The Wife Upstairs(73)

We didn’t speak again that night, and later, I lay in bed next to her. She had her back to me, the curve of her ass against my hip, and for a moment, I thought about waking her up, trying to figure out if sex could fix this.

I didn’t think it could.

And as I lay there, I tried not to think about her mother, lying at the bottom of the stairs, blood pooling around her.

Tried not to envision Bea at the top of those stairs, looking down at her. The picture was too clear though, too easy to see, and the more I pushed it away, the clearer it became, the more right it felt.

And I had no fucking idea what to do with that.

Was that the kind of person I’d married? Someone who could murder her own mother?

I truly hadn’t believed it. Not until the night she killed Blanche.





34





I couldn’t tell you why I went down to the lake.

Maybe it was because Tripp had stopped by, asking if I wanted a ride there, too, and I hadn’t known Bea had invited him.

Tripp and I hadn’t been friends or anything, but something about it, about the girls (women, I heard Jane say) going up there alone, then Bea texting Tripp to join them … something about it felt off.

I’d seen the way Tripp had been looking at Bea lately, with these sad puppy-dog eyes. I told myself it was because Blanche was making it so obvious that she was into me. He’d transferred affection or some shit.

But that didn’t mean I had to like it.

So, it had bothered me, Bea inviting him, and long after Tripp left, I’d sat there in the living room, thinking about it, probing it like a sore tooth.

Why would Bea want him there? She didn’t even like Tripp, and this was supposed to be some kind of girls’ bonding weekend.




The house is dark and empty when Eddie gets there.

Or he thinks it’s empty. After standing there in the living room, calling out to someone, he hears a snore from upstairs.

Tripp is in the guest room, passed out, his mouth open, his hand hanging off the bed. His snores are deep, congested, his breaths taking a while to come, and something about it strikes Eddie as weird. Unnatural.

But then again, Tripp is a drunk, maybe this is how they all sound.

The boat is gone, and there are signs they’d all three been there—Blanche’s purse hanging up by the door, Tripp’s keys on the counter, Bea’s overnight bag on one of the bar chairs by the counter.

Standing there in the living room, Eddie tells himself he’d been a complete jackass, that the girls had taken the boat out and were having a great time, and he’d let Blanche get to him with all that shit about Bea’s mom.

Then he looks out the back door and sees her.

Bea. Walking up the dock, soaking wet.

And Eddie knows.

And she had known he knew. He would remember the look on her face for the rest of his life, the way her jaw had clenched and her shoulders had gone back, head lifting as if to say, Try it, motherfucker.

And at first, Eddie makes the right decision. Taking her into his arms. Telling her he understands. Blanche knew this horrible thing about her, and she was telling people, what else could Bea do? She was protecting them, protecting everything they’d built, and wasn’t she smart, getting Tripp down here to take the fall? He was so drunk, they would say. He and Blanche got into a fight, and he hit her, hit her so hard. Bea had tried to save her—Blanche was her best friend!—but she’d been drinking, too, and it was so dark. She’d been so brave, diving into the water, swimming away to get help.

Smiling at Eddie, Bea rises up on tiptoes and kisses him. “I knew you’d get it,” she says.

Which is when Eddie grabs her, his arm cutting off her air, her feet scrabbling on the ground, fingers tearing a button off his shirt that he forgets about until days later, once Bea was safe in the panic room.

Safe.

That’s what he tells himself.




I couldn’t turn her in, or let her go to prison. Not for a murder this calculated, not in a death-penalty state, not when they might start asking the same questions about her mother that I’d been asking.

(Not to mention that a trial would kill the business. No one wants charming knickknacks from a murderer.)

But I also couldn’t let her just do this, couldn’t stomach the thought that the next time someone failed to fall in line with what Bea wanted, she’d just do away with them.

The panic room had been a solution.

Not the smartest, not the best, but fuck, what else could I have done?



* * *



Some of the pain was starting to recede now, or maybe I was just getting used to it. In any case, I could move more now, and even though my stomach roiled again, I was able to sit up.

Jane.

I didn’t love her, not really. I knew that now.

I’d wanted to. So much. In the beginning, it had felt so easy. I could just love someone else. I could have a fresh start. I could put everything with Bea behind me, forget what she’d done, what I’d done, what we’d done, and start over with Jane. Smart, funny Jane who saw the good parts of me, never the bad.

Bea had learned the truth about my family eventually. That I hadn’t spoken to my mom or my brother since I was eighteen even though they were both good people who hadn’t done anything wrong. Their only crime was that they were a reminder of how thoroughly mediocre my beginnings had been.