noticed he was wearing the blue dress shirt I got him for our last anniversary. It was the exact same shade of blue as his eyes, which is why I’d bought it, and he still looked great in it. He’s been looking better in general lately, more like himself.

  And so I said, “You look good.”

  That surprised him. Instead of turning away from me, he glanced down at himself, like he’d just realized what he was wearing. Saw the significance of it.

  “Thanks,” he said at last. “I forgot you got this for me.”

  “I got most of your clothes for you,” I replied, “except for that godawful houndstooth tie you like. That was all you.”

  He smiled a little at that, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I love that tie.”

  Well, now you can wear it all the time, I guess.

  The words were right there, a pithy comeback, the kind of thing he used to like from me. But I held my tongue because I knew it would just make him leave. And I needed him to stay.

  “It did look good on you,” I said. “Which was very irritating.”

  A snort, then he turned for the door, and was gone. I’d wanted him to linger, to keep talking, and it was hard not to feel disappointed. But there was a looseness to him as he left that hadn’t been there when he came in.

  It’s a start.

  * * *

  OCTOBER, THREE MONTHS AFTER BLANCHE

  Eddie came back today, which surprised me. He’d just been here yesterday, and I was used to waiting three days between visits, counting the time as best as I can up here.

  He brought more food and water with him, but I still had plenty, and after he dropped them off, he just stood there by the door for a long while, his hands in his back pockets.

  “Do you want some more books?” he finally asked, and it took me a minute to respond.

  “That would be great,” I said, and meant it. He doesn’t know I’ve been using this one as a journal, and I could really use some more reading material.

  He nodded and, as he left, said, “Bye, Bea.”

  He hasn’t done that before. It’s the first time I’ve heard my own name in weeks.

  * * *

  Another day, another visit from Eddie. He’s coming every day now. Not staying long, and twice now, he’s been here while I’ve been asleep, and I wonder if that means he’s coming at night. I don’t have the best sense of night and day right now, but I still sleep, and I assume that I must be keeping a semi-regular schedule. I don’t know why he’d suddenly be coming up at night, though.

  But no, I told myself that I can’t do that, can’t try to guess at his reasons or his motives. If I do that, I’ll go crazy.

  Well, crazier.

  * * *

  Eddie stayed for an hour today. Maybe longer.

  He didn’t even bother bringing food and water, and for the first time since I woke up in here, I felt something in my chest loosen, like I could breathe again.

  He’d brought me books like he promised, and as soon as he came in, I held up one of them, a political thriller I remembered him reading. “This was maybe the stupidest book I’ve ever read,” I told him, and he crossed the room, taking it from my hand, studying the cover.

  “Is this the one where they replace the president with a clone?”

  “It was the vice president,” I reminded him, “but yes.”

  Reading the back, Eddie smiled faintly. “I bought it in an airport. No one can be judged for the books they buy in airports.”

  “I remember that,” I said, and suddenly I did. We’d been going to a conference in Atlanta. Well, I’d been going to the conference. Eddie had come with me so he could go to some football game there the same weekend.

  “Women and Leadership, Leaders and Womanhood,” I said. “Some workshop like that. Three days of lectures with titles like, ‘A Gentle Hand: Commanding Respect without Fear,’ and ‘Women on Top.’”

  He smiled. “You hated that shit.”

  “I did,” I replied, nodding. “That one was especially bad, though.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed, remembering that weekend, how miserable and bored I’d felt, overdressed in my pencil skirts, wasting my time.

  I could still see the woman who led one of the group workshops, standing in front of us, her hair short and prematurely gray, a cream-colored cashmere cardigan nearly swallowing her birdlike frame.

  “We keep so many things in our brains,” she’d said. “More than men do. They’re allowed to only worry about business, while we have to worry about business and our families. Our children. I bet if I were to ask a male CEO, ‘How much milk do you have in your fridge right this second?’ he’d have no idea. But all of you know.”

  The woman had smiled, beatific, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You all know, don’t you?”

  A wave of chuckles and knowing nods, and I’d looked around thinking, Are all of you for fucking real?

  I told Eddie that story now, and he laughed, folding his arms across his chest. “Right, but every day, when I got back to the room and asked how your day had gone, you’d said, ‘Fine.’”

  I shrugged. “What was I supposed to say? I was the one who’d chosen to go. I didn’t want to admit that you were right, and it was a waste of time.”

  I didn’t add that things had been strained between us then. That we’d been arguing more, even before Blanche and her renovations.

  I didn’t want him to remember that.

  “That weekend wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs for me, either. I ended up giving my ticket to the Falcons game to one of my clients, so I think I mostly watched ESPN in the hotel room and ate bad room service.”

  He glanced around then, and I realized he was looking for a place to sit.

  But of course, there wasn’t one, because this wasn’t my parlor, it was a cell.

  A cell he’d made.

  Thinking fast, I patted the bed next to me. “It’s surprisingly comfy,” I said, smiling a little. This was the most we’d talked, and I wanted him like this, relaxed and a little more open.

  He hesitated, and for a moment, I thought he’d leave instead.

  Then he sat.

  The mattress dipped under his weight, making me lean toward him more, and I caught the scent of his soap, and underneath that, the clean, warm smell that was just Eddie.

  That weekend in Atlanta hadn’t been all bad. Even with the tension between us, we’d taken advantage of that big hotel bed every night.

  Things had always been good between us in bed.

  Eddie looked over at me, his eyes very blue, and my mouth went dry.

  He wasn’t looking at me like he hated me, like he wanted me gone. And there had to be a reason I was still here, after all.

  Blanche was dead, while I was alive.

  That had to mean something.

  “We should’ve gone on more vacations,” I said, letting my gaze drift to his lips. “Maybe back to Hawaii.”

  I glanced up at him then, and his face was open to me, finally. His eyes warm, his lips parted, the Eddie I knew.

  The Eddie I understood.

  And suddenly the best way to get out of here was very, very clear.

  She hadn’t come to Hawaii to meet a guy. She’d come to sit in the sunshine and drink overpriced frozen cocktails. To look out at the Pacific Ocean, which she’d never seen before that trip. In fact, the only ocean she’d ever been to was the Gulf of Mexico, that one summer Blanche’s family took her to their place in Orange Beach.

  Blanche hadn’t approved of the trip to Hawaii. “It’s tacky,” she’d told Bea, wrinkling her nose as she’d tucked her hair behi
nd her ear. “And you can afford better. Do Bali or something. Fiji, even.”

  But Bea had wanted Hawaii, so that’s where she’d gone, and Blanche could get fucked with her judgey face and pointless opinions. She was just jealous, anyway. Tripp hadn’t taken her anywhere since their honeymoon in Italy, and Bea knew for a fact he was still paying off the credit card bills.

  But she sat there in her beach chair day after day, looking out at the ocean—as blue as she’d hoped it would be—and Blanche’s words had spun around her mind. Should she have gone somewhere a little more exotic? Somewhere harder to get to? Somewhere where she wasn’t spending her days avoiding families and honeymooners?

  It was always a balancing act, separating the wants of the girl she used to be from the needs of the woman she was now.

  Another mai tai, too sweet, but she drank it anyway. No, Hawaii was good. Hawaii was accessible, and that’s part of what Southern Manors was selling, right? Class, but in a comfortable way. She might do an entire Hawaiian line for next summer. Hibiscus blooms painted on glass tumblers. Napkin rings in the shape of pineapples. A cheeky hula girl print.

  Thinking about work calmed her as it always did, made her brain cease that constant circling, like she was forever looking for the places where she’d stepped wrong, or could step wrong. She never had that uncertainty and self-doubt when it came to her business.

  Bea pulled her iPad out of her beach bag where it sat next to the three magazines and two books she’d picked up at the airport, but knew she wouldn’t read.

  Within a few minutes, she had a page of ideas for the summer line, and was trying to think of a name for the collection that would be fun and catchy, but not overly cutesy. Another fine line she walked all the time, but easier.

  She was on her third attempt (“Something with Blue Hawaii? Too dated?”) when a shadow fell across her chair, and she heard someone say, “Working at the beach? I’m not sure if that’s inspiring or depressing.”

  It was the smile that did her in, almost from that first moment. Looking up at the man standing there in striped trunks and a white T-shirt, one hand casually in his pocket, his sunglasses spotted with dried seawater, his hair falling over his brow like he was the hero of some rom-com she’d just stepped into.

  Bea smiled back, almost without thinking. Later, she’d realize that he was good at that, at breaching walls before you’d even had a chance to put them up, but on that sunny afternoon, there hadn’t been anything sinister about his charm.

  “Beats working in an office,” she heard herself reply, and his grin had deepened, revealing a dimple in his left cheek.

  “I’ll drink to that,” he replied, and then he was offering her his hand, that smile as bright as the sun overhead.

  “I’m Eddie.”

  Eddie. It was a boy’s name, Bea thought, but it suited him because there was something boyish in his smile.

  And she liked that. Liked it enough that she let him sit in the empty chair next to her and that she accepted his invitation for dinner that night.

  Why not? she’d thought. Wasn’t this the kind of thing that was supposed to go along with this new life of hers? Expensive vacations, fancy cocktails, dinner with a handsome stranger?

  They ate in the hotel restaurant, near the big plate glass window overlooking the sea, the sky a violent mix of pink, purple, and orange, a candle flickering between them, expensive wine sweating in a bucket of ice by the table.

  Looking back, Bea could see how it was almost too perfect, too much of a romantic cliché, but at the time, it had just felt exciting and … right, somehow. Like she was finally getting everything she deserved.

  They talked, and she was surprised at how easy it all was. How easy he was. He was from Maine, originally, and loved boats. He was in Hawaii because he had a friend looking to get into the yacht charter business, and they were scouting out other companies, seeing how it was done.

  And she’d told him about growing up in Alabama, leaving out the more Southern gothic aspects of her childhood, focusing on the fancy boarding school, the debutante scene, the all-girls college she’d attended in South Carolina. As she spun out her tales, she realized that she was doing it again, papering parts of Blanche’s life over the less savory parts of hers, but she’d been in the habit for so long that it hardly registered anymore.

  Over dessert, laughing sheepishly, a little chagrined, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck: “You are really fucking beautiful.”

  Shake of his head. “And I am clearly really fucking drunk,” he added.

  But he hadn’t been. He’d had one old-fashioned earlier, and his wine was mostly untouched.

  Maybe it should have alarmed her, that he was faking being drunk as an excuse to say something like that to her, a woman he’d just met.

  But it didn’t alarm her. It interested her. It felt like it might be a hint at a weakness in a man who, from what she could see, had no reason to be weak. Good-looking, smart, successful …

  Bea would eventually find out that he wasn’t in Hawaii “on business” like he’d said, that the charter yacht idea was closer to a pipe dream than an actual pursuit, but by then it was too late and she didn’t care anyway.

  “I’m sure you get that a lot,” he went on, and Bea had looked at him, really looked at him.

  His eyes were blue, and there was just a hint of red high on his cheekbones, from the sun she thought, not booze or embarrassment.

  “I do,” she replied, both because it was true and because she wanted to see how he’d respond. If the script he’d come up with in his head had counted on her playing that mythical creature boys sang about, the pretty girl who didn’t know it.

  But he didn’t seem flustered at all. He narrowed his eyes slightly, tilting his glass at her. “So, beautiful and smart enough to know it.”

  “And rich,” she added. Also true, and again, she wanted to see the look on his face when she said it.

  To his credit, he didn’t give anything away. He just smiled again. “A triple threat, then. Lucky me.”

  Bea laughed, tucking her hair behind her ear, sincerely charmed for maybe the first time that evening. She liked that he didn’t bluster about it, didn’t pretend it was no big deal. He probably already knew, of course—later, she’d wonder a lot about that first encounter—but something about the way he handled it appealed to her. He accepted her, right from the start. She’d built an image of the person she wanted to be, and Eddie was perhaps the first person who truly understood it.

  Probably because he was little more than an image himself.

  PART V

  JANE

  18

  Eddie takes the detective out to the backyard. There’s no ride to the police station, no Eddie in the back of a car, and I tell myself that this isn’t serious. This is nothing, really.

  If it were something, he wouldn’t be offering the detective bottled water with a smile.

  I stand in the kitchen, absentmindedly cleaning the counters, putting glasses in the dishwasher, anything to keep my hands busy and make me look just as relaxed as Eddie does right now.

  But I’m not Eddie, and when Detective Laurent comes back inside, I have to fight the urge to go hide in the bedroom and lock the door.

  It sounds stupid, but I’d thought this kind of money and lifestyle insulated you from things like this, the police showing up at your door with questions and hard eyes.

  The detective is friendly enough, though, holding up her empty bottle. “Recycling?” she asks, and I take it from her, smiling like I’m totally unbothered.

  She leans on the counter, casual, and asks, “How long have the two of you been seeing each other?”

  I have no idea if this is an actual question she’s asking as a police officer, or if she’s just making small talk, and my palms sweat as I reach up to tuck my hair behind my ear.

  “A few months?” I say. “Eddie and I met back in February, started dating in March?”

  Great, I’m doing the q
uestioning thing that makes me sound like an unsure little girl, not the kind of woman who belongs in a house like this.

  But the detective just smiles at me, her dark eyes warm, the skin around them crinkling.

  “Your fiancé says you used to be his dog-walker.” Wrinkling her nose, she gestures around us. “I said, ‘What the hell do people in this neighborhood need a dog-walker for?’ but that’s the bougie set for you, isn’t it?”

  I laugh along with her, nodding even as my heart keeps pounding and my hands keep shaking. “I said the same thing. But it was a good job, and I like dogs.”

  I could not sound more insipid if I tried, but that’s the point, right? Make her think I’m no one worth even talking to. And whatever this is, it has nothing to do with me. Plain Jane, blending into the background again.

  Drumming her nails on the counter—sensible, short, square, only one thin gold band on her left hand—Detective Laurent nods. “We all have to do what we can to get by,” she says, not unkindly, and then gives me a nod before checking the phone she has clipped to her belt.

  “I better get going. Sorry again for interrupting y’all’s evening.”

  “It was no problem at all,” I tell her, dying to ask why she’s here, what she said to Eddie, but also wanting her to go, to pretend that this night never even happened.

  “Let me walk you out,” I offer, but she waves me off.

  “No need.” Then, reaching into her jacket, she pulls out a business card and hands it to me. Unlike the card Eddie handed to John that day, this one is thin, the paper cheap. It’s stamped with the Mountain Brook PD’s crest, and has her name—Detective Tori Laurent—and number. “I told Mr. Rochester to call if he has any questions. You do the same, okay?”

  And then she’s off, her sensible shoes squeaking on the floor, the front door opening and closing.

  As though he’d been waiting for her to leave, Eddie comes in through the back sliding glass door and lets out a long breath, shoving his hands through his hair.