The Wife Upstairs(72)

Maybe I left my phone unlocked so Bea could snoop to her heart’s content.

Still, it would’ve just blown over eventually if it hadn’t been for the shit about Bea’s mom.

Another afternoon at Blanche’s house, but this time, she went to kiss me, and yeah, I let her. Just for a little bit. I was curious to see how far she wanted to take it, and honestly curious to see if I was more interested than I thought, but strangely enough, I wasn’t. Blanche was pretty, and clearly into me, but there was no real spark there, and after a little bit, I pushed her away, gently.

“We can’t do this,” I remember saying. “Bea doesn’t deserve this.”

And fuck me, but that had been the wrong thing to say.

I could still see Blanche’s face twisting into something almost ugly. “Bea?” she’d all but sneered. “Do you even know Bea?”

The words were so angry that I wondered if she was drunk. But no, that was just sweet tea in her glass, and her gaze was sharp.

“Did you know her parents were both drunks?” she asked. “Did you know her name isn’t even Bea?” Blanche poked herself in the chest with one finger. “I gave her that name. She was Bertha when I met her.” A disbelieving snort. “Fucking Bertha.”

I’d known about the name thing and wasn’t sure why Blanche was making such a big deal out of it. I didn’t like going by “Edward,” so I never had, and I didn’t give a shit that Bea had felt the same about Bertha. But I didn’t know that her parents were alcoholics, and I didn’t like getting caught off guard.

“Did you know that they found her mother at the bottom of the stairs when Bea was the only person in the house?”

I saw in her face that she regretted the words the second they were out, saw the brief flaring of her nostrils and widening of her eyes that meant that even she thought she’d gone too far, but I kept my face carefully blank.

“You just said yourself that she was a drunk. Drunks have a tendency to fall,” I replied woodenly.

“Yeah, well.” Blanche hesitated, and I could practically see the gears turning behind her eyes. “This drunk fell about two weeks after she embarrassed Bea at her big reception for Southern Manors, so.” She shrugged. “You do the math.”

It was ridiculous to think that Bea would’ve had anything to do with that. Or so I tried to tell myself.

But then, I began to wonder.

There had been a secretary at my construction business, Anna. She’d been pretty and cute, right out of college, and Bea had wanted her gone from the second she’d met her. I hadn’t done anything about it because Anna was a good worker, and hell, I had no intention of being the kind of creep who hit on someone who worked for him, so it wasn’t like I was staring down daily temptation.

But then petty cash started disappearing, and one day when Bea was up at the office to bring me lunch, she’d opened Anna’s desk drawer to grab a pen and there, shoved in the back, had been the missing money.

Anna had cried and sworn she hadn’t taken it, but what could I do except fire her?

Nothing about it had ever sat right with me. Anna hadn’t seemed like a thief, and Bea hadn’t wanted her there, and it had been Bea who found the cash … it was all too neat.

I hadn’t said anything, though, because I didn’t even know what to say. I certainly didn’t like thinking that my wife could be so manipulative.

And I shouldn’t have said anything about her mom, but that night, the very same fucking day Blanche had told me about it, I’d opened my damn mouth.

“You didn’t tell me your mom died in a fall.”

Bea looked up from her laptop, her face bathed in the pale glow of the screen. She was wearing her glasses, her dark hair pulled up in a messy bun, and she looked so young all of a sudden, so different from the polished, poised Bea I was used to.

I liked it.

“Okay?” she said at last. “I did tell you she died suddenly.”

“Right, but you said it was because she drank too much.”

Bea turned her attention back to the screen, her fingers clacking along the keyboard. “It was. She was drinking too much and she fell.”

Frustrated now, I crossed the dining room and closed her computer, earning me a squawk of protest. “Right, but that’s really different from what you led me to believe. I thought she had liver failure or something. Cirrhosis. I didn’t realize it was an accident.” My voice caught on the last word.

Flipping her laptop open with quick, jerky movements, Bea said, “Well, it was. She fell and I found her, which was obviously upsetting, so thanks for bringing it back up. So glad we could have this talk.”

“Don’t be like that.”

Her gaze shot back to mine, red blotches climbing up her neck like they always did when she was pissed off. “Is there a reason you and Blanche were discussing my mother’s death?” she asked, and shit. Shit. I should’ve seen that one coming, but I was so desperate to put these awful thoughts to rest that I hadn’t stopped to think that she’d know exactly where I’d gotten that information.

“It came up today while I was over there,” I said, and she let out a sarcastic laugh.

“Right, typical small talk, ‘Hey, did you know how your wife’s mom died?’”

“Don’t be a bitch,” I said, straightening up, but Bea didn’t reply, even though I’d never spoken to her like that before. Her focus was on the laptop again, whatever email she felt had to be dealt with at 10 P.M. on a Friday night.