The Wife Upstairs(81)

But our morning walk reminds me that no, it happened. There’s only an empty lot where the house Eddie and Bea built used to stand. Ashes and crime scene tape, that’s all that’s left, but I take Major there anyway, waiting for … what? A sign? Bea to magically appear wearing a veiled hat and sunglasses, telling me it was all worth something?

That’s not happening.

I’m just a girl who got caught up in other people’s bullshit. Who got to taste a different life only to have it taken away, because that’s how it always goes.

Still, it makes me sad to stand there, seeing the spot where the house used to be, remembering how I’d felt, cooking in that kitchen, sleeping in that bedroom, soaking in that bathtub.

Except that every time I think of that, I have to remember that Bea was always there, sharing the space with me. Waiting.

I’ve just turned to go back to Emily’s house, Major happily trotting along, when my phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s not a number I recognize, but since it’s a 205 number, which means Birmingham, I answer.

“Is this Jane Bell?” a man asks.

He sounds like what I’d imagine a basset hound would sound like if it could talk, his voice deep and drawling, and I tug at Major’s leash as I say, “Yes?”

“I’m Richard Lloyd. Edward Rochester’s lawyer.”

I remember that name, remember Eddie handing Richard’s business card to John, and my grip tightens on my phone.

“Okay,” I say, and he sighs.

“Could you come down to my office this week? The sooner the better, really.”

I want to tell him no. What good can come of meeting with lawyers?

But then I look back at the ruin of what was Eddie’s house and remember that daydream I’d had, Bea striding out of the ashes to hand me something, some reward for everything I’d been through.

“Sure,” I tell him. “I can be there tomorrow.”



* * *



The office is exactly what I thought it would be. Expensive, masculine leather furniture, pictures of dogs with dead ducks in their mouths, magazines about hunting, fishing, and golf littering the coffee table in front of me.

And when a slightly florid-faced man in an ugly suit walks into the lobby and says, “Miss Bell?” he’s exactly what I was expecting, too.

There was none of Tripp’s air of dereliction around him, but they were clearly from the same genus, Southernus drunkus.

I imagine he walks over to the pub I saw on the corner for lunch every day, orders the same thing, has at least two beers before coming back to sexually harass the pretty college student currently answering phones.

But I make myself give him that tremulous smile Eddie had liked as I stand up, taking his proffered hand and shaking it. “Please,” I say, “call me Jane.”

“Jane,” he repeats. “Don’t meet many Janes these days.”

I just keep the same insipid smile on my face and let him lead me to his private office.

More leather here, more pictures of hunting, only now they are photographs of this man, smiling broadly in a bright orange vest, holding up the head of a deer, its eyes glassy, its tongue lolling out.

Not for the first time, I think to myself that I am going to be relieved to get out of this place. The coddled bubble of Thornfield Estates has been nice, but everything else around here is pretty fucked.

“Now,” he says as he settles behind his massive desk. “I have to admit, I was a little surprised when Eddie wanted to change his will so soon after getting engaged to you. Honestly, I actually tried to talk him out of it. No offense.”

“None taken,” I say, but I can hardly hear him over the ringing in my ears.

Eddie put me in his will.

Did he think Bea might get out one day? That she’d kill him? Was this his way of preemptively saying sorry, or was it just another play in their sick game? A way of putting her own fortune out of her reach, by giving it to me?

I’ll never know.

“In any case, he had control over all of Bea’s finances after she disappeared. Her shares in the company, all of that. And now,” he says, handing a thick leather portfolio across the desk to me, “it’s yours.”

My fingers are numb as I place it in my lap, feeling the weight of it on my legs.

“The company is yours as well, of course,” he goes on, writing something on a legal pad. “Southern Manors. You can keep it, or—”

“I can sell it, right?”

Mr. Lloyd’s eyes meet mine across the desk, and his lips twitch slightly. “It’s yours,” he repeats.

I sit there, holding this, holding everything, and for a moment, I think about what it would be like to keep it. To run Southern Manors, to buy a new house in Thornfield Estates.

But no.

I see this for what it is—a gift. From Eddie. From Bea.

In exchange for keeping their secrets, they’ll give me this.

And I will fucking take it.

I open the folder and stare at the paper in my hands. It’s mostly legal jargon, and of course Jane Bell isn’t even my real name, but none of that matters. All I’m looking at are the numbers.

It’s all of it, I can tell. Bea’s entire fortune, everything she built with Southern Manors, left to Eddie who then left it to me.

I’m rich.