The Wife Upstairs
Which he decidedly did not.
I’d only been up there ten minutes before I heard him coming.
I think that once in his life, Tripp had probably been a lot like John. Not as pathetic, of course, and blonder, handsomer. Less like something that grew in dark places behind the fridge. But there’s a similar vibe there, like he’d totally eat food with someone else’s name on it, and I bet more than one woman at the University of Alabama had turned around surprised to suddenly find Tripp Ingraham in the doorway, had wondered why someone who looked so innocuous could suddenly feel so scary.
But all the drinking had foiled Tripp on the creeper front. I think he meant to sneak up on me there in the “blue bedroom,” but I could hear his tread coming down the hall even though he was moving slowly, and, I think, trying to be quiet.
Maybe don’t wear golf shoes on hardwood floors, dumbass, I thought to myself, but I was smiling when I turned to face him there in the doorway.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, and his watery hazel eyes widened a little. There was a sour look on his face, probably because I’d ruined whatever it was he’d hoped for. A girlish shriek maybe, me dropping a box and clasping my hands over my mouth, cheeks gone pink.
He would’ve liked that, probably. Tripp Ingraham was, I had no doubt, the kind of asshole who had jerked steering wheels, jumped in elevators, pretended to nearly push girlfriends off high ledges.
I knew the type.
“You can pack up everything in here if you want,” Tripp says, rattling the glass in his plastic cup. “None of this really meant anything to Blanche.”
I can see that. It’s a pretty room, but there’s something hotel-like about it. Like everything in here has been selected for just how it looks, not any kind of personal taste.
I glance over beside the bed, taking in a lamp meant to look like an old-fashioned tin bucket. The shade is printed in a soft blue-and-green floral pattern, and I could swear I’ve seen it before. Wouldn’t surprise me—all the knickknacks in these houses look the same. Except for in Eddie’s house.
It strikes me then that actually, everything in these houses seems to be a pale knockoff of the stuff at Eddie’s, a Xerox machine slowly running out of ink so that everything is a little fainter, a little less distinct.
And then I realize where I’d seen that tin bucket lamp.
“That’s from Southern Manors, isn’t it?” I ask, nodding toward the bedside table. “I was looking at their website the other night, and—”
Tripp cuts me off with a rude noise, then tips the glass to his mouth again. When he lowers it, there’s a drop of bourbon clinging to his scraggly mustache, and he licks it away, the pink flash of his tongue making me grimace.
“No, that lamp was Blanche’s. Think it had been her mom’s or something, picked it up at an estate sale, I don’t know.” He shrugs, belly jiggling under his polo shirt. “Bea Rochester wouldn’t have known an original idea if it bit her in her ass. All that shit, that ‘Southern Manors’ thing. All that was Blanche’s.”
I put down the half-empty box. “What, like she copied Blanche’s style?”
Tripp scoffs at that, walking farther into the room. The tip of his shoe catches an overstuffed trash bag by the door, tearing a tiny hole in it, and I watch as a bit of pink cloth oozes out.
“Copied, stole …” he says, waving the cup at me. “They grew up together, you know. Went to school at the same place, Ivy Ridge. I think they were even roommates.”
Turning back to the stack of books on the bed, I start placing them in the box at my feet. “I heard they were close,” I reply, wondering just how much more info I can get out of Tripp Ingraham. He’s the only one so far who hasn’t talked about Bea like the sun shone directly from her ass, so I wouldn’t mind hearing more of what he has to say. But gossip is tricky, slippery. Pretend to be too interested, and suddenly you look suspicious. Act bored and nonchalant, sometimes the person will clam up totally, but then sometimes they’re like Emily Clark, eager to keep sharing, hoping to find the right worm to bait the hook.
I don’t know what kind Tripp is, but he sits on the corner of the bed, the mattress dipping with his weight.
“Bea Rochester,” he mutters. “Her name was Bertha.”
I look up at that, tucking my hair behind my ear, and he’s watching me, his eyes bleary, but definitely focused on my face.
“Seriously?” I ask, and he nods. His leg is moving up and down restlessly, his hands twisting the now empty cup around and around.
“She changed it when she went to college, apparently. That’s what Blanche said. Came back to Birmingham one day all, ‘Call me Bea.’” He sighs again, that leg still jiggling. “And Blanche did. Never even mentioned her real name to people far as I know.”
Bertha. The same sits heavily on the tongue, and I think back to those pictures I looked at last night, those red lips, that shiny dark hair. She definitely didn’t look like a Bertha, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to change it.
Plus, it was another thing we had in common, another secret tucked against my chest. I hadn’t been born “Jane,” after all. That other, older name was so far behind me now that whenever I heard it on TV or in a store or on the radio, part of a snatch conversation as I walked by people, I didn’t even flinch or turn my head. I had buried that person somewhere in Arizona, so that name meant nothing to me now.
I was lucky, though. There was no one here who had ever known the other me. Bea Rochester hadn’t had that luxury. What was it like, living right down the street from someone who knew how much you needed to change?
Tripp is still talking, but none of the information is useful now. It’s just a bourbon-fueled stream of grievances, veering back to Blanche, about how he isn’t sure what he’s going to do with all her things.
I hear this at least once every time I’m over here, this idea that he’s suddenly going to toss all of Blanche’s stuff, start fresh, maybe move somewhere smaller, “somewhere near the golf course.”
He won’t do it, though. He’s going to stay right here in this house, which he’ll keep as a kind of shrine to her.
The Rochester house isn’t a shrine.
I think about this as I leave Tripp’s, shutting the door on all that sadness and bitterness. Eddie has just one picture of Bea still, that shot from Hawaii. Does it mean that he’s moving on—or wants to move on, at least?
I think he does.
And then, like I’d conjured him into being, suddenly he’s there, jogging down the sidewalk. He sees me and stops, his dark hair sweaty against his brow.
“Jane.”
“Hi.”
We stand there, me clutching my old purse tightly against my body, Eddie in his expensive running gear, and he puts his hands on his hips, breathing hard.
His chest is broad in his T-shirt that’s wet with sweat, and suddenly I don’t care anymore about last night, or his dead wife, or how many people might be watching us right now.
“Are you working for Tripp?” he asks, a trio of wrinkles appearing in his brow, and I shrug.
“Kind of? I walked his dog for a while, but now I’m mostly helping pack up his wife’s stuff.”
The frown deepens, his fingers digging into his hip bones, and then he says, “I was an asshole last night.”
I shake my head, already denying it, but he holds up one hand. “No, seriously. I used to work with Chris, and him bringing up Bea … it fucking rattled me, and I started thinking it was too soon, or that people might be dicks to you about it, and I just …”
He sighs, and hangs his head briefly. When he looks up at me, his hair is falling over his forehead like a little boy’s, and it’s so charming, so perfect, that my fingers want to smooth it back for him.
“Can I have a take two?” he asks.
Even if he weren’t smiling, even if his eyes weren’t so blue, even if I didn’t want to touch him so badly my jaw ached with it, I would’ve said yes.
I would’ve remembered the smell and closeness of Tripp’s house.
The way Mrs. McLaren looked at me in the village.
Emily Clark’s hard eyes.
Eddie’s house and the way it felt to slide my hand into his at dinner.
Yes.
APRIL
Whirlwind.
It’s hard not to use that word to describe my relationship with Eddie, but every time it comes into my head, I remember Bea, meeting Eddie on vacation.
She called it a whirlwind, too.
But maybe that’s just what being with Eddie is like. Maybe every woman who’s ever come into his life gets swept up in the same way because once he’s decided he wants you, it’s the only way he knows how to behave.
I give Eddie the second chance he wanted, but set it on my terms. No dates in Mountain Brook. Neutral territory. He thinks it’s because I’m worried about the other people in Thornfield Estates finding out. I don’t want them to know about us yet—and I don’t want to risk another fuckup like the thing with Chris—but it’s not because I’m worried about my job. My dog-walking days are ticking down so steadily I can practically hear the click.
No, I don’t want anyone to know yet because I like having this secret. The biggest piece of gossip in the neighborhood, and it’s mine.
They’ll find out eventually, I know, but I’m determined that when they do, I’ll be so deeply entrenched there won’t be shit they can do about it.
So as February slides into March, March into April, we go to fancy restaurants with menus I can barely read. We walk through parks, our shoulders and hips touching. We go to movies, and sit in the back, like teenagers. His hand is always on me, resting against my palm, tracing the line of my collarbone, a warm weight on my lower back so that I can feel his touch even when we’re apart.
That’s the strangest part to me, really. Not the dates, not the idea that someone like Eddie Rochester might want to spend time with me. It’s how much I want him, too.
I’m not used to that.
Wanting things? Sure. That’s been a constant in my life, my eyes catching the sparkle of something expensive on a wrist, around a neck; pictures of dream houses taped to my bedroom wall instead of whatever prepubescent boy girls my age were supposed to be interested in.
But I’ve been dodging men’s hands since I was twelve, so wishing a man would touch me is a novel experience.
I think I like it.
The first time he kissed me, it was beside his car outside a restaurant. His mouth tasted like the red wine we’d shared, and his hands holding my face hadn’t made me feel trapped, but … safe. And beautiful.
I’d liked the clear disappointment in his eyes when I pulled back. Because, of course, I pulled back. Timing is everything here, and I’m not about to fuck up something this big by being an easy conquest for him.
So, any intimacy is limited to kisses for now and the occasional heated touches, his palms sliding over my upper arms, my thighs, my fingers resting on the hard muscles of his stomach but not going lower.
He hasn’t had to wait for anything in a long time, I think, so he can damn well wait for me.
But it isn’t just the kissing, the desire I feel for him that has my head spinning. It’s how much he notices things. Notices me.
On our third date—sandwiches at a place in Vestavia—I pick a bottle of cream soda from the cooler, and before I can stop myself, I’m telling him the story of a foster dad I had early on, when I was ten. He was obsessed with cream soda, bought giant cases of it from Costco, but never let me or the other kid in the house at that time, Jason, touch any of it—which, of course, meant that cream soda was all I ever wanted to drink.
It surprised me, how easily the story poured out. It hadn’t been that exact story, of course. I’d left out the foster care part, just saying “my dad,” but it was the most truthful I’d been about my past with anyone in years.
And Eddie hadn’t pried or looked at me with pity. He’d just squeezed my hand, and when I went to his house the next day, the fridge was stocked with the dark glass bottles.
Not the cheap shit Mr. Leonard bought, but the good stuff they only sell in fancy delis and high-end grocery stores.
I’ve gone so long trying not to be seen that there’s something intoxicating about letting him really see me.
John knows something is going on, his beady eyes are even more suspicious than usual as they follow me around the apartment, but even that doesn’t bother me now. I like keeping this secret from him, too, the smug smile I wear, the different hours I’m keeping.
But all of that—kissing Eddie, fucking with John—is nothing compared to how I feel now, crouched in front of Bear’s crate as I put him back after his walk, listening to Mrs. Reed on her cell phone.
“Eddie is dating someone.”
I allow myself a small smile. I’d been waiting for this, but it’s even more satisfying than I’d imagined, the thrill rushing through me similar to how I feel when I swipe a ring or put a watch in my pocket.
Actually, it might even be better.
“I know!” I hear Mrs. Reed exclaim from behind me. There’s a pause, and I wonder who’s on the other end of the phone. Emily, maybe? They go back and forth between friends and enemies, but this week, they’re on the friends’ side of things. All it will take is one snide comment about someone’s yoga pants being too tight, or a passive-aggressive dig at the lack of kids, and then they’ll be feuding again—but for now, they’re besties.
And talking about me.
Except they don’t know that it’s me, and that’s the fun part, the part I’ve been waiting weeks for now.
I smile as I turn back to Mrs. Reed, handing over Bear’s leash.
She takes it, then says, “Girl, let me call you back,” into the phone. Definitely Emily, then. They do that “girl” thing with each other constantly when they’re friends again.
Putting her phone back on the counter, she grins at me. “Jane,” she practically purrs, and I know what’s coming. She’s done this before about Tripp Ingraham, squeezing me for any stray info, anything I’ve picked up from being around him. It kills me that she thinks she’s subtle when she does it.
So when she asks, “Have you noticed anyone new around the Rochester house?” I give her the same bland smile as always and shrug.
“I don’t think so.”
It’s a stupid answer, and I take pleasure in the way Mrs. Reed blinks at me, unsure what to do with it, before moving past her with a wave of my fingers. “See you next week!” I call cheerfully.
There are Chanel sunglasses on a table by the door, plus a neatly folded stack of cash, but I don’t even look at them.
Instead, the second I’m on the sidewalk, I pull out my phone to text Eddie.
If Eddie was surprised that I actually initiated a date—and that I suggested we “eat at home”—he didn’t show it. He had texted me back within minutes, and when I’d shown up at his house at seven that evening, he already had dinner on.
I didn’t ask if he’d actually cooked it himself or if he’d picked up something from the little gourmet shop in the village that did that kind of thing, whole rows of half-assed fancy food you could throw in the oven or in some gorgeous copper pot and pass off as your own.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered is that he could’ve just ordered takeout, but instead, he’d put some effort into the night, effort that told me I was right to take the next step.
I wait until after dinner, until we’re back in the living room. He’s lit a few candles, lamps spilling warm pools of golden light on the hardwood, and he pours me a glass of wine before getting a whiskey for himself. I can taste it on his lips, smoky and expensive, when he kisses me.
I think of that first day we were in here, drinking coffee, dancing around each other. These new versions of us—dressed nicer (I’m wearing my least faded skinny black jeans and an imitation silk H&M top I found at Goodwill), alcohol instead of coffee, the dancing very different—seem layered over that earlier Jane and Eddie.
Jane and Eddie. I like how it sounds, and I’m going to be Jane forever now, I decide. This is where all the running, all the lying, was leading. It was all worth it because now I’m here with this beautiful man in this beautiful house.
Just one last thing to do.
Turning away from him, I twist the wineglass in my hands. I can’t see out the giant glass doors, only my own reflection, and Eddie’s, as he leans against the marble-topped island separating the living room from the kitchen.
“This has been the loveliest night,” I say, making sure to put the right note of wistfulness in my voice. “I’m really going to miss this place.”
It’s not hard to sound sad as I say it—even the idea of leaving makes my chest tighten. It’s another strange feeling, another one I’m not used to. Wanting to stay somewhere. Is it just because I’m tired of running, or is it something else? Why here? Why now?
I don’t know, but I know that this place, this house, this neighborhood, feels safe to me in a way all those other stopgaps never have.
In the glass, I see Eddie frown. “What do you mean?”
Turning to face him, I shrug. “I’m just not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to stay in Birmingham,” I tell him. “I don’t want to walk dogs forever, and my roommate is a nightmare. I’ve been looking at grad school programs out West, and …” I trail off, thinking about another shrug, but settling on a melancholy sigh instead.
“What about us?” he asks, and it’s everything I can do to hide my smile.
I give him a look, tilting my head. “Eddie,” I say. “This has been really fun, but … I mean, it’s not like there’s a future for us, right? You’ll eventually want somebody more … polished.” I wave my free hand. “Sophisticated. Prettier.”
And then I take a deep breath. “I haven’t even been totally honest with you about my past … about my life before this.”
He stands still, watching me, waiting. “Okay,” he says, and his voice is soft, patient. “Want to start now?”
I nod, and then I take one of the bigger gambles of my life. I tell him the truth.
“I was in foster care from the time I was three until I aged out of the system. That dad I mentioned the other day … he wasn’t my real dad, he was my foster dad, and not a very nice one at that. I don’t even know who my parents were. I mean, I know their names, but just on paper. I have no memories of them. I don’t even know who I really am. Is that actually someone you want to be with? Someone who comes from nothing?”
He sets his glass down on the counter and crosses over to me in a few strides.
“Yes,” he says. His voice is low, and his hands are resting on my bare arms. I feel that touch all the way down to my toes, and when I tug my lower lip between my teeth, I see the way his eyes follow the motion.
“Thank you for sharing that with me, Jane. Knowing that about you, imagining all that you must have gone through …” He trails off, his eyes searching mine, and there’s so much empathy and kindness there, my legs buckle a little. “It doesn’t make me want you less. It makes me want you more,” he finishes, and it is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
“Eddie,” I start, and his grip tightens.
“No,” he replies. “If I wanted an Emily Clark or a Campbell Reed, I’d be with them. I’m with you because I want you, Jane.”
Eddie lowers his head, and his lips brush mine, just barely. A sharp sting, his teeth biting lightly, desire flooding through me so hard I nearly shake with it.
“My Jane,” he says, his voice low and rough, and I swallow hard, nothing feigned now, no illusion.
“I’m not yours,” I manage to say. “I’m free as a fucking bird.”
That makes him smile, and when he kisses me again, I use my teeth this time, nipping at the same place on his mouth where he bit mine.
I’m not leaving tonight, and we both know it.
I’m not leaving ever again.
PART II
JULY, ONE DAY AFTER BLANCHE
I don’t know who I’m writing this for.
Me, I think. A way to get this all down while it’s still fresh in my mind. I can’t let myself hope that someone will find it. It hurts too much to hope for anything right now.
But maybe if I write everything down in black and white, some of it will start to make sense to me, and I can keep from going crazy.
Last night was the first time I understood how easily sanity can slip right through your fingers.
Eddie included a book in the supplies he brought me, a cheap paperback I’d had since college, and I found a pen wedged in the back of a drawer in the bedside table we carried up here just a few months ago.
There’s something especially bizarre about this, about writing my own story over the words I read and reread when I was younger.
But it’s even harder to write the truth.
Last night, my husband, Edward Rochester, murdered my best friend, Blanche Ingraham.
Blanche is dead. Eddie killed her. I’m locked away in our house. No matter how many times I repeat these facts to myself, they still feel so wrong, so crazy, that I can’t help but wonder if this is all some kind of awful hallucination. Or that maybe I drowned along with Blanche and this is hell.
That almost makes more sense than this.
But no. Blanche and I went to the lake house for the weekend, a girls’ trip that was supposed to give us a chance to spend some time together. We’d both been so busy—me with running Southern Manors, Blanche dealing with Tripp—and to just sit and talk with my best friend, to drink wine and laugh like we’d been doing since we were teenagers had been … perfect. That weekend was perfect.
I’m replaying it all in my head to convince myself that there wasn’t any sign of what would happen next.
It’s hard to untangle, you see.
I remember Eddie showing up unexpectedly, and the three of us deciding to take the boat out for a midnight cruise. Eddie was driving, Blanche and I were dancing to the music piping out of the speakers. Then my head was heavy, my thoughts fuzzy, and it was dark. Blanche was screaming, I was in the water, and it was warm, warm like a bath, and I knew I had to keep swimming and swimming, but when I got to the shore, Eddie was already there, and there was a blinding pain in my head, and then blackness. When I opened my eyes, I was … here.
In this room.
It was Eddie’s idea to add a panic room to the third floor, after watching some 60 Minutes episode about how they were all the rage in new construction. I’d gone along with it when he’d renovated the house because I wanted our new home to have the best of everything, and if it made him happy, why not?
I would’ve done anything to make Eddie happy.
And it had been his idea to make it more than just an empty space, too. He’d been the one to suggest the bed.
“In case we get stuck in here for a while,” he’d teased, grabbing me around the waist, pulling me close, and even though we’d been married for almost a year by that point, I felt the same thrill that had shot through me the first night he’d kissed me.
I’d never stopped feeling that for Eddie. Maybe that’s why I’d never seen this coming. I’d been too in love, too trusting, too—