Instead, I finish up my lunch, and we head back to the car, the drive short now.
We make our way down winding roads, dim under the canopy of leaves, the lake sparkling in the distance. There are lots of houses, but the farther we drive, the more spread out they become until finally, there’s just the woods, the lake, and as Eddie rounds a corner, the house.
It’s not as grand as the one in Thornfield Estates, and it was clearly built to look like a rustic lake house, the kind of place where you bring kids fishing, but it’s still sprawling, and I feel the coziness of lunch start to ebb away.
It’s so quiet here. So isolated.
And it’s the last place Bea was ever alive.
As Eddie gets our bags from the trunk, I think he might be feeling something similar because he’s quiet except to call out, “The code for the door is the same one at the house.”
6-12-85. Bea’s birthday.
I enter it into the keypad on the front door, and step inside.
More similarities to Eddie’s house—our house. It’s clearly been expensively decorated, but it’s designed to look lived-in, too. There’s darker wood here, darker furniture, the whole place a lot more masculine, a lot less … Bea.
As I stand beside the heavy front door, my surprise must register on my face because as Eddie steps past me with our stuff, he asks, “What?”
“It’s just…”
This house looks so much more like him. Even though Bea died here, her ghost doesn’t feel nearly as present.
“This is a very man-cavey place,” I finally say, and one corner of his mouth kicks up as he tosses his leather bag onto a couch done in green-and-blue tartan.
“This place was Bea’s wedding present to me,” he says. “So, she let me decorate.” Another smile, wry this time. “Which means I said yes to everything she picked out.”
So, Bea’s stamp is still here—it’s just her version of what she thought Eddie would like. Should like.
I move into the living room, seeing it through Bea’s eyes, imagining how she saw Eddie. Even though this is on a lake, not the ocean, there’s a whole coastal theme happening. Paintings of schooners, decorations made with heavy rope, even an old Chelsea Clock on the wall.
“I worked on sailboats when I was younger, up north. Charter boats in Bar Harbor, that kind of thing,” he says, nodding at the seascape over the fireplace. “I guess Bea wanted to remind me of it.”
“Because you liked it or because you hated it?”
The question is out before I realize what a stupid thing it is to ask, how much it reveals.
His head jerks back slightly, like the question was an actual physical blow, and he narrows his eyes. “What does that mean?” he asks, and I feel my face go hot as I shrug, nudging the edge of an area rug with my toe.
“You’ve just never mentioned that to me before, so I thought … maybe you were trying to forget it? Your past. Maybe this reminder of it might not have actually been a nice thing to do.”
“You think Bea was that kind of bitch?” he asks, and god, I have royally fucked this up.
“Of course not,” I say, but to my surprise, he just laughs, shaking his head.
“I can’t blame you for it. I imagine you saw some real cunty stuff when you worked in the neighborhood.”
It’s a relief, both that he doesn’t think my question was that weird, and also that he gets me. I may not always be honest with Eddie, but he still sees these parts of me sometimes, and I like it.
It makes me think that even though I’ve been playing a certain role, he might have picked me—the real me—anyway.
“It was still a dumb thing to say,” I tell him now, sliding closer to him. Over his shoulder is a glass door leading out to a screened-in porch; beyond that is a sloping green lawn, a narrow pier, and the dark water of the lake. This time of the afternoon, the sun sends little sparks of gold dancing across its surface.
It’s hard to believe that this pretty, sparkly water took Bea’s life. And Blanche’s. And it’s even harder to believe Eddie would want to be anywhere near it again. How can we sit out there tonight and drink wine and not think about it?
But Eddie just gives my ass a pat, propelling me slightly in the direction of the hallway off the living room. “Go ahead and get settled, and I’ll unpack the groceries.”
The master bedroom is nowhere near as big as the one back at Thornfield, but it’s pretty and, like the rest of the house, cozy and comfortable. There’s a quilt on the bed in swirling shades of blue, and a big armchair near the window with a good view of the lake.
I settle into the chair now, watching the water.
After twenty minutes, I still haven’t seen a single person out there.
No boats, no Jet Skis, no swimmers. The only sound is the lapping of the water against the dock and the wind in the trees.
When I come out of the bedroom, Eddie is pouring us both a glass of wine.
“It’s really quiet out here,” I say, and he nods, looking out the back door toward the water.
“That’s why we picked it.”
And then he releases a long deep breath and says, “It made me crazy. After Bea.”
I look up, startled. I hadn’t expected him to voluntarily mention her after my fuckup earlier.
“The quiet,” he goes on. “Thinking about that night and how quiet it would’ve been, how dark.”
He keeps his eyes trained on the water. “It’s deep out there, you know. The deepest lake in Alabama.”
I hadn’t known that, and I don’t say anything. I’m not even sure if he’s talking to me, to be honest. It’s almost like he’s talking to himself, staring out at the lake.
“They flooded a forest to make it,” he goes on. “So there are trees under the water. Tall ones, sixty feet high in some places. A whole fucking forest under the water. That’s why they thought they never found her. They thought she was somewhere in the trees.”
The image seeps into my mind. Bea, her skin white, her body tangled in the branches of an underwater forest, and it’s so awful I actually shake my head a little. I’d wondered why it had been so hard to find the bodies, and now that I knew, I wish I didn’t.
I wish we’d never come here.
A muscle works in his jaw. “Anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing his lower back. “If this is too much—”
“No,” he says, then takes a sip of his wine. “No.” It’s firmer this time. “I loved this place, and she loved this place, and one bad memory can’t taint it forever.”
I want to point out that it’s more than a bad memory—it’s the death of his wife, the death of a close friend, but then what he’s actually said crystallizes in my mind, sucking the breath out of my lungs.
One bad memory.
Eddie wasn’t here that night. He can’t remember it.
Okay, no, I’m being stupid. It was a simple turn of phrase, he doesn’t mean it like a literal memory, just that thinking about what happened here is like a bad memory. Right?
But my voice is still brittle when I ask, “Have you been here since it happened?”
He takes a moment before answering me.
“Once.”
It’s all he says, that one word, and then he turns away. “Let’s go out to eat tonight,” he says. “There’s a great restaurant on the other side of the lake.”
And then he’s moving past me into the bedroom, leaving me there in the silence, watching the sun over the water.
21
Dinner is nice. Some fish place with slightly tacky décor and Christmas lights strung up everywhere, but the food is good, and Eddie seems a little looser, back to how he’d been earlier in the day, before we arrived at the house.
There’s no talk of Bea this time, only us, and when we drive back to the house after the sun has set, Eddie reaches over to hold my hand, his fingers stroking my knuckles.
But the closer we get to the house, the more I can feel him tense up, and when we com
e in, we end up just watching TV and drinking more wine. Maybe too much in my case because when I get into bed close to midnight, my head is spinning and I feel too warm, my skin sweaty, so that when Eddie tries to slide an arm around me, I scoot away from him.
I fall into a fitful sleep only to wake up to find myself alone.
For a moment, I lie there, one hand splayed over the spot where Eddie should be, the sheets still warm.
Then there’s a sound from the living room.
It sounds like something scraping against the floor, and my mouth is suddenly dry from more than the wine.
When I hear it again, I get out of bed.
I come out of the bedroom, my eyes burning, my head still fuzzy, and Eddie is there in the living room, crouched down, looking at the floor.
“Eddie?”
His head jerks up. “Hey,” he says and rises to his feet. He’s wearing the boxers he wore to bed, his feet bare on the hardwood, and even though the house is cool now, he seems to be covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
“What are you doing?” I ask, and there’s a beat. A small one, barely noticeable, but I feel it. The moment when he has to shift himself into a sheepish grin, a hand on the back of his neck.
But before he managed it, I saw a flash of irritation. He was pissed.
At me.
For seeing him. For interrupting him.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to wake you, but I just remembered I pulled the key to the boat shed off my key ring earlier, and then I couldn’t remember where I put it, and then I started wondering if I’d dropped it. You know how it is when you’re trying to sleep and one little thing is bothering you?”
I did. Funny how having your future husband disappear in the middle of the night will do that to you.
“Did you find it?” I ask now, feigning more sleepiness than I feel. But I know he’s lying. And that flash of anger in his eyes, that moment when he clearly wished I hadn’t gotten out of bed to find him.
It scared me.
Eddie scared me.
“No,” he says. “It’s probably in the driveway. I’ll check tomorrow.”
I see his eyes drift over me. I’m wearing an oversized T-shirt that hangs to my knees, but we hadn’t had sex when we’d gone to bed, and I catch the interest in his gaze now.
I could lean into that, smile back, give him some cheesy line about having something that might help him sleep.
Instead, I turn away, going back into the bedroom.
And later, when I lie in bed next to him, I keep seeing that look on his face, and wonder if there is even a boathouse key at all.
* * *
“Did you take money out of the account?”
I’m standing on the dock the next afternoon, looking out at the water. It’s basically all I’ve done today. I slept late, and have been reading since I woke up, trying to ignore the way Eddie keeps prowling around the house when he thinks I’m not paying attention.
The sun is hot on my shoulders, but I feel cold as I turn to see him behind me. He’s wearing swim trunks, his gaze hidden behind those mirrored sunglasses, and he’s frowning down at his phone.
Fuck. I’d thought I’d been so careful with John’s money, taking three hundred out of an ATM in the village, getting a hundred dollars back at the grocery store, spreading it out over a few days so he wouldn’t see a big chunk of money coming out. How did he notice it?
He’s still watching me, still waiting.
“Wedding stuff,” I say, waving a hand, even though the truth is I haven’t done shit for this wedding yet besides look at dresses. “You have no idea how many little things you have to put deposits down on.”
Eddie nods, but says, “I actually do have an idea. Had a wedding before, remember?”
That Eddie grin, the one that makes his dimples deepen, but there’s an edge to it now, and I suddenly remember that this is the same grin he gave John that afternoon in the parking lot when I went to get my stuff.
I’ve never had this directed at me before. “Of course,” I reply, giving a flustered little laugh. “You know all about this kind of thing. Anyway, it just seemed easier to use cash. I meant to tell you, but I guess the lake trip distracted me.”
I try to give him a sultry sideways look at that, but he’s already looking back at his phone.
“Gotcha. It’s just that the bank thought it looked suspicious and froze the account.”
My face flushes hot. Here I was, thinking I was being smart and subtle, and instead his bank saw a petty fucking thief.
“Shit,” I say. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he says, waving his free hand. “I’ll just let them know the charges were legit, and they’ll unfreeze it. Just.”
He looks up at me then. “Use the credit card I gave you, okay?”
“Sure, of course,” I say, and he nods at me, heading back inside while I stand there, blushing and sick to my stomach and nearly shaking.
We go out to dinner again that night, and this time I make sure not to drink so much, but it doesn’t matter. Neither of us can relax, and I get the sense Eddie is watching me just as carefully as I’m watching him. And when he suggests we leave early on Sunday, I agree too quickly. This place gives me the creeps.
We leave before nine, and when I get into the passenger seat, I tell myself I’ll never come back here, that we’ll sell this place and buy something new.
“I should get another boat,” Eddie says as we drive away, the house and the lake slipping from view. He sets a hand on my knee, squeezes. “Would you like that?”
Tripp Ingraham stands there in my mind, his basket on his arm, his face twisted in a smirk, and I push the image away, making myself smile at Eddie. “I’d love it.”
22
For the next two weeks, all I can think about is the way Eddie kept creeping around the lake house, and I find myself doing the same thing back in Thornfield Estates. Going down hallways, opening closets, pacing.
Standing in front of closed doors.
For the first time since I started seeing Eddie, I feel lonely.
I imagine bringing it up to Emily or Campbell, power-walking around the neighborhood, all, “Hey, girls, Eddie took me to the lake house where his wife died; weird, right?”
Fuck that.
But people are still talking, I know.
When I do manage to leave the house, even just to go to Roasted for a fancy coffee, I hear two women I don’t even know talking about Bea.
Two older ladies, sitting at a table near a window, one of them with her phone in her hand. “I ordered things from her website every Christmas,” she says to her friend. “She was such a sweetheart.”
I edge closer just as the other one says, “It was the husband, you know it was.”
“Mmmhmmm,” her friend agrees, lowering her voice to whisper, “It always is.”
But which husband? There are two involved here, and one of them is about to be my husband.
Then the lady holding her phone says, “It’s just such a shame she got caught up in it. You know that’s what happened. He probably didn’t want to kill both of them, but they were both there, and…”
“And what else could he do?” her friend says. “It was the only option.”
Like “murdering someone” is the same as saying, “Sure, Pepsi is fine,” when you order Coke.
These fucking people.
I keep listening, trying to discern whether they mean Tripp or Eddie, Bea or Blanche, so that the barista has to call, “Hazelnut soy latte for Jane?” three times before I remember I’m Jane.
I can’t keep doing this.
I need to talk to someone. I need to know what happened out there on that lake.
* * *
Detective Laurent’s card is still in my purse, and I think about calling her, just casually checking in, seeing if there’s anything I can do to help, but even I can’t fake that level of confidence.
No, the less I talk to the police, the better.
So, I decide to talk to someone I dislike nearly as much.
When Tripp accepted my text invitation to lunch, I’d been a little surprised, but now here we sit at the pub in the village, the one I’ve never been to because it always seemed like the kind of place guys like Tripp would frequent.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you to lunch,” I tell him, going for the whole “hesitant college girl” thing. My hair is loose today so I can nervously tuck it behind my ears as I talk, and while I’m not in the jeans and T-shirts I always wore to work at his house, I’m in one of the more casual outfits I picked up after the engagement, a plain beige shirtdress that I know doesn’t particularly flatter me.
Snorting, Tripp picks up his Rueben and dips it in the extra Thousand Island he ordered. “Let me guess,” he says. “Someone told you the rumors about Blanche and Eddie, and now you want to know if it’s true.”
My shock is not feigned. I really am that blinking, stammering girl I’ve pretended to be so often. “What?” I finally say, and he looks up.
Tripp’s gaze sharp. “Wait, it’s not about that?” He frowns a little, licking dressing off his thumb. “Well, shit. Okay, then. So what, you just wanted to hang out?”
I sip my beer to buy some time, and I hate this, feeling like I’m out of control, that this thing I set up is already fucked.
“I wanted to talk to you because I know you’re going through the same thing Eddie is, and I just wanted to see how you were doing, to be honest.”
A little wounded sharpness in my tone, eyes meeting his then sliding back to the table. I can still keep this on track, even if I do want to lunge across the table and shake him until he tells me everything about Eddie and Blanche.
Some of Tripp’s smugness drains away, and he puts his sandwich down, picking up his beer. “Yeah. It was … different when I thought she drowned. Now this, it’s … well, it’s a hell of a thing.”
The Wife Upstairs Page 14
