The Wife Upstairs(58)

“Sorry,” I mouth at him with an exaggerated grimace, and then I walk out.

As I pass the desk again, I see the girl watching me with obvious curiosity on her face, and I give her another smile as I pull a checkbook out of my purse.

“My fiancé and I had heard your church was in need of a new music system.”

I leave the church several thousand dollars poorer, but a truckload smugger. Let John ever try shit like this again now that his boss, the Reverend Ellis, came out to shake my hand and thank me effusively for my generosity, promising me that both Eddie and I will be thanked in every church program from here on out.

I want John to see that every Sunday.

Mr. Edward Rochester, and his wife, Mrs. Jane Rochester.

Okay, maybe I jumped the gun a little with the wife bit, but we are getting married. Eddie is innocent. And I’m—free.

I get into the car, my hands wrapped around the steering wheel, and I take a deep breath.

It isn’t like I killed Mr. Brock, after all. Killing someone and letting them die are two different things.

He deserved it.

He let Jane die. The real Jane, the one I loved, the one who was the best friend I ever had, my sister, even if we didn’t share any blood. We’d shared a home, though. We’d shared a nightmare.

She was always puny, always small. Always getting whatever cold or stomach bug went around our school. Usually, I could help. Vitamin C, orange juice. Taking notes for her so she didn’t get behind.

But that last time, she got sick and didn’t get better. The cough got wetter, deeper. Her fever ran higher.

You have to take her to the doctor, you have to, I’d begged the Brocks, but they’d make excuses, like they always had.

She’s fine, she’s faking, it’s not that bad.

Jane died in my bed, huddled next to me, her body glowing so hot I could hardly hold her.

But I did hold her. I held her as she gasped for breath and shook and finally went still.

Pneumonia. It might have killed her even if the Brocks had gotten her to a hospital. She was so weak already.

I would never know.

So it had felt like a kind of poetic justice, that night that it was just me and Mr. Brock in the house. Mrs. Brock was at bingo, and by then, I was the only foster kid in their care.

He’d been watching TV, a baseball game, and some call had pissed him off. Sometimes that had meant one of us got hit, but that night, he’d just stood up, screaming at the television, his face red.

I’d been sitting at the kitchen table, filling out paperwork for a shitty fast-food job when he’d suddenly gasped, clutched his chest.

He’d had heart issues for a while. I never knew what was actually wrong with him, but I’d assumed a diet of whiskey, fries, and Pure Fucking Evil hadn’t helped.

He had pills for it. Big ones in an orange bottle, and he’d choked that word out as he turned to me, his face the color of old milk.

Pills.

I hadn’t gotten them.

He’d hit his knees, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, his eyes bugging out of his head.

Mr. Brock wasn’t a big man, wasn’t much bigger than me, really, but I still liked him there on his knees. I’d gotten up, stood over him while he stared at me, uncomprehending.

The word had come so easily to my lips.

Die.

I wanted him to die. For Jane.

So, I stood there, and watched him struggle and gasp, and when he tried to reach for his pills, just there on the little table between the two recliners, I’d taken them. Held them in front of him. Let him see that I had them.

And then I’d gone into the kitchen and poured them down the sink with shaking hands, turning on the garbage disposal for good measure.

I only left the house when I was sure he’d stopped breathing.

For the past five years, I’ve run from that night, from the knowledge that surely people remembered I was the only one at home when Mr. Brock dropped dead.

But I’d forgotten how disposable people like me really were. No one connected me leaving with him dying.

He had a heart condition, after all. And Helen had simply left town. She’d been just shy of her eighteenth birthday, a high school graduate, ageing out of the system already.

I’d left with Jane’s ID in my purse. Jane, who looked enough like me to be my real sister.

And I’d started over.

Successfully, it turned out.

Smiling, I start the car and head home. My new home.

My real home.





27





“Which dress should I wear?” I ask, and Eddie glances at the options I’ve laid out on the bed.

There are three: a simple cream-colored sheath dress, a sexier black number, and then a dress I’d ordered off of Southern Manors. Deep plum purple, green leaves embroidered on the Peter Pan collar, the sleeves capped. It’s way more twee than anything I’d usually wear, but I was curious what the dresses Bea had designed were like, and I wanted to see if Eddie would recognize it. And if he did, would he say anything?

But if the dress is familiar at all, he doesn’t show it. He just nods at the cream one and says, “I like that.”

So I head off to my first country club cocktail party feeling slightly like a sacrificial virgin. The dress that had looked so sophisticated on the hanger is actually a little too long for me, the hem hitting me below my knees, the high collar a little too high, nearly bumping my jaw and making my skin look sallow.