The Wife Upstairs

by Rachel Hawkins

  But Bea—Bea was a totally different beast.

  My breathing sounded watery and thick, and I closed my eyes.

  I should be thinking of what to do now, how to get the fuck out of here, but all I could think about was Bea.

  Last year. That dinner. Blanche was flirting with me, I knew. What her intent was, though? No fucking clue. I wasn’t from the South, but I’d lived here long enough to learn that flirting was like a second language with these people, or a casual hobby. Back home if someone had looked at me like Blanche was looking at me, I would’ve been sure they were ready to fuck me. Here, there was no telling.

  Her hand was on my arm, her body close enough that I could feel the press of her breast against my bicep. I liked Blanche, definitely didn’t like Tripp, and Bea was so focused on Southern Manors that I was beginning to feel like I never saw her anymore. But sleeping with her best friend seemed like more trouble than it was worth, and honestly, I liked Bea’s money more than I liked sex anyway.

  But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t a little fun, seeing Bea get jealous.

  So, I didn’t do anything, but I didn’t try to avoid Blanche, either. I was in charge of her renovation, so it wasn’t like I could brush her off. Lunches in the village to review architectural sketches and bathroom fixtures. Afternoons at her house to look at paint samples. Texts to confirm our next meeting. All of it seemed harmless to me, but god, Bea got pissed off.

  And it wasn’t like I hadn’t known what Blanche was doing. I was just the latest prop in whatever cold war they’d been fighting since they were kids. But it had been nice, having Blanche pay that much attention to me. Bea was so busy building her empire, she’d stopped looking at me the way she used to.

  The way Blanche did.

  So maybe I encouraged it a little. Maybe I flirted back.

  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.

  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 w
ho 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.

  Jane didn’t know that, though. She didn’t know that my mom still tried to email me through the public address I had at Southern Manors, or that I deleted them as soon as they came in. Or that when my brother had tried to send us a Christmas card, I’d sicced our lawyers on him, implying that he was harassing us.

  With Jane, I was getting a blank slate.

  But a part of me had always known it was never going to be that easy. I might’ve told myself that I hid Bea away to protect the business, that it was better the world think she was dead than a murderer, but the truth was … I couldn’t bear to give her up.

  It was that simple. That fucking terrifying.

  I still loved her.

  That’s what this had been, fucked up as it was. Love. Trying to save her from the outside world—and from herself.

  “This is the best thing for you,” I’d told her that first night when I’d put her in the panic room as she’d gaped at me, confused and angry, and maybe a little scared.

  And I’d believed that. I still did. But Jesus, now she was loose, in the house with Jane, resilient Jane who I should’ve let go from the start. She didn’t deserve this. I should never have proposed to her, not when I was still going into Bea’s room, seeing her, talking to her, sleeping with her. But I’d wanted to give Jane the thing she’d wanted. I’d somehow, stupidly, thought this might work out. That there was a way out that ended with all of us getting what we wanted.

  And I’d wanted both Jane and Bea. Hadn’t been willing to give either of them up, keeping Bea upstairs, keeping Jane by promising to marry her, and now we were all fucked.

  I should’ve known that Jane would figure this out. She kept getting so close, and for all that naïve young woman act, I knew she was as sharp as a drawer of fucking knives.

  I, on the other hand? Curious, impulsive, greedy.

  With a groan, I managed to get on my knees. I wasn’t tied up or restrained in any way, just locked in an inescapable room.

  Except that it had never been completely inescapable. There was one guaranteed way out. There always had been. I was just the only one who knew it because I was the one who’d built this fucking house.

  It was dangerous, though. Stupid, even. And possibly deadly.

  But I had to try.

  PART XI

  JANE

  35

  “You’re nothing like he described.”

  I stand there in the hallway, my arm still aching from where I hit Eddie with that goddamn pineapple. I hit him too hard, I know that. And in a weird spot. I could still feel bone crunching, could see the teeth on the carpet. We had left him in there, closing and locking the doors behind us, and there’s no sound, no sign that he’s conscious or even alive in there.

  And Bea Rochester is standing in front of me.

  Alive.

  Because Eddie had her locked in their fucking panic room. Oh, and apparently talked to her about me.

  It’s all so bizarre I can’t even think how to reply, finally stuttering, “The p-police. We need to call—”

  “What I need,” Bea says, loudly sighing, “is a fucking drink.”

  * * *

  Bea moves down the stairs with the same confidence and focus I’d always imagined she’d have, her head high, her movements sure. I trail behi
nd, arms wrapped around my middle, wishing I weren’t still in my jogging gear from earlier this morning.

  Bea is already in the kitchen when I get downstairs, going into the butler’s closet. It’s a narrow room between the kitchen and the laundry room with a little sink, wineglasses, and several bottles of wine, plus the whiskey Eddie likes.

  I hang back as Bea opens a cabinet, her eyes moving over the bottles of wine in their little wooden cubbies. “Did the two of you drink the 2009 Mouton Rothschild?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder at me, and I stand there, my hands at my sides, arm still aching from the force I’d used in my hit to Eddie’s head.

  I feel like what I am—an imposter.

  And I can’t believe how … calm she is. How in control. I feel like the entire world has been turned on its head, and she’s selecting wine.

  But Bea only shakes her head, fingers dancing over the bottles. “The 2007 is still here. That’ll do.”

  She plucks the bottle from its hiding place, then slides two glasses from the rack affixed under the counter, her movements smooth and sure.

  And for the first time, I realize that this really was her house. It could never have been mine, and it sure as fuck wasn’t Eddie’s.

  Pausing between the kitchen and the dining room, she glances at me again. “Grab the corkscrew, will you?”

  That I can do, at least, and I open one of the drawers in the kitchen, pulling out the corkscrew before following Bea into the dining room.

  She opens the wine, pouring us each a glass, then gestures for me to sit. She takes her own seat at the head of the table, and for a moment, I wonder if I’m supposed to sit at the other end, the two of us facing off like medieval queens.

  Instead, I sit at her left, not in the chair closest to her, but one over, leaving some space between us, but not a football field length of oak table.

  This is the same place where she posed for that Southern Living interview a few years ago, only now she’s wearing wrinkled silk pajamas, her nails a ragged mess. But even though she looks like hell—pale, her hair longer, split ends fraying over her shoulders, dark circles beneath her eyes—underneath I can see the Bea Rochester I’d spent so much time imagining. The woman who built an empire out of gingham and bowls shaped like fruit, a brand modeled after a certain lifestyle she hadn’t been born into but clawed her way toward just the same.