The Wife Upstairs(45)

“This place was Bea’s wedding present to me,” he says. “So, she let me decorate.” Another smile, wry this time. “Which means I said yes to everything she picked out.”

So, Bea’s stamp is still here—it’s just her version of what she thought Eddie would like. Should like.

I move into the living room, seeing it through Bea’s eyes, imagining how she saw Eddie. Even though this is on a lake, not the ocean, there’s a whole coastal theme happening. Paintings of schooners, decorations made with heavy rope, even an old Chelsea Clock on the wall.

“I worked on sailboats when I was younger, up north. Charter boats in Bar Harbor, that kind of thing,” he says, nodding at the seascape over the fireplace. “I guess Bea wanted to remind me of it.”

“Because you liked it or because you hated it?”

The question is out before I realize what a stupid thing it is to ask, how much it reveals.

His head jerks back slightly, like the question was an actual physical blow, and he narrows his eyes. “What does that mean?” he asks, and I feel my face go hot as I shrug, nudging the edge of an area rug with my toe.

“You’ve just never mentioned that to me before, so I thought … maybe you were trying to forget it? Your past. Maybe this reminder of it might not have actually been a nice thing to do.”

“You think Bea was that kind of bitch?” he asks, and god, I have royally fucked this up.

“Of course not,” I say, but to my surprise, he just laughs, shaking his head.

“I can’t blame you for it. I imagine you saw some real cunty stuff when you worked in the neighborhood.”

It’s a relief, both that he doesn’t think my question was that weird, and also that he gets me. I may not always be honest with Eddie, but he still sees these parts of me sometimes, and I like it.

It makes me think that even though I’ve been playing a certain role, he might have picked me—the real me—anyway.

“It was still a dumb thing to say,” I tell him now, sliding closer to him. Over his shoulder is a glass door leading out to a screened-in porch; beyond that is a sloping green lawn, a narrow pier, and the dark water of the lake. This time of the afternoon, the sun sends little sparks of gold dancing across its surface.

It’s hard to believe that this pretty, sparkly water took Bea’s life. And Blanche’s. And it’s even harder to believe Eddie would want to be anywhere near it again. How can we sit out there tonight and drink wine and not think about it?

But Eddie just gives my ass a pat, propelling me slightly in the direction of the hallway off the living room. “Go ahead and get settled, and I’ll unpack the groceries.”

The master bedroom is nowhere near as big as the one back at Thornfield, but it’s pretty and, like the rest of the house, cozy and comfortable. There’s a quilt on the bed in swirling shades of blue, and a big armchair near the window with a good view of the lake.

I settle into the chair now, watching the water.

After twenty minutes, I still haven’t seen a single person out there.

No boats, no Jet Skis, no swimmers. The only sound is the lapping of the water against the dock and the wind in the trees.

When I come out of the bedroom, Eddie is pouring us both a glass of wine.

“It’s really quiet out here,” I say, and he nods, looking out the back door toward the water.

“That’s why we picked it.”

And then he releases a long deep breath and says, “It made me crazy. After Bea.”

I look up, startled. I hadn’t expected him to voluntarily mention her after my fuckup earlier.

“The quiet,” he goes on. “Thinking about that night and how quiet it would’ve been, how dark.”

He keeps his eyes trained on the water. “It’s deep out there, you know. The deepest lake in Alabama.”

I hadn’t known that, and I don’t say anything. I’m not even sure if he’s talking to me, to be honest. It’s almost like he’s talking to himself, staring out at the lake.

“They flooded a forest to make it,” he goes on. “So there are trees under the water. Tall ones, sixty feet high in some places. A whole fucking forest under the water. That’s why they thought they never found her. They thought she was somewhere in the trees.”

The image seeps into my mind. Bea, her skin white, her body tangled in the branches of an underwater forest, and it’s so awful I actually shake my head a little. I’d wondered why it had been so hard to find the bodies, and now that I knew, I wish I didn’t.

I wish we’d never come here.

A muscle works in his jaw. “Anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing his lower back. “If this is too much—”

“No,” he says, then takes a sip of his wine. “No.” It’s firmer this time. “I loved this place, and she loved this place, and one bad memory can’t taint it forever.”

I want to point out that it’s more than a bad memory—it’s the death of his wife, the death of a close friend, but then what he’s actually said crystallizes in my mind, sucking the breath out of my lungs.

One bad memory.

Eddie wasn’t here that night. He can’t remember it.

Okay, no, I’m being stupid. It was a simple turn of phrase, he doesn’t mean it like a literal memory, just that thinking about what happened here is like a bad memory. Right?