The Wife Upstairs

by Rachel Hawkins

  One of those bowls sits on the table now, filled with lemons, and she reaches out, pulling the bowl close to her before plucking a lemon free and rolling it in her hands as she thinks.

  I pick up my glass now, taking a deep sip, the rich cabernet exploding on my tongue as Bea rolls that lemon back and forth between her palms.

  Finally, she puts it back in the bowl and looks at me.

  “So. Jane.”

  “So. Bea,” I reply in the same tone and she smiles at me. Well, smirks, really, just one corner of her mouth lifting, and I realize I’ve seen that exact expression on Eddie’s face before. Did she pick it up from him or vice versa?

  Spreading her hands, she asks, “What do we do now?”

  I like that word, we. And I like the way Bea looks at me, like she’s actually seeing me, not Jane-the-Dog-Walker, not the sad girl her asshole husband almost tricked into marrying him. The real me.

  Lifting the wine bottle, I top off my glass. Hers is still full, so I set the bottle back on the table with a thump. Outside, a storm rages, rain splattering against the glass, thunder shaking the house every few minutes. There might also be the occasional thump from upstairs, but I can’t tell.

  I think of Eddie, sprawled on the floor of the panic room and wait to feel guilt, or regret, or … something.

  Nothing comes except a queasy sort of relief. I was right. All those suspicions I had, all those bad feelings, they weren’t lying to me. My instincts were as sharp as they’d ever been. And now Bea was safe.

  “We need to call the police,” I say again. “Tell them the whole story, all of it.”

  Bea nods, thinking that over. “The whole story. What do you think that is?”

  Even though my mind has been reeling for the last few hours, ever since Tripp, ever since I found the diary, I’ve gotten good at thinking on my feet over the years and getting past shock as quickly as possible. That’s been a necessary survival skill.

  It serves me well now.

  “I’m guessing Blanche is really dead,” I say to Bea. “But it probably wasn’t an accident like everyone thinks.”

  “They were having an affair,” Bea answers, her voice mild, but a muscle quivers in her jaw, and she briefly clenches her teeth before continuing. “Eddie, of course, thought I’d never find out, but I knew almost from the start. He’s never been as smart as he thinks he is.”

  I remember his story about “transitional seasons” and “raccoons in the attic,” and snort, picking up my wine. The ground underneath my feet is starting to feel more solid now.

  “But then Blanche had an attack of conscience, I guess. We’d been friends since we were kids, and maybe loyalty meant more to her than she thought. Or hell, maybe she just wanted to rub my face in it. Anyways, I knew the reason she’d invited me to the lake that weekend was to tell me.”

  She sips her wine delicately. “And I guess Eddie knew, too. And he’d rather kill Blanche than have me hear the truth.”

  Except that Bea invited Blanche. It was her lake house.

  I frown a little, but don’t say anything, and Bea goes on.

  “Classic Eddie. Always wanted just one more slice of cake, just one extra turn at bat. But he also knew that all of this”—she spreads her hands again, taking in the house, the neighborhood, probably their entire lives—“is mine. Couldn’t have me divorcing him, now, could he?”

  “So why not kill you, too, then?” I am doing a good job, I think, of sounding calm, but now my heart is racing because this isn’t true. None of what she’s saying is true.

  She’s a good liar, I’ll give her that. Definitely better than Eddie. But I recognize this shit, and nothing she’s saying is adding up.

  Leaning forward, Bea folds her arms on the table, the sleeves of her pajama top riding up to reveal thin, elegant wrists. “I could never quite figure that out,” she admits. “And trust me, I’ve had some time to mull it over. I think—”

  “He loved you,” I say, the words sour in my mouth. Because even though the story Bea is telling me doesn’t make sense, somehow this explanation … does.

  He loved her. Whatever happened here was fucked up and twisted, and Eddie could be ruthless. I remembered him with John. If he’d thought Bea was in his way, really in his way, I didn’t doubt he could’ve killed her.

  Instead, she was still here.

  Bea looks at me, and for just a second, her confidence falters. She didn’t expect that answer.

  I watch her look down at the table, and then, after a beat, she lifts her head, shrugs. “Maybe. In any case, that’s the story I can tell. He murdered Blanche, faked my death, then kept me locked away in this house like something out of a goddamn gothic novel while he seduced the naïve young woman who walked his dog.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Thoughts?”

  I take a long, deliberate sip of wine. “I guess that’s a version of the truth.”

  “But you don’t like it.”

  I don’t. I don’t want to be the tragic ingenue, the idiot who got duped by a handsome face and a huge bank account.

  A victim.

  I sit back in my chair, looking at Bea. Maybe it’s the wine, but she’s not looking quite so pale now, and even with her messy hair and pajamas, she looks almost … elegant.

  “Why aren’t you more freaked out?” I ask her now, and she meets my eyes across the table. She has pretty eyes, big and dark, her lashes thick without mascara.

  “Why aren’t you?” she counters. “You just found out the man you love is a murderer and his dead wife is alive. A little screaming and crying wouldn’t be unheard of.”

  I don’t answer.

  “Do you know what I think?” she continues. “I think there’s a reason Eddie fell for both of us. No”—she holds up a hand, cutting off my attempt to demur—“he genuinely cares for you. He wouldn’t have risked bringing you into his life if he didn’t. But I think we’re a lot alike, Jane.”

  “That’s not my real name,” I say, before I can stop myself, and she smiles.

  “And Bea isn’t mine.”

  “I knew that,” I tell her. “Tripp.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Fucking Tripp.”

  I almost laugh at that because I know how she feels. But there’s still something so … wrong about all this. She’s too calm, too collected, too in control for a woman who just went through the most harrowing thing I can think of.

  Then she leans forward and says, “Eddie said you were nothing like me. I don’t think that’s the case.”

  I look at her, sitting there like a queen, lying through her teeth, and I know they’re the only truthful words she’s uttered.

  PART XII

  BEA

  36

  He loved you.

  I don’t know why hearing those words out of Jane’s mouth hit me like they do. Maybe because Jane, of all people, wouldn’t want that to be true.

  But Jane is a good liar.

  I can tell, looking at her. I can also tell that she isn’t at all the girl Eddie thought she was. A girl who would smash his face in with a silver pineapple, then sit here with his wife—who she’d been told was dead at the bottom of a lake—drinking wine.

  I like this girl, so much that I almost feel sorry for Eddie that he couldn’t see this side of her.

  He might have liked it, too.

  Or maybe he did. Maybe, as much as he hated to admit it, Eddie knew she was like me.

  Knew that it was what had drawn him to her in the first place.

  She takes another sip of her wine. She is petite, pale, her hair a color between blond and brown that isn’t particularly flattering, and the clothes she’s wearing look like muted imitations of the other women in this neighborhood. Maybe that was enough to fool Eddie, but he should have looked into her eyes.

  Her eyes give it all away.

  For example, she’s nodding at me, sitting there calmly, but her eyes are almost fever-bright, and I’m sure she’s not buying my story of what “really happened.�
� The affair, Eddie killing Blanche, locking me away, framing Tripp. I’d counted on her thinking Eddie is smarter than he is, but that might have been a miscalculation.

  In fact, looking at her now, she reminds me of Blanche. After the funeral.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” Bea hugs Blanche tightly, feeling just how thin she is in her black dress. Bea is not wearing black, going instead for the dark plum that will be a signature shade in this year’s autumn line at Southern Manors.

  Blanche hugs her back, says how sorry she is over and over again, but as she leaves, Bea thinks she catches something in Blanche’s eyes. She’s not suspicious, not exactly. Blanche would never make that big of a leap. But Bea can tell there’s something about all of this that isn’t sitting quite right for Blanche, even if she’d never say it, never even let herself think it.

  Later that night, Bea sits in the wingback chair she’d had shipped from Mama’s house, the only thing she’d wanted out of her godawful childhood home, and finishes off the bottle of wine. It helps her to feel numb and fuzzy, helps to block out the picture of Mama’s face right before she fell.

  She had been high, that part was true, completely zonked out on whatever the current flavor of escape was. Klonopin, probably. Bea had watched her make her way down the hall like a woman much older than fifty-three, her footsteps slow and shuffling.

  She had told Mama to get rid of that hall runner right there by the stairs, but of course she hadn’t listened. Still, she’d only stumbled rather than fallen outright. She would’ve been fine.

  Bea can’t even say for sure why she pushed her. Only that she was there, and Mama tripped, and as she did, Bea’s whole heart seemed to rise up joyfully in her chest, and it had felt like the most natural thing in the world to just reach out and … shove.

  Her face didn’t register fear or horror or shock. As always, Mama just looked vaguely confused as she fell.

  It occurred to Bea at the funeral that she was lucky. If she’d just broken an ankle or fractured a collarbone, Bea would’ve had a lot of explaining to do. But she hit her head hard at the edge of the filial there at the bottom. Bea had heard the crack, seen the blood.

  She didn’t die right away, but when Bea had looked down at her, she’d seen that the injury was severe enough, the blood already pooling around her head.

  Still, if she had called 911 right then instead of the next morning, if she’d pretended to hear a thud in the middle of the night rather than waking up to find her mother at the bottom of the stairs, Mama probably would’ve made it. It was the bleeding that did it in the end, after all.

  Lying there all night alone at the foot of the stairs, blood gushing then slowly leaking onto the hardwood.

  Bea had waited for months to feel bad about it, but in the end, all she’d felt was free.

  And she’d put it out of her head, mostly, for years. Even Eddie didn’t know the truth about how her Mama had died. She’d given him a vague story about Mama’s drinking, and since Eddie was vague enough about his own past, he’d let it slide. It hadn’t come up again until just a few months before Blanche died.

  The two of them, having dinner at that same Mexican restaurant they’d gone to after Bea had met Eddie.

  Things had been tense—this is after Bea catches Eddie and Blanche at lunch, after she fucks Tripp in the bathroom, not that Blanche knows about that—but Bea is still unprepared for how angry Blanche seems that night.

  “He doesn’t know, does he?” she asks, and Bea stares at her until she’s the first to look away. “Eddie. That all your shit is fake. That this whole”—she waves one arm in the air—“Southern Manors thing was basically stolen from me.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe the world doesn’t revolve around you, Blanche, but I promise that’s the case,” Bea replies, her voice calm even as her pulse spikes.

  Blanche takes another drink, sullen now. Was she always like this, or is this what being married to Tripp has done? Bea wonders.

  She even looks like him now, her hair the same sandy shade as his, cut nearly as short. But her body is rail thin, unlike his, bangles jangling on her wrist as she plucks a chip from the basket. Bea can’t help but inspect those bracelets, looking for something familiar, but no, not a one of them is from Southern Manors. They’re all Kate Spade, and she wrinkles her nose.

  Blanche sees. “What?” She’s not eating the chip she’s holding, just picking small pieces off of it, and Bea reaches over to wipe away the pile of crumbs.

  “If you need bangles, we just did a new line,” Bea says. “I’ll send some over to you.”

  Blanche’s lips part slightly, eyes wide, and after a moment, she gives a startled laugh that’s too loud. “Are you fucking serious?” she asks, and Bea sees heads turn in their direction.

  Frowning, she leans closer. “Lower your voice, please.”

  “No,” she says, letting the remnant of her chip drop to the table. “No, I seriously want to know if you’re pissed because I’m not wearing your stupid jewelry. I want to know if that’s what’s happening right now, Bertha.”

  “Mature,” Bea replies, and Blanche hoots with laughter, sitting back in the booth and crossing her arms over her chest.

  “I’m asking you if your husband knows that everything about you is a lie. You’re bitching about my bracelets, and I’m the immature one, okay.”

  Bea’s hand shoots out, grabbing her wrist, the one covered in those goddamn bangles, and she squeezes so hard Blanche yelps.

  “You’re drunk,” Bea tells her through clenched teeth. “And you’re embarrassing yourself. Maybe leave that to Tripp.”

  Dinner ends early that night, and it’s only two days later that Eddie is asking why Bea never told him her mother died in a fall.

  Which is when Bea realizes there is no affair, when she realizes that even if Blanche had wanted to hurt her, Eddie did not. And because Blanche did not get what she wanted for once in her life, she’s now acting out, firing the only ammunition she has left.

  Bea shows up with coffee the next morning and breakfast pastries. She even gets Blanche one of those gluten-free abominations she likes.

  “Peace offering,” she says, and she can tell that a part of Blanche wants to believe it, that she wants things to go back to the way they were.

  The lake trip is another peace offering. Another olive branch.

  And Blanche grabs it with both hands.

  Jane sits there, twirling the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, and I watch her mind work. I like not knowing exactly what she’ll do, and it is oddly satisfying to see how shallow her loyalty to Eddie really is.

  I hadn’t lost him after all.

  It surprises me how much that thrills me.

  But maybe it shouldn’t. Some of the things in the diary were for show, to cover my tracks—the majority of it, really—but the sex? The way I felt about Eddie?

  That had all been real.

  But then Jane sits up a little straighter and says, “We should call the police. Tell them what Eddie did. Let him pay the consequences.”

  Is she playing with me, or is that what she really wants? The ambiguity that I’d enjoyed so much just a moment ago is now irritating, and I wave one hand, finishing my wine.

  “Later,” I say. “Let me enjoy a few hours of being out of that room before I’m stuck answering a bunch of questions.”

  Looking around, I add, “You really didn’t do anything new with the place, did you?”

  Jane doesn’t answer that, but leans closer, reaching for my hand. “Bea,” she says. “We can’t just sit here. Eddie murdered Blanche. He could’ve murdered you. We have to—”

  “We don’t have to do anything,” I reply, yanking my hand out from under hers and standing up.

  “The stressful part is always making the decision,” Bea used to remind her employees. “Once you’ve made it, it’s done, and you feel better.”

  That’s how it was with Blanche.

  Once Bea has decided
that she has to die, it’s easy enough, and the rest of the steps fall into place. She invites Blanche to the lake house, then texts Tripp at the last minute. She’s going to need a fall guy this time, after all. One person dying in an accident while she’s alone with them is one thing. Two would be harder to pull off.

  So, Tripp.

  Blanche is not happy when he shows up.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a girls’ trip,” she says, and Tripp settles on the couch next to her, already drinking a vodka tonic.

  “And I am a Girls’ Tripp,” he jokes, which is so terrible that for a moment Bea thinks maybe she should kill him, too.

  But no, she needs Tripp to play a part in all this.

  He does it well, too. Blanche is so irritated he’s there that she drinks even more than Bea had hoped, glass after glass of wine, then the vodka Tripp is drinking.

  And when Tripp passes out, as Bea had known he would thanks to the Xanax she’d put in his drink, Blanche actually laughs with Bea, the two of them dragging his limp body into the master bedroom, Bea pretending to be just as drunk as Blanche.

  That’s the thing she remembers the most about it all later. Blanche was happy that night. It had mostly been the booze, but still, Bea had given her that.

  One last Girls’ Night Out.

  When they get onto the pontoon boat Bea bought for Eddie last year, Blanche is so unsteady, Bea has to guide her to her seat.

  More drinks.

  The sky overhead is dark, too, a new moon that night, nothing to illuminate what happens.