The Wife Upstairs(4)

“How do you take it?” he asks me, his back still to me, and I perch on the edge of a stool, Bear’s leash in one hand.

“Black,” I reply. The truth is, I don’t really like black coffee, but it’s always the cheapest thing at any café, so it’s become a habit.

“I see, you’re tough, then.”

Eddie smiles at me over his shoulder, his eyes very blue, and my face goes hot again.

Married, I remind myself.

But when he hands me the cup of coffee, I glance down at his hands. Fine-fingered, manicured, a smattering of dark hair over his knuckles.

And no ring.

“So, tell me about yourself, Jane the Dog-Walker,” he says, turning back to make his own cup of coffee. “Are you from Birmingham?”

“No.” I blow across the surface of my coffee cup. “I was born in Arizona, lived mostly out West until last year.”

True, but vague: my preferred way of explaining my background to new people.

Eddie takes his mug from the Keurig machine and faces me, leaning back against the counter. “How’d you end up down here?”

“I was looking for something new, and a friend from school lived here, offered me a room.”

There’s a trick to spinning lies. You have to embed the truth in there, just a glimmer of it. That’s the part that will catch people, and it’s what makes the rest of your lies sound like truth, too.

I was looking for something new. I was. Because I was running from something old.

A friend from school. A guy I met in a group home after my last foster situation ended badly.

Nodding, Eddie takes a sip of his coffee, and I fight the urge to squirm in my seat, to ask why the hell he brought me into his house to make small talk, where his wife is, why he isn’t at work or wherever it was he was going in such a hurry this morning.

But he seems happy to just sit there in the kitchen with me, drinking coffee and looking at me like I’m a puzzle he’s working out.

I can’t help but feel like I cracked my head on the road this morning and dropped into some alternate universe where rich, handsome men seem interested in me.

“What about you?” I ask. “Are you from Birmingham originally?”

“My wife was.”

Was. I hold that word, that tense, in my mind.

“She, uh. She grew up around here, wanted to move back,” he goes on, and his fingers are drumming on the side of his mug, that same gesture I’d noticed earlier in the street. Then he puts the mug down and leans on the island in front of him, arms crossed.

“You’re staying in Mountain Brook?” he asks, and I raise my eyebrows, making him laugh. “Is this creepy? The third-degree thing?”

It maybe should be, but instead, it’s nice to have someone actually interested in me—not the fake, feigned interest of Mrs. Reed, but something genuine, real. Plus, I’d rather sit here talking and drinking coffee in his gorgeous kitchen than walk Bear in the rain.

I let my fingers trace a vein in the marble as I say, “Only mildly creepy. Tier One on the creep meter.”

He smiles again, and something tingles at the base of my spine. “I can deal with Tier One.”

I smile back, relaxing a little. “And no, I’m not staying in Mountain Brook. My friend’s place is in Center Point.”

Center Point is an ugly little town about twenty miles away, once part of the suburban sprawl of Birmingham, now a haven of strip malls and fast-food joints. There are still nice neighborhoods tucked in and around it, but on the whole, it feels like another planet compared to Thornfield Estates, and Eddie’s expression reflects that.

“Shit,” he says, straightening up. “That’s quite a hike from here.”

It is, and my crappy car probably can’t take it much longer, but it’s worth it to me, leaving behind all that ugliness for this place with its manicured lawns and brick houses. I knew it would’ve been smarter to find work in Center Point, like John, but as soon as I’d moved in, the first thing I’d done was look for ways to escape.

So, I didn’t mind the drive.

“There wasn’t much work in Center Point,” I tell him, which is another half-truth. There were jobs—cashier at the Dollar General, checkout girl at Winn-Dixie, cleaner at the “Fit Not Fat!” gym that used to be a Blockbuster Video—but they weren’t jobs that I wanted. That would get me any closer to the type of person I wanted to be. “And my friend knew someone who worked at Roasted in the village, and that’s where I met Mrs. Reed. Well, I met Bear first, I guess.”

At the sound of his name, the dog wags his tail, thumping against the base of my stool, a reminder that I should probably get going. But Eddie is still watching me, and I can’t seem to stop talking. “He was tied up outside, and I brought him some water. Apparently, I was the first person he hadn’t growled at since Mrs. Reed got him, and she asked if I ever did any dog-walking, so now…”

“So now here you are,” Eddie finishes up, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. The movement is elegant despite his wrinkled clothes, and I like how his lips are caught somewhere halfway between a smile and a smirk.

“Here I am,” I say, and for a moment, he holds my gaze. His eyes are very blue, but they’re rimmed in red, and his stubble is dark against his pale skin.