The Wife Upstairs(42)

I capture his hand before he can pull it back, pressing it closer to my face. His skin feels so warm. Mine is still freezing. “This is a lot, I know,” he says. “I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it. But I want you to know you have nothing to worry about, okay? I’m not going anywhere, and we’re going to get through this.”

He’s speaking in this calm, measured tone, but it doesn’t help. In fact, I think it might actually make it worse, and I step back from him, running a hand through my hair.

“Eddie, your wife was murdered,” I say. “It’s not going to be okay. It can’t be.”

Things like this weren’t supposed to happen here. I was supposed to be safe here, this place was supposed to be safe.

And even though Blanche and Bea had disappeared before I even arrived in Thornfield Estates, there was a part of me that felt like maybe this was my fault. Had I brought this here? This sordidness, this violence? Did it cling to me like some kind of virus, infecting anyone who got close to me?

It was a silly, self-absorbed thought that didn’t make any sense. But what made even less sense was the thought that Bea and Blanche could’ve stumbled into something that got them killed. Who would’ve wanted to hurt either of them? And why?

And why was Eddie so calm?

“I know, it’s fucking awful,” he says on a sigh. “Believe me, I know.” Closing his eyes, he pinches the bridge of his nose. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now. Worrying about it isn’t going to change it.”

Worrying about it isn’t going to change it. I want to tell him that it’s pretty fucking normal to worry about who might have wanted your wife and her best friend dead, but something stops me.

Eddie takes my hands. “Focus on the wedding,” he says. “On the rest of our lives. Not this.”

“It’s just that … I don’t really like the police,” I say, and he frowns in confusion.

“Why not?”

Spoken like a rich white guy, I think to myself.

Instead, I consider my response very carefully. This is another moment where I feel like a bit of truth in the lie might be useful.

“There was a foster family I lived with,” I say. “In Arizona. They weren’t exactly in it to do good work for kids, you know?”

When I glance back over at him, he’s got his arms folded across his chest, watching me with his chin slightly tucked down. His listening face.

“Anyway, when I was sixteen, they thought I was stealing from them, and they called the cops on me.”

I had been stealing from them, but given that they were using most of the money the state gave them on themselves, rather than to take care of me and two other kids in their care, I hadn’t really seen what the big deal was.

“The officer they sent was a friend of my foster dad’s, so they took me down to the station, and it was…”

Even as I talked about it, I remembered sitting there, smelling burnt coffee and Pine-Sol and shaking with so much rage that I could barely talk. But I can’t tell Eddie about the anger. He won’t get that.

“It was scary,” I finally say. “And I guess I never really got over it.”

Not the full story at all, of course. No mention of the real Jane. Of that last night in Phoenix.

But Eddie doesn’t need to know those things.

Making a clucking noise, Eddie uncrosses his arms, pulls me back into them.

“This isn’t supposed to be about me,” I say, tilting my head up to look at him. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says before kissing my forehead. “And don’t worry about any of this. Bea and Blanche are gone. This doesn’t change anything.”

But when he lets me go and turns away, I see his hand at his side, fingers flexing and unflexing.





19





The casseroles start showing up the next day.

First, it’s Caroline McLaren with chicken Divan and a big hug. “Oh god, this is all just so awful,” she says, before tapping the foil covering her glass dish and saying, “And this can’t go through a dishwasher.”

Emily and Campbell are just a couple of hours behind her. They bring three big paper bags full of things from the gourmet store in the village, the place that makes the fancy dinners you can pass off as your own.

As I stack the foil containers in the freezer, Emily and Campbell sit at the island, sipping the iced coffees they’d brought with them, which is kind of a shame because I already feel like drinking today. I know they’re just dying to ask a thousand questions, and I could use the fortification.

“How’s Eddie holding up?” Emily asks when I close the freezer and turn back to them. Outside, it’s started to rain, and I think back to that first day I met Eddie, the gray skies, the slick roads.

“Not great,” I reply. “I think he’s still in shock, really.”

“We all are,” Campbell says, stabbing her straw into her drink. “I mean … it just never occurred to any of us that they’d been murdered. I’ve never known anyone who was murdered.”

For the first time, I notice that her eyes are red, and that Emily isn’t wearing any makeup, and shit.

Shit.

I was so sure they were coming over here to get the dirt, but Bea and Blanche were their friends. Two women they’d loved whose deaths had seemed tragic, but at least accidental. Finding out that someone had killed them had to be awful, and here I am, thinking they just want gossip.