The Wife Upstairs(55)

“Well, right now, I’m all sweaty and gross, so maybe a shower instead,” I say, and he makes a low sound that would usually send desire spiking through me.

“Wish I were there and not here,” he says, and I make myself sound appropriately intrigued as I reply, “You could always come home for lunch.”

He sighs, and I’m actually a little relieved when he says, “Would that I could. But it’s a big day on the Connors’ place, then I need to drop by Southern Manors. I’ll be home before five though, promise.”

“I will hold you to it,” I say, and after Eddie hangs up, I stand there in the hall, hands braced on the now-empty table.

There’s a mirror over the table, and I look into it now. I’m pale despite my run, my hair scraggly and slightly greasy, and there are dark flakes of mascara under my eyes.

“Get your shit together,” I mutter at my reflection, scraping my hair back from my face with both hands. The girl in the mirror looks feral, and I bare my teeth before shaking my head at myself, laughing softly.

And then the knocking starts again.





25





When I used to walk dogs in the neighborhood, I sometimes thought about where people like Campbell, Emily, and Caroline went during the day, when they pulled out of Thornfield Estates in their oversized SUVs.

Not far, apparently. Today, we’re at Roasted, for a meeting of the Neighborhood Beautification Committee. Campbell and Emily are both wearing athleisure, but I’ve dressed a little nicer, pairing a gray pencil skirt with a pink blouse and matching heels. I’m still not quite as tan or as glossy of hair as they both are, but I can see myself reflected in Emily’s giant sunglasses, and I know I look a lot more like both of them than I did just a few months ago.

Making a mental note to ask Emily where she gets her hair done, I reach down into my bag—another new purchase, this massive leather purse that could probably hold Adele—and pull out the binder I’ve carefully labeled TENBC in a pretty, swirly font.

“Look at yooooouuuuu,” Emily says, reaching out to playfully shove at my arm. “So organized!”

I smile, not mentioning that I was up until 1 A.M. working on this and that it took a stupid amount of concealer to cover the circles under my eyes.

Or that while I sat on the floor of the living room, cutting pictures out of magazines and sliding them into the binder’s plastic folders, I’d heard those thumps from upstairs again, the weird sounds Eddie had said not to worry about.

Just a couple, and faint enough that I hadn’t jumped or shrieked this time, but I’d still made a mental note to call an exterminator.

Now, though, I’m all smiles as I lay the binder out on the table, my ring flashing in the sunlight.

Campbell leans forward to look more closely at the ring, just like I’d hoped she would.

“When’s the wedding?” she asks, and Emily perks up a little, too.

Gossip as currency, yet again.

I look down at the binder, flipping through its pages. “Honestly, we’re not sure. It was going to be fairly soon—something small, you know? Casual, at home…”

“I’m sure all of this with Tripp has made planning a wedding hard,” Emily says, sympathetic, and I look up.

“We’re mostly trying not to think about it,” I say, which is true.

Both women hum in agreement, and then Campbell sighs, turning my binder to face her. She flips through the pictures, but I can tell she’s not really looking at them.

“I found a couple of ideas from Southern Living,” I say. “For the flower beds in the front of the neighborhood? On that fourth page—”

“Did you know the police found out Tripp was at the lake?”

Emily says it in almost a whisper, and I jerk my head up, surprised. That’s new.

But I’m not as shocked as Campbell, apparently. She sits up so abruptly that she kicks the table, rattling the wrought iron.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Campbell whips off her sunglasses, her blue eyes wide. “He was down there? Seriously?”

Emily nods, and I slide my binder back across the table to me. “That’s what the police said. I think someone saw him? Or there are receipts? Like, the actual kind, not the Kardashian kind.”

I laugh a little at that—who knew Emily had jokes?—but Campbell is still looking at both of us, her sunglasses dangling from her fingers.

“So … he really did it. He killed them.”

“Of course, he did,” I say, more sharply than I mean to, and they both turn to look at me.

Fuck.

Clearing my throat, I flip through the binder some more. “I just mean … the police are doing their jobs. They wouldn’t have charged him if they weren’t confident he did it.”

Emily nods, but Campbell still looks unsure, chewing her lower lip, her leg jiggling. “It’s just so weird,” she says. “Tripp could be an asshole when he drank, don’t get me wrong, but he wasn’t … violent. And he loved Blanche.”

I’d thought so, too, but now, I wonder if him falling to pieces after she died, him wandering the house and drinking all day wasn’t grief, but guilt.

And Emily pipes up, “They were having some issues though, Cam. You know that.”