The Wife Upstairs(47)

“Gotcha. It’s just that the bank thought it looked suspicious and froze the account.”

My face flushes hot. Here I was, thinking I was being smart and subtle, and instead his bank saw a petty fucking thief.

“Shit,” I say. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says, waving his free hand. “I’ll just let them know the charges were legit, and they’ll unfreeze it. Just.”

He looks up at me then. “Use the credit card I gave you, okay?”

“Sure, of course,” I say, and he nods at me, heading back inside while I stand there, blushing and sick to my stomach and nearly shaking.

We go out to dinner again that night, and this time I make sure not to drink so much, but it doesn’t matter. Neither of us can relax, and I get the sense Eddie is watching me just as carefully as I’m watching him. And when he suggests we leave early on Sunday, I agree too quickly. This place gives me the creeps.

We leave before nine, and when I get into the passenger seat, I tell myself I’ll never come back here, that we’ll sell this place and buy something new.

“I should get another boat,” Eddie says as we drive away, the house and the lake slipping from view. He sets a hand on my knee, squeezes. “Would you like that?”

Tripp Ingraham stands there in my mind, his basket on his arm, his face twisted in a smirk, and I push the image away, making myself smile at Eddie. “I’d love it.”





22





For the next two weeks, all I can think about is the way Eddie kept creeping around the lake house, and I find myself doing the same thing back in Thornfield Estates. Going down hallways, opening closets, pacing.

Standing in front of closed doors.

For the first time since I started seeing Eddie, I feel lonely.

I imagine bringing it up to Emily or Campbell, power-walking around the neighborhood, all, “Hey, girls, Eddie took me to the lake house where his wife died; weird, right?”

Fuck that.

But people are still talking, I know.

When I do manage to leave the house, even just to go to Roasted for a fancy coffee, I hear two women I don’t even know talking about Bea.

Two older ladies, sitting at a table near a window, one of them with her phone in her hand. “I ordered things from her website every Christmas,” she says to her friend. “She was such a sweetheart.”

I edge closer just as the other one says, “It was the husband, you know it was.”

“Mmmhmmm,” her friend agrees, lowering her voice to whisper, “It always is.”

But which husband? There are two involved here, and one of them is about to be my husband.

Then the lady holding her phone says, “It’s just such a shame she got caught up in it. You know that’s what happened. He probably didn’t want to kill both of them, but they were both there, and…”

“And what else could he do?” her friend says. “It was the only option.”

Like “murdering someone” is the same as saying, “Sure, Pepsi is fine,” when you order Coke.

These fucking people.

I keep listening, trying to discern whether they mean Tripp or Eddie, Bea or Blanche, so that the barista has to call, “Hazelnut soy latte for Jane?” three times before I remember I’m Jane.

I can’t keep doing this.

I need to talk to someone. I need to know what happened out there on that lake.



* * *



Detective Laurent’s card is still in my purse, and I think about calling her, just casually checking in, seeing if there’s anything I can do to help, but even I can’t fake that level of confidence.

No, the less I talk to the police, the better.

So, I decide to talk to someone I dislike nearly as much.

When Tripp accepted my text invitation to lunch, I’d been a little surprised, but now here we sit at the pub in the village, the one I’ve never been to because it always seemed like the kind of place guys like Tripp would frequent.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you to lunch,” I tell him, going for the whole “hesitant college girl” thing. My hair is loose today so I can nervously tuck it behind my ears as I talk, and while I’m not in the jeans and T-shirts I always wore to work at his house, I’m in one of the more casual outfits I picked up after the engagement, a plain beige shirtdress that I know doesn’t particularly flatter me.

Snorting, Tripp picks up his Rueben and dips it in the extra Thousand Island he ordered. “Let me guess,” he says. “Someone told you the rumors about Blanche and Eddie, and now you want to know if it’s true.”

My shock is not feigned. I really am that blinking, stammering girl I’ve pretended to be so often. “What?” I finally say, and he looks up.

Tripp’s gaze sharp. “Wait, it’s not about that?” He frowns a little, licking dressing off his thumb. “Well, shit. Okay, then. So what, you just wanted to hang out?”

I sip my beer to buy some time, and I hate this, feeling like I’m out of control, that this thing I set up is already fucked.

“I wanted to talk to you because I know you’re going through the same thing Eddie is, and I just wanted to see how you were doing, to be honest.”

A little wounded sharpness in my tone, eyes meeting his then sliding back to the table. I can still keep this on track, even if I do want to lunge across the table and shake him until he tells me everything about Eddie and Blanche.