The Wife Upstairs(41)

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.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and I make myself smile up at him as I wrap my arms around his waist.

“Yeah, fine,” I say, even though I definitely am not. “What did she want?”

He leans in close, resting his chin on the top of my head. “To talk about Blanche. And Bea.”

“Did they find her?” My voice is quiet. It’s such a gruesome question, a gruesome image, them finding Bea after she’s been in the water this long …

“Not Bea,” Eddie replies, his voice rough. “Blanche, though. They found Blanche.”

“Jesus,” I mutter, trying hard not to think about what exactly they found as I pull out of his embrace.

His skin has gone a sort of grayish-green, and a muscle keeps ticking in his jaw. He looks more like the Eddie I first met than he has in ages, and my stomach lurches.

“Is there more?”

“She was … there was a fracture on her skull. Like she’d been hit by something. Or someone.”

He turns away from me, then, rubbing the back of his neck, and I stand there, absorbing the news, peeling through the shock and fear to see what this means.

Now I’m not just nauseous, I’m cold. Numb, almost as I reach up and press my fingers to my lips. “She was murdered?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.

Eddie still has his back to me, his shoulders tense, and I can’t help but add, “And Bea?”

“Considered a homicide, now, too,” he says. “That’s what they wanted to talk to me about. To tell me they’re now investigating her disappearance as a murder.”

I feel like my vision is graying out, and my knees are suddenly weak, watery. “Oh, god. Eddie.”

I don’t know what else to say.

We were finally starting to make peace with Bea’s ghost. We’re engaged, for fuck’s sake. Talking about a wedding. And it’s one thing to have lost your wife in a tragic accident. But to find out someone did it on purpose? That’s a nightmare.

And then another thought occurs to me. “They don’t…” I don’t even want to finish the sentence. Don’t want it hanging there in the air between us.

“Think I did it?” he asks, turning around. He’s still pale, but his expression isn’t quite so intense now. “No, they just wanted to let me know that things had changed. They’ll have questions, of course, but I got the impression they were looking at me as the grieving widower, not a suspect.”

The more he talks, the more that the normal Eddie, the Eddie I’m used to, starts bleeding back into his face and voice. I can practically see his other persona sliding on like a shell. Or a mask.

He looks at me then, frowning. “Christ, Jane, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry?” I step toward him, taking his hands. “Why would you say that?”

Sighing, he pulls me into his arms. “Because this is such a fucking mess, and I don’t want you to have to deal with this. I don’t want you … I don’t know, sitting in some little room, answering questions about something that happened before you even fucking knew me.”

I thought I’d felt as scared as I could, but now a new horror rushes over me, making my mouth dry as I look up at him. “You think they’ll want to question me?”

“They mentioned it,” he says, distracted. “Just that you should come along when I go in.”

I’ve spent the past five years avoiding attention, avoiding questions, definitely avoiding cops. Fuck, if they look into Eddie over this, they’ll look into me. His fiancée. The girl he got engaged to less than a year after his wife disappeared.

John, the call from Phoenix, now this. I can practically feel the teeth of a trap starting to snap closed, and I close my eyes, pressing my forehead against Eddie’s chest and taking deep breaths.

Eddie’s hand goes to the back of my neck, rubbing. “Don’t let it worry you, though.”

“It doesn’t,” I automatically reply, but he gives a rueful smile, reaching out to cup my cheek.

“Janie, you’re pale as a ghost.”