When we part, Eddie lowers his forehead to mine. “Tell me you trust me,” he says, his voice husky.
And for the first time in my life, I say, “I trust you.” And I think I actually mean it.
PART VI
BEA
NOVEMBER, FOUR MONTHS AFTER BLANCHE
Eddie didn’t hesitate today.
He came right in and sat down next to me, his thigh touching mine. When he said, “Are you okay up here?” I could smell the mint on his breath.
For some reason, that made it easier. Knowing he’d brushed his teeth before coming to see me, that he was expecting—hoping?—for this.
But then I’d gotten ready, too. I don’t have much in the way of makeup in here, but I’d taken a shower, pinched my cheeks to put some color in them, brushed my hair. It was a little longer now, closer to how it looked when we first met, and I figured that could only help with what I needed to do.
Ever since that last visit, when the look on his face changed as soon as I mentioned Hawaii, I’d known we would end up here, that the easiest and best way of keeping myself alive, reminding him that he needed me, was through the one thing that had never let us down.
Sex.
But it’s one thing to consider seducing the man who murdered your best friend, the man who’s keeping you locked up, the man you thought you knew, the man you married.
It’s another thing to go through with it.
I took his hand in mine, feeling the calluses on his palms, remembering that I’d always liked that about him, how he worked with his hands, how he wasn’t like the Tripp Ingrahams of the world with their soft, pale fingers.
He was beautiful.
He always had been.
I focused on that, taking a deep breath as I let my fingers run over his knuckles.
I couldn’t think about those hands on Blanche, couldn’t think about them pulling me into this room. Instead, I thought of all the times I’d wanted those hands on me, the times I’d thought I’d die if he didn’t touch me.
It had been like that, right from the start.
“Bea, what are you doing?” he murmured as I leaned closer, letting my lips brush the shell of his ear.
“I miss you,” I answered, and realized all at once that it was true.
I did miss him.
Not the Eddie who killed Blanche. I didn’t know that Eddie. But the Eddie from before, the one who had swept me off my feet with his easy smiles, his charm, the way he’d known exactly what I wanted before I knew it myself.
I focused on those early days now. Before we moved here, before things went darker than I knew they could.
“Do you remember that first night in Hawaii?” I asked him, rising up from the bed to stand in front of him, my hands on his shoulders.
His own hands easily came to rest on my waist, almost like a reflex.
“I invited myself to your room,” he said as I slid my hands from his shoulders, down his chest, moving even closer so that he had to open his legs to let me step between them. “You said you weren’t that kind of girl.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up a little at that, a dimple deepening, and I leaned down to kiss that spot, feeling him suck in his breath.
“I wasn’t,” I said. “Until you.”
Then I kissed him.
This part was so much easier than I thought it would be, maybe because kissing Eddie had always been one of my favorite things.
Or maybe because as I re-created that first night for us, it was easy for me to slip into it, too. I wanted Eddie to forget where we were, what had happened, what he’d done, but I was doing it, too.
Forgetting.
Slipping.
His mouth under mine made that so easy, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him in, my fingers in his hai—
“No, no, Jesus, Bea, this is fucked up.”
Eddie pushed me away, his breath coming fast.
I stepped back from the bed as he stood up, nearly stumbling in his haste to get to his feet.
His face was red, his eyes almost glassy as he raked a hand through his hair.
“We can’t,” Eddie said, and my heart sank.
“I shouldn’t have come today,” he continued, moving past me. “I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, I don’t know—”
I reached for him before he could walk out, and he stopped, looking down at my fingers loosely cuffing his wrist. The energy in the room shifted, tightened, and sharpened.
Moving toward him, I cupped his face in my hand and he didn’t turn away.
“It’s okay,” I told him, my voice soft. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” he protested, but he didn’t move, and I leaned in.
“If you really don’t want to, we don’t have to,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “But I want to. I want you to understand that. I want this, Eddie. I want you.”
And I did.
I honestly did.
Which was maybe the worst part of all of it.
There was no holding back when I kissed him this time, no tentative testing of lips and tongue. I kissed him like I had that very first night, and he gave in, like I’d known he would.
It was amazing, really, how easy it was. How quickly our bodies remembered each other.
You love me, I told him with every kiss, every touch, every gasp.
Remember that you love me, that what we have is good and right and worth something.
Remember you’re mine.
But in trying to make him remember all that, I’m remembering, too.
How good he feels. How much I loved him.
Reader, I fucked him.
And when it was over and we lay in the bed, sweat still sticking his skin to mine, something about the quiet made me reach out, tracing my finger over his heart. “You know that I still love you,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
I wanted him to hear what I was trying to say. If you let me out, I’ll never tell what happened. We’ll figure it out.
But it was the wrong thing to say.
Eddie sighed heavily, pulling away from me and reaching for his clothes, still in a pile beside the bed.
I could see in the stiffness of his movements that I’d pushed too far. He’d heard what I was saying, and he didn’t like it.
And when he walked out without another word, I wondered if I was going to have to start all over again.
Bea had put that moment with Eddie and Blanche out of her mind when she sees them at lunch in the village.
She was supposed to be at the Southern Manors offices in nearby Homewood, but she’d wanted to drop by one of the Mountain Brook boutiques and see what was in the front windows.
Instead, she sees her husband and her best friend sitting at one of the café tables, laughing over salads like they’re in a fucking Cialis commercial, and the anger nearly chokes her, shocking in its force.
It isn’t just the two of them together—it’s that it’s so public, that anyone can see them, that people will see them, and they’ll talk.
People might even feel sorry for her.
She stands there on the sidewalk underneath an awning, shielded by her sunglasses, and in her mind, Bea can see other faces turned to her, other expressions of pity with just a touch of schadenfreude, and suddenly her hands are shaking, and her feet are moving and she’s crossing the street to stand in front of their table, taking a small, savage delight in the way they both flinch at her bright greeting.
There are blueprints on the table between them. Eddie’s contracting business (the business she paid for, the one she gave him) is doing an addition on Blanche’s house. It’s all innocent really. Just a friendly working lunch to go over some details.
But it’s not just this lunch. It’s that ever since Blanche came up with this idea for Eddie to renovate her house, Eddie has been there all the time.
Or Blanche has been at Bea’s house, sitting on the back deck with
Eddie, drinking Bea’s wine and showing Eddie some Pinterest board of her “dream kitchen.”
And Eddie just smiles at her, indulges her.
Takes her out to lunch, apparently.
“You embarrassed me,” Eddie tells her later, the two of them making dinner in the kitchen together, Bea on her third glass of wine, the stereo up just a little too loud. “Actually,” he goes on, “you embarrassed yourself.”
Bea doesn’t answer because she knows that will infuriate him, and it does.
With a huff, Eddie tosses the kitchen towel he’d had on his shoulder to the counter and heads out to the back deck, taking her glass of wine with him.
They don’t talk about it again, but the next time Blanche and Bea have coffee, Blanche is all apologies and brittle smiles and then—
“You always overreact, Bea.”
Bea thinks about that for a long time, that tossed-off statement as Blanche scraped the whipped cream off her coffee with a wooden stirrer, the slight bite in the words, the implied judgement.
But two days later, Bea picks up Eddie’s phone—he doesn’t password lock it, wouldn’t even think to, which is classic Eddie—and sees the text.
It’s a selfie of Blanche. Nothing sultry or sexy, nothing tacky, but a shot of her face pulling an exaggerated frown.
Missed you today!
Bea stares at that text, then scrolls up.
Again, it’s maddening how little actual evidence there is, how there’s not one definitive thing that tells her they’re having an affair, one thing she could point to and ruin them both, but collectively …
A series of moments, of conversations. Of a closeness they’ve both denied is there. Blanche’s bad day, Eddie’s frustration with how often Bea is gone. Funny little phrases that make no sense, but read like in-jokes, snapshots of something they share that has nothing to do with her.
It has honestly never occurred to her that Eddie would cheat on her, but it’s the betrayal from Blanche that stings the most.
That actually hurts.
So really, it’s only fair what happens between Bea and Tripp.
They’re all over at Caroline’s for a neighborhood barbecue, and Tripp is, as usual, drunk as a fucking skunk before the sun has fully set.
“They sure are getting cozy, aren’t they?” he says to Bea as they watch Eddie and Blanche chat by the grill, Eddie holding a beer, Blanche a margarita. They’re laughing, and it’s the most relaxed and happy Bea has seen Eddie look in a while.
Blanche glances over then, seeing Bea and Tripp, and she just grins, raising her glass in greeting. Bea and Tripp raise their glasses, too, and everything is fine, everything is like it should be, all of them just the best of friends.
Only Bea notices the way Blanche’s smile turns up at the corners, curdling into a smirk.
Only Bea notices how Eddie reaches out to touch Blanche’s elbow to make a point.
“So, if they’re fucking, do you think Eddie should give her a ten percent discount?” Bea asks Tripp now, and that startles a laugh out of him.
Tripp is better looking when he laughs. More like the Tripp that Blanche married.
The Tripp that Blanche had been in love with.
“Blanche should actually probably give him a twenty percent bonus,” he replies, and Bea looks over her shoulder at him, grinning slowly, letting him see her gaze drift over him.
“I think maybe you’re selling yourself a little short there, Tripp.”
He’s not, it turns out.
The sex he and Bea have in Caroline’s upstairs bathroom is decidedly mediocre, and Bea doesn’t even bother pretending to come, focusing instead on the heinous print Caroline has hanging on the wall, a banal picnic scene.
As Tripp groans against her neck, Bea thinks about how she’ll have to send Caroline one of those new block color prints they just got in for Southern Manors’ summer line.
As soon as it’s over, Tripp is surprisingly remorseful, rubbing his hand over his face and saying, “I don’t know why I did that.”
Bea knows exactly why she did it—to get back at Blanche and Eddie, to take from Blanche before Blanche can take from her—but she feels empty all the same.
Later, Tripp texts her.
I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry, either.
Bea knows exactly how he feels.
PART VII
JANE
24
JULY
Over the next few weeks, I resolve to trust Eddie, to be the fiancée he wants and deserves. I go ahead and buy the dress I wanted from Irene’s in the village, complete with a veil, new shoes, the whole thing.
And we talk about the wedding more. We’re still planning on something small and simple, but here in Birmingham now, no more talk of eloping. We’re back on track, finally.
I take up jogging even though the summer weather is getting oppressive, and Eddie warns me that I’m going to die of heatstroke. But I actually like the heat early in the morning, before the humidity sets in, the grass still wet and jewel-green as the sun climbs over the horizon. It feels good, the sweat running down my back, stinging my eyes behind my sunglasses.
Sometimes I see Emily and Campbell. They’re always walking, not running, and while Emily always waves at me and grins, there’s something tight in Campbell’s smile.
This morning, though, the streets are empty, the July temps too much for most people, even at 8 A.M., and I find myself turning down Tripp’s street.
A first-degree murder charge, and he’s still at home.
That’s rich white guys for you, though.
I try not to think of Phoenix, of Mr. Brock gasping on the floor, of the sick fear I’ve lived with ever since that moment. If they’d caught me, if they’d found out what I did, do you think I’d be able to just hang out at Eddie’s until the trial?
No, I’d be in an orange jumpsuit before I’d even had time to say the words not guilty.
It’s another reminder that this world, the world these people live in, might as well be a different planet.
Tripp’s lawyer was able to prove his client wasn’t a flight risk, so he’s still here in Thornfield Estates, waiting for the trial, which is still months away.
I tell myself that by the time he goes to trial, it won’t matter as much. Eddie and I will be married by then, and even though Eddie will certainly have to testify, I can stay out of it.
That hasn’t stopped me from reading everything I can about the case, though. I know that when they found Blanche, there was a massive fracture in her skull, and that Tripp had bought a hammer just a few days before Blanche went to the lake.
Dumbass used his credit card at the hardware store in Overton Village.
The theory is that Tripp surprised the women, talked them into taking out the boat even though they were all completely fucked up, and that something happened. A fight, an argument. Tripp was drunk, they all were. And it ended with Blanche in the water.
They don’t know about Bea. Maybe she was screaming and he hit her, too. Maybe she was passed out, or down below in the boat when it all started going down. Maybe she came up, confused, disoriented, and Tripp pushed her overboard.
The cops have admitted to Eddie that getting a murder charge to stick to Tripp for Bea might be harder since they still haven’t found her body and since there’s no evidence on the boat. No blood, no DNA. It’s all conjecture at this point, which is another part of why Tripp’s lawyer was able to get him bail.
Well, that and Rich White Dude Privilege.
I pause now outside his house, a stitch in my side that I pinch with one hand as I stare at the windows, wondering what Tripp is doing in there. What he’s thinking.
Eddie says he won’t do much jail time, even if he’s found guilty, because guys like him never do. Since the case is still mostly circumstantial, the DA might lower the charge to manslaughter, for a better shot at conviction. Tripp’s lawyers will argue that all the prosecution has is Blanche’s body, and a crack running up the ba
ck of her head. The fact that Tripp bought a hammer doesn’t mean he used it to kill his wife, and she could’ve hit her head when she fell off the boat.
Upstairs, there’s a flicker of movement, a drape being pulled back slightly, and I know Tripp is watching me.
I wait on the sidewalk for a bit, wondering if he’ll come out or try to talk to me, but there are no further signs of life, and after a moment, I jog on.
The house is empty when I get home, Eddie already off to work, and I stop in the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of water out of the fridge and resting one hip against the counter as I drink deep, the water so cold it makes my teeth and my temple ache.
I’ve just set the bottle down when I hear a noise.
It’s a thump from somewhere upstairs, just like the one I heard that night the cops first came to tell us about Blanche, and I stand there, frozen, listening.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Like someone picking up and dropping something heavy.
“Hello?” I call. “Is someone there?”
Excellent, I’ve gone the full horror movie. Soon I’ll be running down to the basement in my underwear in the dark.
But then there’s a thump again, and my heart beats faster.
I move across the living room slowly, quietly, my ear cocked toward the ceiling, but there isn’t another sound. I can’t hear anything except the purring of the air conditioner and my own rasping breath.
The silence feels loud, weighted, my sweat cooling so fast on my skin that now I’m cold, and when my phone trills, I shriek.
My hands are even shaking slightly as I pull it out of the little pocket in my yoga pants, and I see Eddie’s name on the screen.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he says when I pick up, and he sounds so relaxed, so casual, that my heartbeat slows a little, some of the fear draining from my veins. “Just calling to see how your day was going.”
I can hear noise in the background, the thwap of hammers on boards, a distant buzzsaw, so I know he must be on a job site, and I try to picture him there, his shirt rumpled, his sunglasses on.
The Wife Upstairs Page 16