The Wife Upstairs

by Rachel Hawkins

  He drains nearly half his beer, setting it back on the table with a not-so-discreet burp into his napkin. “How is Eddie?”

  Tripp’s stare is pointed, and I see now that he has his own reasons for accepting this invitation, and they have nothing to do with being neighborly.

  “I can’t really speak for him,” I reply, careful now, pushing my fries around my plate. “But I know he offered to cooperate with the police. Anything he can do to be helpful.”

  Which is true. Eddie’s gone down to the station twice now to answer questions, questions he’d never told me the specifics of, and I wonder if that’s what Tripp is fishing for. Wondering how much Eddie is saying, what is he saying, and not for the first time, I wonder if this was more dangerous than I’d thought, arranging to meet him. And not just because someone might see us.

  Drumming his fingers on the table, he nods, but his gaze is far off now, and we sit there in an excruciating silence for too long before he says, “There wasn’t anything. Between Blanche and Eddie. It was just your usual neighborhood bullshit. Eddie’s company was doing some work on our house, I was busy, so I let Blanche handle it. They hung out a lot, but Blanche and I were good. And honestly, even if I thought she’d cheat on me, she never would’ve fucked over Bea.”

  He grimaces before adding, “Although Bea never deserved that loyalty if you ask me, but…”

  His words just hang there, and I push, the littlest bit.

  “You said that Bea took a lot of … inspiration from Blanche.”

  “Basically took her whole life, yeah, but they both ended up in the same place, didn’t they? Bottom of Smith fucking Lake.”

  Tipping his head back, he sighs. “Anyways, if Emily Clark or Campbell or any of those other bitches try to tell you Eddie and Blanche were sleeping together, it was just gossip. Maybe even wishful thinking, since it’s not like I was ever all that popular with that crowd.”

  Whatever I was going to get out of Tripp is gone now, I can tell. He’s slipping back into his bitterness, and when he orders another beer, I make a big show of checking my watch. “Oh, shit, I have a hair appointment,” I say.

  “Sure you do.” His tone is sarcastic but he doesn’t press further, and when I try to leave a twenty to cover my lunch, he waves it off.

  Back at the house, I go back to my computer, pulling up Emily’s Facebook page, looking for any pictures of Blanche with Eddie, but there’s nothing. Not on Campbell’s, either, and while Blanche is clearly tagged in a few pictures, it’s a dead link to her page, which I assume someone in her family took down.

  I’ve been so fixated on Bea, it never occurred to me to look that closely at Blanche.

  Now it seems that was a mistake.

  * * *

  Eddie doesn’t get home until late. I’m in the bathtub, bubbles up to my chin, but I hear him long before I see him—the front door unlocking, his footsteps down the hall, the door to the bedroom opening.

  And then he’s there, leaning against the door, watching me.

  “Good day?” I ask, but instead of answering, he asks a question of his own.

  “Why did you have lunch with Tripp Ingraham today?”

  Surprised, I sit up a little, water sloshing. I fucking love this tub, so deep and long I could lie down flat if I wanted to, but right now, I wish I weren’t in it, wish I weren’t naked and vulnerable. Usually, the size difference between us is kind of a turn-on. Eddie is sleek, but brawny—he’s got real muscle, the kind you get from actually working, not just going to the gym. He makes me feel even smaller and more delicate than I am.

  But for the first time, it occurs to me how easy it would be for him to hurt me. To overpower me.

  “How did you know about that?” I ask, and I know immediately it’s the wrong response. Eddie isn’t scowling, but he’s doing that thing again, that forced casualness, like this conversation doesn’t really mean that much to him even though he is practically vibrating with tension.

  “I mean, it’s a small town, and trust me, people were dying to tell me they saw you out with him. Thanks for that, by the way. Really fun texts to get.”

  Pissed off, I stand up, reaching for the towel hanging next to the bath. “Do you honestly think I have any interest in Tripp Ingraham?”

  Sighing, Eddie turns away. “No,” he acknowledges, “but you have to think about how things look. Especially now.”

  He moves back into the bedroom and I stand there, still naked, still holding the towel, dripping onto the marble floor and looking after him.

  I have worked so hard to present a certain version of myself to Eddie, to everyone, really, but in that moment, it snaps.

  “How it looks?” I repeat, following him into the bedroom, wrapping the towel around myself. “No, Eddie, I didn’t think about how it looks.”

  “Of course, you didn’t. Let me guess, you also didn’t think about how it might look for my fiancée to be handing over wads of money to the guy she used to live with.”

  I am frozen standing there in my towel, my stomach clenching. I’m too rattled to even try to lie. “What?”

  Eddie is looking at me now with an expression I’ve never seen before. “Did you think I didn’t know, Jane? Did it never occur to you to come to me?”

  How? How the fuck could he have known? That first time, the money I gave him was mine. The second, yes, that was Eddie’s, but I was careful. I was so careful.

  “He called me, too,” Eddie says, his hands on his hips, his head tilted down. “Some bullshit story about people in Phoenix looking for you.”

  This can’t be happening; he can’t know. I can’t breathe.

  “Did he tell you why?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper, and Eddie looks up at me again, his eyes hard.

  “I didn’t ask. I told him to go fuck himself, which is what you should’ve done the second he called.”

  He steps closer, so close I can practically feel the heat radiating off of him. I’m still standing there, not even wrapped in my towel, just holding it in front of me, shivering with more than just cold.

  “That’s what you do when people threaten you, Jane. When they try to fuck you over. You don’t give in to them, you don’t give them what they want, you remind them that you’re the one in charge, you’re making the rules.”

  Eddie reaches out then, taking me by the shoulders, and for the first time since I met him, I stiffen at his touch.

  He feels it, and the corners of his mouth twist down, but he doesn’t let me go. “I don’t give a fuck why someone in Phoenix is trying to find you. What I care about is that when he came to you with this shit, you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about it.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I just stand there, looking down, wanting him to let me go, wanting him to leave, and finally, he sighs and drops his hands.

  “You know what?” he says, stepping back and reaching into his jacket pocket. “Here.”

  He pulls out a slip of paper and forces it into my hand.

  My damp skin nearly smudges the ink, but I see it’s a phone number, one with a Phoenix area code. “This is the number of whoever was calling John.”

  I startle, blinking down at the paper. “He gave this to you?”

  Eddie doesn’t answer that, saying, “The point is, Jane, I’ve had this number in my wallet for the past month. Before I asked you to marry me. And I never called it. Not once. You know why?”

  I shake my head even though I know what he’s about to say.

  “Because I trust you, Janie.”

  He turns, heading for the bedroom door, and then stops, looking at me. “It would be nice to get the same in return.”

  With that, he’s gone, and I sink to the edge of the tub, my knees shaking.

  But it’s not because of the number I hold in my hand. It’s not knowing that Eddie’s had it all this time, that at any point over the past month, he could’ve called it and learned … everything.

  It’s because of what he said. How he looked.
/>
  That’s what you do when people threaten you, Jane.

  His eyes had been so cold. His tone so flat.

  I’d looked him in the eyes and hadn’t recognized him at all.

  I can hear those women at the coffee shop again. It’s always the husband.

  And for the first time, I honestly believe that it could’ve been.

  Not Tripp, sitting across from me at lunch. He was a little bit drunk, a little bit belligerent. He’s also clumsy, and unfocused.

  He’s nothing like Eddie.

  23

  “Girl, I swear you’ve gotten even skinnier!”

  Emily is smiling as she says it to me, and I think it’s a compliment, but I can barely make myself smile back at her. We’re standing in the open courtyard of the First Methodist Church, people milling all around us, and I’m too aware of both how hot the evening is—even though the sun is going down—and also how wrong my outfit is.

  In my defense, I had no idea what the fuck one was supposed to wear to a silent auction at a church on a Wednesday night, and black had seemed a safe choice—sophisticated, respectable. But all the other women are in bright colors, flower prints, that kind of thing, and I feel like a crow standing around a bunch of flamingos.

  Eddie must’ve known it was wrong, but he hadn’t said anything, and I fight the urge to glare at his back as he stands there, talking to the reverend.

  Now I smooth my dress over my thighs and say, “Pre-wedding jitters,” to Emily, who nods and pats my arm sympathetically.

  “You’re lucky. When I got married to Saul, my stress response was to eat everything in sight.”

  Her husband is over near a giant azalea bush, chatting with Campbell’s husband, Mark, and Caroline’s husband, Matt.

  I realize that I hardly ever see Eddie with those guys, and that he never mentions them. Did the neighborhood pull back from him after everything with Bea and Blanche, or does he find these people as insufferable as I do?

  Okay, they’re not all bad. Emily is actually nice, steering me around groups of people, introducing me as Eddie’s fiancée and never once mentioning the dog-walker thing.

  It almost makes me feel sorry for all the shit I stole from her.

  The auction items are inside the church’s Family Life Center, but despite the heat, everyone is congregating out here in the courtyard, probably because it’s so pretty and lush.

  Maybe we should get married here instead of eloping after all.

  But then thinking about the wedding is too hard when Eddie is barely speaking to me.

  It’s been two nights since our fight in the bathroom, two nights of Eddie sleeping god knows where in the house, of him leaving for work early and coming home late.

  The worst part is that I’ve been relieved he’s been gone so much. It’s easier with him not there, without looking at him every second, wondering if that flash of hardness, coldness will come back.

  The number he gave me is still in my purse. I’ll never call it, but I want it there as a reminder of how badly I almost fucked up, how little I even really know about Eddie.

  But here we are at the church’s little party, mingling in a garden, drinking lemonade because even though the Methodists aren’t the Baptists, no one wants an open bar in front of Jesus, I guess, and I’m just about to get another glass of the lemonade when Caroline approaches us, her blond hair swinging over her shoulders.

  “Holy shit,” she breathes, surprising me because I’ve never heard her curse before and also, Jesus. I’m going to hell for all kinds of things, but even I manage to keep it PG at church.

  She clutches my arm, her nails digging in. “Tripp Ingraham has been arrested.”

  That last word is hissed in a whisper, but it doesn’t matter. I see other people looking over at us, and Emily already has her phone out, frowning at the screen.

  Eddie is still talking to the reverend, and my insides feel frozen, my feet locked to the soft grass beneath my too-tight heels.

  “What?” I finally say, and she glances behind her at her husband.

  “Matt just got a text from his friend in the DA’s office. Apparently, they found something when they did the autopsy? Or something in the house? I don’t know, but I texted Alison who lives on his street, and she said a cop car full-on showed up and took him away in handcuffs.”

  Now Emily is glancing over at me, and I can see little groups start to form, practically watch as the gossip moves through the gathering, all thoughts of fundraising replaced with this, the biggest story to hit this neighborhood since Bea and Blanche died, I’d guess.

  When I turn toward Eddie, he’s staring at me. And even across the courtyard I can see it in his eyes.

  He’s relieved.

  * * *

  The house is dark and quiet as we walk in, both of us absorbed in our own thoughts.

  When I tell Eddie I’m going to take a shower, I wait for some of this old spark to come back, for a sly grin and an offer to join me.

  Instead, I get a distracted nod as he keeps scrolling through his phone. He’d barely spoken on the car ride home, just confirming that yes, he’d heard the same thing, that they’d arrested Tripp; yes, it had something to do with the night Bea and Blanche died; no, he didn’t know what the actual charges were.

  In the master bathroom, I step out of my dress, letting it pool there on the marble floor, not bothering to hang it up. I probably won’t wear it again anyway.

  The water is scalding hot, which feels good after the weird chill I experienced on the way home, and I when I step back out of the shower, the room is filled with steam.

  Wrapping myself in a towel, I walk to the mirror, wiping the steam off with one hand.

  My face stares back, plain and starkly pale, my hair wet and shoved back from my face.

  You’re fine, I tell myself. You’re safe. It was Tripp the whole time because of course it was.

  But that doesn’t really make me feel better, and I’m frowning at my reflection when Eddie steps into the bathroom.

  He shucks his clothes easily, and I can’t help but watch him in the mirror. He’s so beautiful, so perfectly male, but I feel no surge of desire when I look at him, and he’s not meeting my eyes.

  I take my robe from the hook near the door, wrapping it around me as he showers, and then I sit on the little tufted bench in front of the vanity, combing out my hair for much longer than I need to.

  I’m waiting.

  Finally, the water shuts off and Eddie steps out, wrapping a towel around his waist as I fumble in a drawer for the expensive moisturizer I bought the other day.

  “The other night. When we argued. Were you scared of me?”

  I sit very still there at the bathroom counter, watching him in the mirror. He’s got a towel around his waist, water still drying on his skin, his hair slicked back from his face, and there’s something about the way he’s looking at me that I don’t like.

  “Did you think it was me? That I killed them?”

  I blink, trying to recalibrate, trying to get this back on track. “The last few weeks have just been a lot,” I finally say, adding a little tremor to my voice for effect. “Everything was finally so perfect, and we were so happy, and then…”

  “And then you thought I murdered my wife and her best friend,” he says, relentless, and my head snaps up.

  This isn’t how this is supposed to go. He’s supposed to feel sorry for snapping at me, for even suggesting I thought such a thing.

  But he’s still watching me, arms folded over his chest, and since the lowered lashes and tremulous voice aren’t working, I turn and meet his eyes.

  “Yes,” I say, and honestly, it feels kind of good to tell the truth. “I did. Or I thought you may have done it.”

  He blows out a long breath, tilting his head up to look at the ceiling before saying, “Well. At least you’re honest.”

  I step forward, curling my hands around his wrists and pulling his arms down. “But I was wrong,” I insist. “Obvi
ously. And I’m sorry, Eddie. I’m so sorry.”

  And the thing is, I am sorry. I’m sorry I ever thought he might have been involved with Bea’s and Blanche’s death, and not just because I almost fucked up everything.

  I’m the one lying to him, I’m the one who’s stolen from him, from everyone I’ve grown close to. I’m the one who has pretended to be something she’s not.

  I’m the one who has actually done something terrible.

  I press my forehead to his damp chest, breathing in the scent of his soap. “I’m sorry,” I say again, and after a long beat, I feel his hand rest gently on the back of my head. “And you were right, the other night. I should’ve trusted you about John, I should’ve come to you—”

  “It’s alright,” he murmurs, but I’m afraid that it’s not. That I’ve let all my suspicions and distrust ruin this perfect thing I’ve found, this new life.

  “Do you think it really was Tripp?” I ask him, still standing there in his arms, wanting him to tell me that yes, he does. That it’s that awful, but that simple, and there’s an easy person to blame.

  “I don’t want to think he could’ve done it,” he says. “How many times did I have that guy in my house, or played golf with him, for fuck’s sake.” Another sigh, one I can feel as well as hear. “But he and Blanche were having issues. God knows he drinks like a goddamn fish. If he was drunk and they fought…”

  He lets it trail off. I remember now how uneasy Tripp has made me feel. I’d never thought of it as anything truly threatening, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t. Who could ever really know what someone was capable of?

  “The police are doing their job,” Eddie says, his hand still stroking the back of my head. “If they think it was Tripp, I’m sure they’ve got good reasons.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. “Eddie…”

  But he dips his head then and kisses me. “Shh,” he murmurs against my lips when we part. “It doesn’t matter, Janie.”

  He kisses me again, harder this time, and I wrap my arms tightly around his waist, holding on not just to him but to this moment, to this chance I nearly threw away.