THE WIFE UPSTAIRS
Rachel Hawkins

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

First published in the USA in 2021 by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group

Copyright © Rachel Hawkins 2020

Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Cover photographs © Buffy Cooper / Trevillion Images (woman), Shutterstock.com (background)

Rachel Hawkins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008377526

Ebook Edition © January 2021 ISBN: 9780008377533

Version: 2020-11-26

Dedication

For Mama, who is thankfully nothing like the mothers in this book

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part I: Jane

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part II: Bea

Part III: Jane

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part IV: Bea

Part V: Jane

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Part VI: Bea

Part VII: Jane

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Part VIII: Bea

Part IX: Jane

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Part X: Eddie

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Part XI: Jane

Chapter 35

Part XII: Bea

Chapter 36

Part XIII: Jane

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Rachel Hawkins

About the Publisher

PART I

JANE

1

FEBRUARY

It is the absolute shittiest day for a walk.

Rain has been pouring down all morning, making my drive from Center Point out here to Mountain Brook a nightmare, soaking the hem of my jeans as I get out of the car in the Reeds’ driveway, making my sneakers squelch on the marble floors of the foyer.

But Mrs. Reed is holding her dog Bear’s leash, making a face at me, this frown of exaggerated sympathy that’s supposed to let me know how bad she feels about sending me out in the rain on this Monday morning.

That’s the important thing—that I know that she feels bad.

She still expects me to do it, though.

I’ve been walking dogs in the Thornfield Estates subdivision for almost a month now, and if there’s one thing I’ve definitely figured out, it’s that what matters most is how everything looks.

Mrs. Reed looks sympathetic. She looks like she absolutely hates that I have to walk her collie, Bear, on a cold and stormy day in mid-February.

She looks like she actually gives a fuck about me as a person.

She doesn’t, though, which is fine, really.

It’s not like I give a fuck about her, either.

So I smile, tugging at the bottom of my army-green raincoat. “Came prepared,” I tell her, taking Bear’s leash. We’re standing in the front foyer of the Reed home. To my left is a giant framed mirror propped against the wall, reflecting me, Mrs. Reed, and Bear, already straining toward the door. There’s also a distressed wood table holding a bowl of potpourri as well as a pair of diamond hoop earrings, flung carelessly when Mrs. Reed came in last night from whatever charity function she’d been attending.

Charity functions are big around here, I’ve noticed, although I never can figure out what they’re actually raising money for. The invitations I see lying on end tables or fastened to refrigerator doors with magnets are a word salad of virtue signaling. Children, battered women, homeless, underprivileged: various euphemisms that all mean “poor.”

No telling what Mrs. Reed was supporting last night, really, but that’s another thing I don’t actually care about.

And I don’t let my eyes linger on the earrings.

Bear’s leash is smooth in my hand as I give Mrs. Reed a little wave and head out onto the wide front porch. It’s painted cement, slick in the damp, and my ancient sneakers nearly skid across it.

I hear the door close behind me, and wonder what Mrs. Reed will do this morning while I’m off walking her dog. Have another cup of coffee? Chase it with a Xanax? Plan some other charity function?

Maybe a brunch to raise money for kids who don’t know how to yacht.

The rain has tapered off some, but the morning is still cold, and I wish I’d brought gloves. My hands look raw and chapped, the knuckles an angry red. There’s still a light pink burn mark splashing across my skin between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, a trophy from the last day I worked at Roasted, a coffee shop in Mountain Brook Village.

I remind myself that walking dogs sucks, but at least it doesn’t carry the threat of second-degree burns.

Bear tugs on his leash, sniffing every mailbox we come to, and I let him pull me along behind him, my mind more on the houses, the neighborhood, than on my charge. Behind every one of these McMansions is a bright green backyard, so it makes no sense that anyone would even need a dog-walker. But need is not a word people like this think of. Everything with them is want.

That’s what all these houses are about.

Mrs. Reed and her husband live alone on Magnolia Court in eight bathrooms and seven bedrooms, a formal living room and a family den, an upstairs lounge and a “gentleman’s study.” Every house in Thornfield Estates is like that from what I can tell. I’ve been in four of them so far because of course once one neighbor has a dog-walker, everyone else needs—wants—one. I work for the Reeds, walking Bear, and now for the McLaren family on Primrose Lane, walking their dalmatian, Mary-Beth. Then there’s the Clarks on Oakwood with their shih tzus, Major and Colonel, and Tripp Ingraham on Maple Way just hired me to walk his late wife’s Labrador, Harper.

All in all, it’s a good gig, certainly better than working at Roasted. Here, people actually look me in the eye because they want to be the kind of people who tell themselves they’re not assholes if they actually call “the help” by their first name. “Jane is like family,” Mrs. Reed probably says to the other ladies at the country club, and they all make simpering sounds of agreement and have another Bloody Mary.

My sneakers squeak as I walk down the sidewalk, and I think of my apartment, how it’s probably leaking in that one spot in the kitchen again, the ceiling a darker, dingy gray against the rest of the dingy gray. The apartment is cheap and not in a terrible part of town, but sometimes it feels like living in a little concrete box, and no matter how much I try to dress it up with posters from Target or pretty blankets I’ve picked up from thrift stores, the gray fights back.

There isn’t any dingy gray in Thornfield Estates.

Here, the grass is green no matter the time of year, and every house has flowerpots or window boxes, or huge bushes covered in colorful flowers. The shutters are bright yellow, navy blue, deep red, emerald green. If there’s any gray at all, it’s soft and elegant—dove gray, I heard Mrs. Reed call it. There’s a constant hum of activity from lawn services, carpet cleaners, and housekeeping vans going in and out of driveways, even on a rainy day like today.

Bear stops to pee against a curb, and I use my free hand to push the hood back from my head, cold rainwater slithering down my neck as I do. The rain jacket is old, and the seam on the left side is torn, but I can’t bring myself to buy a new one. It’s an expense that doesn’t seem quite worth it, and sometimes I wonder if anyone around here would notice if an older raincoat went missing.

Too big a risk, I remind myself, but I still spend a solid two minutes imagining walking through this neighborhood in something sleek and pretty, something that doesn’t leak cold rainwater all over me. Something like the Burberry jacket Mrs. Clark had hanging up by the door last week.

Don’t even think about it.

So instead, I think about the diamond earrings at Mrs. Reed’s, how if both went missing, well, that looks suspicious, but one? One could’ve fallen off the table. Could be pressed into the carpet at the country club. Could be loose in a pocket somewhere.

Bear stops to smell another mailbox, but I pull him on, making my way toward my favorite house.

It’s at the end of a dead-end street, set back farther from the road than the others, and it’s one of the few that doesn’t seem to have a steady stream of people going in and out. The yard is just as green as the other lawns in the neighborhood, but shaggier, and the pretty purple bushes that bloom out front have climbed too high, blocking off windows on the first floor.

It’s the biggest house in the neighborhood, rising taller, two massive wings sprouting off either side, two oak trees climbing high on the front lawn. It was clearly older than the other homes in the neighborhood, probably the first house ever built here.

The sameness of Thornfield Estates means that eventually, all the houses blur together. I like that—a beautiful blur is better than the depressing monotony of my part of town—but there’s something about this house, all alone at the end of a cul-de-sac, that draws me back every time.

I step off the sidewalk, and into the center of the road, to get a closer look.

This part of the neighborhood is always so quiet that it doesn’t even occur to me that standing in the street might not be the safest thing to do.

I hear the car before I see it, but even then, I don’t move, and later, I’d look back at that moment and wonder if I somehow knew what was going to happen. If everything in my life had been leading me to that one spot, to that one house.

To him.

2

Almost all of the cars in Thornfield Estates are the same, some version of luxury SUV. They’re basically movable versions of the houses—notably expensive, bigger than could ever be necessary. I barely notice them anymore, just register them as champagne or midnight-blue tanks that roll through the streets regularly.

The car that comes flying out of the driveway of my favorite house isn’t an SUV, though. It’s a sports car, an older one with a growling engine, and candy-apple red, bright as a wound against the gray day.

Bear barks, dancing on his back legs, and I try to move out of the way, my fingers getting tangled in the leash as the car’s bumper rushes toward us.

The asphalt is slick with rain, and maybe that’s what saves me because as I step back, my foot skids and I fall, landing hard enough to rattle my teeth. My hood drops over my face, so I can’t see anything except army-green vinyl, but I hear the squeal of brakes, then the soft crunch of metal. Bear is barking and barking and barking, moving nervously, and the leather leash bites into my wrist, making me wince.

“Jesus Christ,” I hear a man say, and I finally manage to push the hood back.

The back half of that gorgeous car now rests against one of the fancy streetlights that line the road. He hadn’t been going all that fast, but the car was so lightweight that the metal had crumpled like paper, and my mouth suddenly goes dry, heart pounding heavily in my chest.

Shit, shit, shit.

A car like that is worth more than most people make in a year. It would take me ages at the coffee shop to even afford a down payment on something like that, and now it’s seriously fucked up because I’ve been gaping at this guy’s house from the middle of the street.

The driver’s door is open, and I finally make myself look at the man standing there, one arm slung across the top of the door.

He doesn’t look like the other men I’ve seen in Thornfield Estates. They wear polo shirts and khakis, and even the ones who are young and in good shape have a sort of softness to them. Weak chins or bellies that sag slightly over their expensive leather belts.

There’s nothing weak or sagging in this man. He’s wearing jeans and boots that are meant to look lived-in, but I know are expensive. Everything about him looks expensive, even his rumpled white button-down.

“Are you alright?” he asks, stepping toward me. Even though it’s raining, he’s wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses, and I can see myself reflected in them, the pale oval of my face against the dark green of my hood.

And when he takes off the glasses, hooking them in the collar of his shirt, his eyes are very blue. A trio of wrinkles pop up over the bridge of his nose as he looks down at me.

It had been a long time since anyone looked at me like they were actually worried about me, and that’s almost more attractive than the nice clothes, the gorgeous car, the perfect bone structure.

I nod at him as I push myself to my feet, yanking on Bear’s leash to bring the dog closer.

“Fine,” I tell him. “I shouldn’t have been standing in the street.”

One corner of his mouth kicks up, revealing a dimple in his cheek. “I shouldn’t have been pulling out of the driveway like a bat out of hell.”

He leans down then, giving Bear a quick scratch between the ears. The dog twists into his touch, tongue lolling out.

“I’m guessing you’re the new dog-walker everyone’s so excited about,” the man says, and I clear my throat, cheeks suddenly hot.

“Yeah, I am,” I say, and he keeps watching me, waiting. “Jane,” I blurt out. “That’s … my name is Jane.”

“Jane,” he repeats. “Don’t see many Janes around lately.”

I don’t tell him that it’s not even my real name, but the name of a dead girl I knew in a dead life. My real name is equally boring, but it’s one he might hear more often than Jane.

“I’m Eddie,” he tells me, offering his hand, and I shake it, painfully aware of how clammy my palm must feel and the grit of the road still embedded in the meaty place just below my thumb.

“Don’t see many Eddies around lately, either,” I say, and he laughs at that. It’s a rich, warm sound that makes something at the base of my spine tingle.

And maybe that’s why when he asks if I want to come in for a cup of coffee, I say yes.

3

Up close, the house is even more impressive than it is from the street. The front door towers over us, curving into an arch. It’s a defining feature in all these houses, these massive doors. At the Reeds’, the bathroom doors are at least eight feet tall, making even the smallest rooms feel grand and important.

Eddie ushers me and Bear inside, and the dog immediately shakes himself, sending droplets of water to the marble floor.

“Bear!” I say sharply, tugging on his collar, but Eddie only shrugs.

“Floors will dry faster than you, huh, big guy?” He gives the dog another pat, then gestures for me to follow him down the hall.

There’s a heavy table just to the right—more marble, more wrought iron—holding an elaborate flower arrangement, and when I pass by, I let one finger trail over the nearest blossom.

It feels cool and silky, slightly damp under my finger, so I know the flowers are real, and I wonder if he—or his wife, let’s be real— have new ones brought in every day.

The hallway leads to a massive living room with high ceilings. I’d expected something like the Reeds’ house again, a sea of neutrals, but the furniture in this room is bright and looks comfortable. There’s a pair of sofas in a deep cranberry, plus three wingback chairs with bold prints that don’t match, but manage to go together. The floors are light hardwood, and I spot a few rugs, also in bright colors.

Two tall lamps throw warm pools of golden light on the floor, and the fireplace is framed by built-in bookshelves.

“You have books,” I say, and Eddie stops, turning to me with his hands in his pockets, his eyebrows raised.

I nod at the shelves, which are crammed full of hardbacks. “Just … a lot of these houses have that shelving, but I usually don’t see books.”

The Reeds have a few framed photos, some weird-looking vases, and a whole bunch of blank space on their built-ins. The Clarks prefer china plates on little stands with the odd silver bowl.

Eddie’s still watching me, and I can’t read his expression. Finally, he says, “You’re observant.”

I’m not sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or not, and I suddenly wish I hadn’t said anything at all.

I turn my attention to the wall of windows looking out onto the backyard. Like the front, it’s a little shaggier than the other yards in the neighborhood, the grass higher, the bushes not as uniform, but it’s prettier than those other cookie-cutter lawns, too. This property backs up to woods, tall trees stretching out toward the gray sky.

Eddie follows my gaze. “We bought the land behind this plot so that we’d never have to look at the back of another house,” he said. He’s still holding his car keys, and they jangle in his hand, a nervous tic that doesn’t seem to fit the rest of him.

I think about what he just said—we.

It’s stupid to be disappointed. Of course, a man like this has a wife. There are no single men in Thornfield Estates except for Tripp Ingraham, and he’s a widower. Single men don’t live in places like this.

“It’s pretty,” I tell Eddie now. “Private.”

Lonely, I also think, but don’t say.

Clearing his throat, Eddie turns from the window and walks into the kitchen. I follow behind, Bear still trudging in my wake, my coat dripping on the floor.

The kitchen is as grand as the rest of the house with a massive stainless-steel refrigerator, a dark granite island, and beautiful cream-colored cabinets. Everything seems to gleam, even the man standing in front of the Keurig, loading up a coffee pod.

“How do you take it?” he asks me, his back still to me, and I perch on the edge of a stool, Bear’s leash in one hand.

“Black,” I reply. The truth is, I don’t really like black coffee, but it’s always the cheapest thing at any café, so it’s become a habit.

“I see, you’re tough, then.”

Eddie smiles at me over his shoulder, his eyes very blue, and my face goes hot again.

Married, I remind myself.

But when he hands me the cup of coffee, I glance down at his hands. Fine-fingered, manicured, a smattering of dark hair over his knuckles.

And no ring.

“So, tell me about yourself, Jane the Dog-Walker,” he says, turning back to make his own cup of coffee. “Are you from Birmingham?”

“No.” I blow across the surface of my coffee cup. “I was born in Arizona, lived mostly out West until last year.”

True, but vague: my preferred way of explaining my background to new people.

Eddie takes his mug from the Keurig machine and faces me, leaning back against the counter. “How’d you end up down here?”

“I was looking for something new, and a friend from school lived here, offered me a room.”

There’s a trick to spinning lies. You have to embed the truth in there, just a glimmer of it. That’s the part that will catch people, and it’s what makes the rest of your lies sound like truth, too.

I was looking for something new. I was. Because I was running from something old.

A friend from school. A guy I met in a group home after my last foster situation ended badly.

Nodding, Eddie takes a sip of his coffee, and I fight the urge to squirm in my seat, to ask why the hell he brought me into his house to make small talk, where his wife is, why he isn’t at work or wherever it was he was going in such a hurry this morning.

But he seems happy to just sit there in the kitchen with me, drinking coffee and looking at me like I’m a puzzle he’s working out.

I can’t help but feel like I cracked my head on the road this morning and dropped into some alternate universe where rich, handsome men seem interested in me.

“What about you?” I ask. “Are you from Birmingham originally?”

“My wife was.”

Was. I hold that word, that tense, in my mind.

“She, uh. She grew up around here, wanted to move back,” he goes on, and his fingers are drumming on the side of his mug, that same gesture I’d noticed earlier in the street. Then he puts the mug down and leans on the island in front of him, arms crossed.

“You’re staying in Mountain Brook?” he asks, and I raise my eyebrows, making him laugh. “Is this creepy? The third-degree thing?”

It maybe should be, but instead, it’s nice to have someone actually interested in me—not the fake, feigned interest of Mrs. Reed, but something genuine, real. Plus, I’d rather sit here talking and drinking coffee in his gorgeous kitchen than walk Bear in the rain.

I let my fingers trace a vein in the marble as I say, “Only mildly creepy. Tier One on the creep meter.”

He smiles again, and something tingles at the base of my spine. “I can deal with Tier One.”

I smile back, relaxing a little. “And no, I’m not staying in Mountain Brook. My friend’s place is in Center Point.”

Center Point is an ugly little town about twenty miles away, once part of the suburban sprawl of Birmingham, now a haven of strip malls and fast-food joints. There are still nice neighborhoods tucked in and around it, but on the whole, it feels like another planet compared to Thornfield Estates, and Eddie’s expression reflects that.

“Shit,” he says, straightening up. “That’s quite a hike from here.”

It is, and my crappy car probably can’t take it much longer, but it’s worth it to me, leaving behind all that ugliness for this place with its manicured lawns and brick houses. I knew it would’ve been smarter to find work in Center Point, like John, but as soon as I’d moved in, the first thing I’d done was look for ways to escape.

So, I didn’t mind the drive.

“There wasn’t much work in Center Point,” I tell him, which is another half-truth. There were jobs—cashier at the Dollar General, checkout girl at Winn-Dixie, cleaner at the “Fit Not Fat!” gym that used to be a Blockbuster Video—but they weren’t jobs that I wanted. That would get me any closer to the type of person I wanted to be. “And my friend knew someone who worked at Roasted in the village, and that’s where I met Mrs. Reed. Well, I met Bear first, I guess.”

At the sound of his name, the dog wags his tail, thumping against the base of my stool, a reminder that I should probably get going. But Eddie is still watching me, and I can’t seem to stop talking. “He was tied up outside, and I brought him some water. Apparently, I was the first person he hadn’t growled at since Mrs. Reed got him, and she asked if I ever did any dog-walking, so now …”

“So now here you are,” Eddie finishes up, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. The movement is elegant despite his wrinkled clothes, and I like how his lips are caught somewhere halfway between a smile and a smirk.

“Here I am,” I say, and for a moment, he holds my gaze. His eyes are very blue, but they’re rimmed in red, and his stubble is dark against his pale skin.

The house is well taken care of and clean, but something about the feeling of emptiness inside of it—and the emptiness in Eddie’s eyes—reminds me of Tripp Ingraham. I hate walking his dog because then I have to go into that stuffy, shut-up house where it’s as if the pause button was hit the second his wife died.

And then I remember that Tripp’s wife didn’t die alone. She and her best friend were both killed in a boating accident just six months back. I never registered the friend’s name because to be honest, I hadn’t really cared about old gossip, but now I wish I had.

Was. He’d said was.

“And I’ve kept you from your work by nearly running you over, then forcing you to make small talk with me,” Eddie says, and I smile, turning my mug around in my hands.

“I like the small talk. Could’ve done without the near-death experience.”

He laughs again, and I suddenly wish I didn’t have anywhere else to be, that I could sit here talking with him the rest of the day.

“Another cup?” he asks, and even though I still have half my coffee left, I push the mug away.

“No, I should probably get going. Let Bear finish up his walk.”

Eddie puts his own mug in the smaller sink there by the coffee-maker. All the houses have that because god forbid rich people have to walk the extra three feet to use the main sink, I guess.

“How many dogs are you walking in the neighborhood?” he asks as I slide off the stool, reaching for Bear’s leash.

“Four right now,” I tell him. “Well, five, the Clarks have two. So five dogs, four families.”

“Could you squeeze in a sixth?”

I pause as Bear pushes himself to his feet, stretching.

“You have a dog?” I ask.

He smiles at me again, a real smile this time, and my heart turns a neat flip in my chest.

“I’m going to get one.”

4

“Since when does Eddie Rochester have a dog?”

Mrs. Clark—Emily, I’m actually supposed to call her by her first name—is smiling.

She’s always smiling, probably to show off those perfect veneers that must have cost a fortune. Emily is just as thin as Mrs. Reed and just as rich, but rather than Mrs. Reed’s cute sweater sets, Emily is always wearing expensive athletic wear. I’m not sure if she actually goes to the gym, but she spends every second looking like she’s waiting for a yoga class to break out. She’s holding a monogrammed coffee thermos now, the E printed in bold pink on a floral background, and even with that smile, I don’t miss the hard look in her eyes. One thing growing up in the foster system taught me was to watch people’s eyes more than you listened to what they said. Mouths were good at lying, but eyes usually told the truth.

“He just got her,” I reply. “Last week, I think.”

I knew it had been last week because Eddie had been as good as his word. He’d adopted the Irish setter puppy, Adele, the day after we met. I’d started walking her the next day, and apparently Emily had seen me because her first question this morning had been, “Whose dog were you walking yesterday?”

Emily sighs and shakes her head, one fist propped on a narrow hip. Her rings catch the light, sending sprays of little rainbows over her white cabinets. She has a lot of those rings, so many she can’t wear them all.

So many she hasn’t noticed that one, a ruby solitaire, went missing two weeks ago.

“Maybe that’ll help,” she says, and then she leans in a little closer, like she’s sharing a secret.

“His wife died, you know,” she says, the words almost a whisper. Her voice drops to nearly inaudible on died, like just saying the word out loud will bring death knocking at her door or something. “Or at least, we presume. She’s been missing for six months, so it’s not looking good.”

“I heard that,” I say, nonchalant, like I hadn’t gone home last night and googled Blanche Ingraham, like I hadn’t sat in the dark of my bedroom and read the words, Also missing and presumed dead is Bea Rochester, founder of the Southern Manors retail empire.

And that I hadn’t then looked up Bea Rochester’s husband.

Edward.

Eddie.

The joy that had bloomed in my chest reading that article had been a dark and ugly thing, the sort of emotion I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel, but I couldn’t really make myself care. He’s free, she’s gone, and now I have an excuse to see him every week. An excuse to be in that gorgeous home in this gorgeous neighborhood.

“It was so. Sad,” Emily drawls, apparently determined to hash out the entire thing for me. Her eyes are bright now. Gossip is currency in this neighborhood, and she’s clearly about to make it rain.

“Bea and Blanche were like this.” Twisting her index and middle finger together, she holds them up to my face. “They’d been best friends forever, too. Since they were, like, little bitty.”

I nod, as if I have any idea what it’s like to have a best friend. Or to have known someone since I was little bitty.

“Eddie and Bea had a place down at Smith Lake, and Blanche and Tripp used to go down there with them all the time. But the boys weren’t there when it happened.”

The boys. Like they’re seventh graders and not men in their thirties.

“I don’t even know why they took the boat out because Bea didn’t really like it. That was always Eddie’s thing, but I bet he never gets on a boat again.”

She’s watching me again, her dark eyes narrowed a little, and I know she wants me to say something, or to look shocked or maybe even eager. It’s no fun to spill gossip if the recipient seems bored, so that’s why I keep my face completely neutral, no more interest than if we were talking about the weather.

It’s satisfying, watching her strive to get a reaction out of me.

“That all sounds really awful,” I offer up.

Lowering her voice, Emily leans in even closer. “They still don’t even really know what happened. The boat was found out in the middle of the lake, no lights on. Blanche’s and Bea’s things were all still inside the house. Police think they must’ve had too much to drink and decided to take the boat out, but then fallen overboard. Or one fell and the other tried to help her.”

Another head shake. “Just real, real sad.”

“Right,” I say, and this time, it’s a little harder to fake not caring. There’s something about that image, the boat in the dark water, one woman scrabbling against the side of the boat, the other leaning down to help her only to fall in, too …

But it must not show on my face because Emily’s smile is more a grimace now, and there’s something a little robotic in her shrug as she says, “Well, it was tough on all of us, really. A blow to the whole neighborhood. Tripp is just a mess, but I guess you know that.”

Again, I don’t say anything. Mess does not even begin to describe Tripp. Just the other day, he asked if I’d start packing up some of his wife’s things for him, since he can’t bring himself to do it. I was going to refuse because spending any more time in that house seems like a fucking nightmare, but he’s offered to pay me double, so I’m thinking about it.

Now I just watch Emily with a bland expression. Finally, she sighs and says, “Anyway, if Eddie’s getting a dog, maybe that’s a sign that he’s moving on. He didn’t seem to take it as hard as Tripp did, but then he didn’t depend on Bea like Tripp did on Blanche. I swear, that boy couldn’t go to the bathroom before asking Blanche if she thought that was a good idea. Eddie wasn’t like that with Bea, but god, he was broken up.”

Her dark hair brushes her shoulder blades as she swings her head to look at me again. “He was crazy about her. We all were.”

I fight down the bitter swell in my chest, thinking back to the one photo I pulled up of Bea Rochester on my laptop. She was strikingly beautiful, but Eddie is handsome, more so than most of the husbands around here, so it’s not a surprise that they were a matched set.

“I’m sure it was a really big loss,” I say, and finally, Emily waves me and the dogs away with one hand.

“I’ll probably be gone when you get back, so just put them in the crate in the garage.”

I take Major and Colonel for their walk, and sure enough, Emily’s SUV is missing when we return. Their little fluffy bodies tremble with excitement as I settle them in the crate. Major and Colonel are the smallest of all the dogs I walk, and the ones who seems to least enjoy the exercise.

“I know how you feel, dudes,” I tell them as I close the latch, watching Major sink into a dog bed that costs more than I make in a couple of weeks.

Which is why I don’t feel all that bad taking the sterling silver dog tag from his collar and slipping it into my pocket.

5

“You’re late on your half of the rent.”

I look up from my spot on the couch. I’ve only been home for ten minutes and had hoped I might miss John this afternoon. He’s an office assistant at a local church, plus he works with the Youth Music Ministry, whatever that actually means—I’ve never been a big churchgoer—and his hours are never as set as I’d like. This is hardly the first time I’ve come home to find him standing in the kitchen, his hip propped against the counter, one of my yogurts in his hand.

He always eats my food, no matter how many times I put my name on it, or where I try to hide it in our admittedly tiny kitchen. It’s like nothing in this apartment belongs to me since it was John’s place first, and he’s letting me live here. He opens my bedroom door without knocking, he uses my shampoo, he eats my food, he “borrows” my laptop. He’s skinny and short, a wisp of a guy, really, but sometimes it feels like he sucks up all the space in our shared 700 square feet.

Another reason I want to get out.

Living with John was only ever supposed to be a temporary thing. It was risky, going back to someone who knew my past, but I’d figured it would just be a place to land for a month, maybe six weeks, while I figured out what to do next.

But that was six months ago, and I’m still here.

Lifting my feet off the coffee table, I stand, digging into my pocket for the wad of twenties I shoved in there after my visit to the pawnshop this afternoon.

I don’t always get rid of the stuff I take. The money has never been the point, after all. It’s the having I’ve always enjoyed, plus knowing they’ll never notice anything is missing. It makes me feel like I’ve won something.

But dog-walking isn’t bringing in enough to cover everything yet, so today, I’d plucked Mrs. Reed’s lone diamond earring from the pile of treasures on my dresser, and while I didn’t get nearly what it was worth, it’s enough to cover my half of this shitty concrete box.

I shove it into John’s free hand, pretending I don’t notice the way his fingers try to slide against mine, searching for even a few seconds of extra contact. I’m another thing in this apartment that John would consume if he could, but we both pretend we don’t know that.

“How’s the whole dog-walking thing going?” John asks as I cross back over to our sad couch. He’s got a bit of yogurt stuck to the corner of his mouth, but I don’t bother pointing it out. It’ll probably stay there all day, too, forming a crust that’ll creep out some girl down at the Student Baptist Center where John volunteers a few nights a week.

I already feel solidarity with her, this unknown girl, my sister in Vague Disgust for John Rivers.

Maybe that’s what makes me smile as I sit back down, yanking the ancient afghan blanket out from under me. “Great, actually. Have a few new clients now, so it keeps me pretty busy.”

John’s spoon scrapes against the plastic tub of yogurt—my yogurt— and he watches me, his dark hair hanging limply over one eye.

“Clients,” he snorts. “Makes you sound like a hooker.”

Only John could try to shame a girl for something as wholesome as dog-walking, but I brush it off. If things keep going as well as they’re going, soon I won’t have to live here with him anymore. Soon I can get my own place with my own stuff and my own fucking yogurt that I’ll actually get to eat.

“Maybe I am a hooker,” I reply, picking up the remote off the coffee table. “Maybe that’s what I’m actually doing, and I’m just telling you I walk dogs.”

I twist on the couch to look at him.

He’s still standing by the fridge, but his head is ducked even lower now, his eyes wary as he watches me.

It makes me want to go even further, so I do.

“That could be blowjob money in your pocket now, John. What would the Baptists think about that?”

John flinches from my words, his hand going to his pocket, either to touch the money or to try to hide the boner he probably popped at hearing me say blowjob.

Eddie wouldn’t cringe at a joke like that, I suddenly think.

Eddie would laugh. His eyes would do that thing where they seem brighter, bluer, all because you’ve surprised him.

Like he did when you noticed the books.

“You ought to come to church with me,” he says. “You could come this afternoon.”

“You work in the office,” I say, “not the actual church. Not sure what good it would do me watching you file old newsletters.”

I’m not normally this openly rude to him, aware that he could kick me out since this place is technically all his, but I can’t seem to help myself. It’s something about that day in Eddie’s kitchen. I’ve known enough new beginnings to recognize when something is clicking into place, and I think—know—that my time in this shitty box with this shitty human is ticking down.

“You’re a bitch, Jane,” John mutters sullenly, but he throws away the empty yogurt and gathers his things, slinking out the door without another word.

Once he’s gone, I hunt through the cabinets for any food he hasn’t taken. Luckily, I still have two things of Easy Mac left, and I heat them both up, dumping them into one bowl before hunkering down with my laptop and pulling up my search on Bea Rochester.

I don’t spend much time on the articles about her death. I’ve heard the gossip, and honestly, it seems pretty basic to me—two ladies got too drunk at their fancy beach house, got on their fancy boat, and then succumbed to a very fancy death. Sad, but not exactly a tragedy.

No, what I want to know about is Bea Rochester’s life. What it was that made a man like Eddie want her. Who she was, what their relationship might have looked like.

The first thing I pull up is her company’s website.

Southern Manors.

“Nothing says Fortune 500 company like a bad pun,” I mutter, stabbing another bite of macaroni with my fork.

There’s a letter on the first page of the site, and my eyes immediately scan down to see if Eddie wrote it.

He didn’t. There’s another name there, Susan, apparently Bea’s second-in-command. It’s full of the usual stuff you’d expect when the founder of a company dies suddenly. How sad they are, what a loss, how the company will continue on, burnishing her legacy, etc., etc.

I wonder what kind of a legacy it is, really, selling overpriced cutesy shit.

Clicking from page to page, I take in expensive Mason jars, five-hundred-dollar sweaters with HEY, Y’ALL! stitched discreetly in the left corner, silver salad tongs whose handles are shaped like bees.

There’s so much gingham it’s like Dorothy Gale exploded on this website, but I can’t stop looking, can’t keep from clicking one item, then another.

The monogrammed dog leashes.

The hammered-tin watering cans.

A giant glass bowl in the shape of an apple someone has just taken a bite out of.

It’s all expensive but useless crap, the kind of stuff lining the gift tables at every high-society wedding in Birmingham, and I finally click away from the orgy of pricey/cutesy, going back to the main page to look at Bea Rochester’s picture again.

She’s standing in front of a dining room table made of warm, worn-looking wood. Even though I haven’t been in the dining room at the Rochester mansion, I know immediately that this is theirs, that if I looked a little deeper into the house, I would find this room. It has the same vibe as the living room—nothing matches exactly, but it somehow goes together, from the floral velvet seat covers on the eight chairs to the orange-and-teal centerpiece that pops against the eggplant-colored drapes.

Bea pops, too, her dark hair swinging just above her shoulders in a glossy long bob. She has her arms crossed, her head slightly tilted to one side as she smiles at the camera, her lipstick the prettiest shade of red I think I’ve ever seen.

She’s wearing a navy sweater, a thin gold belt around her waist, and a navy-and-white gingham pencil skirt that manages to be cute and sexy at the same time, and I almost immediately hate her.

And also want to know everything about her.

More googling, the Easy Mac congealing in its bowl on John’s scratched and water-ringed coffee table, my fingers moving quickly, my eyes and my mind filling up with Bea Rochester.

There’s not as much as I’d want, though. She wasn’t famous, really. It’s the company people seem to care about, the stuff they can buy, while Bea seemed to keep herself out of the spotlight.

There’s only one interview I can find—with Southern Living, of course, big surprise. In the accompanying photo, Bea sits at another dining room table—seriously, did this woman exist in any other rooms of a house?—wearing yellow this time, a crystal bowl of lemons on her elbow, an enamel coffee cup printed with daisies casually held in one hand.

The profile is a total puff piece. Bea grew up in Alabama, one of her ancestors was a senator in the 1800s, and they’d had a gorgeous home in some place called Calera that had burned down a few years ago. Her mother had sadly passed away not long after Bea started Southern Manors, and she “did everything in memory of her.”

My eyes keep scanning past the details I already know—the Randolph-Macon degree, the move back to Birmingham, the growth of her business—until I finally snag on Eddie’s name.

Three years ago, Bea Mason met Edward Rochester on vacation in Hawaii. “I was definitely not looking for a relationship,” she laughs. “I just wanted some downtime to read a few books and drink ridiculous frozen drinks. But when Eddie showed up …”

She trails off and shakes her head slightly with a becoming blush. “The whole thing was such a whirlwind, but I always say marrying Eddie was the only impulsive decision I’ve ever made. Luckily, it ended up being the best decision I ever made, too.”

Sighing, I sit back from my laptop, my back protesting, my legs slightly numb from how long I’ve had them folded up under me. The throw over my thighs smells like cheap detergent, and I push it away, wrinkling my nose.

Hawaii.

Why does that make it worse for some reason? Why did I want them to have met at church or the country club or one of the other five thousand boring and safe locations around here?

Because I wanted it not to be special, I think. I wanted her not to be special.

But she is. Beautiful and smart and a millionaire. A woman who built something all her own, even if she did come from money and the kind of background that made achieving shit a hell of a lot easier than it did for someone like me.

I stare at that picture some more, wondering what her voice sounded like, how tall she was, what she and Eddie looked like together.

Gorgeous, obviously. Hot. But did they smile at each other? Did they touch each other easily, his arm around her waist, her hand on his shoulder? Were there furtive caresses, brushings of hands under tables, secret signals only they knew?

There must’ve been. Marriage was like that, even though most of the ones I’d seen hadn’t seemed worth the effort.

So, Bea Rochester had been perfect. The perfect mogul, the perfect woman, the perfect wife. Probably had never even heard of Easy Mac or seen the inside of a pawnshop.

But I had one thing over her. I was still alive.

6

Eddie isn’t there when I walk Adele the next morning. His car is missing from the garage, and I tell myself I’m not disappointed when I take the puppy from the backyard and out for her walk.

Thornfield Estates is just up the hill from Mountain Brook Village where I used to work, so this morning, I take Adele there, her little legs trotting happily as we turn out of the neighborhood. I tell myself it’s because I’m bored with the same streets, but really, it’s because I want people to see us. I want people who don’t know I’m the dog-walker to see me with Eddie’s dog. Which means, in their heads, I’m linked with Eddie.

It makes me hold my head up higher as I walk past Roasted, past the little boutique selling things that I now recognize as knockoffs of Southern Manors. I pass three stores with brightly patterned quilted bags in the windows, and I think how many of those bags are probably tucked away in closets in Thornfield Estates.

What would it feel like to be the kind of woman who spent $250 on an ugly bag just because you could?

At my side, Adele trots along, her nails clicking on the sidewalk, and I’m just about to turn by the bookstore when I hear, “Jane?”

It’s Mrs. McLaren. I walk her dalmatian, Mary-Beth, every Wednesday, and now she’s standing in front of me, a Roasted cup in hand. Like Emily Clark, she wears fancy yoga clothes half the time, but she’s smaller and curvier than Emily or Mrs. Reed, her hair about four different shades of blond as it curls around her face.

“What are you two doing all the way down here?” She asks it with a smile, but my face suddenly flames hot, like I’ve been caught at something.

“Change of scenery,” I reply with a sheepish shrug, hoping Mrs. McLaren will just let this go, but now she’s stepping closer, her gaze falling to Adele.

“Sweetheart, it’s probably not safe to have the dogs out of the neighborhood.” The words are cooed, sugar-sweet, a cotton candy chastisement, and I hate her for them.

Like I’m a child. Or, worse, a servant who wandered out of her gated yard.

“We’re not far from home,” I say, and at my side, Adele whines, straining on her leash, her tail brushing back and forth.

Home.

There’s a shopping bag dangling from Mrs. McLaren’s wrist as she steps closer. It’s imprinted with the logo of one of those little boutiques I just passed, and I wonder what’s in it, wanting to catch a glimpse of the item inside, so that when I see it lying around her house later, I can take it. A stupid, petty reaction, lashing out, I know that, but there it is, an insistent pulse under my skin.

Whatever this bitch bought today, she’s not going to keep it, not after making me feel this small.

“Okay, well, maybe run on back there, then?” The uptick, making it a question. “And sweetie, please don’t ever take Mary-Beth out of the neighborhood, okay? She gets so excitable, and I’d hate for her to be out in all this …” she waves a hand, the bag still dangling from her wrist. “Rigmarole.”

I’ve seen maybe three cars this morning, and the only rigmarole currently happening is Mrs. McLaren stopping me like I’m some kind of criminal for daring to walk a dog outside Thornfield’s gates.

But I nod.

I smile.

I bite back the venom flooding my mouth because I have practice at that, and I walk back to Thornfield Estates and to Eddie’s house.

It’s cool and quiet as I let myself in, and I lean down to unclip Adele’s leash. Her claws skitter across the marble, then the hardwood as she makes her way to the sliding glass doors, and I follow, opening them to let her out into the yard.

This is the part where I’m supposed to hang up her leash on the hook by the front door, maybe leave a note for Eddie saying that I came by and that Adele is outside, and then leave. Go back to the concrete box on St. Pierre Street, think again about taking the GRE, maybe sort through the various treasures I’ve picked up on dressers, on bathroom counters, beside nightstands.

Instead, I walk back into the living room with that bright pinkishred couch and floral chairs, the shelves with all those books, and I look around.

For once, I’m not looking for something to take. I don’t know what it says about me, about Eddie, or how I might feel about Eddie that I don’t want to take anything from him, but I don’t. I just want to know him. To learn something.

Actually, if I’m being honest with myself, I want to see pictures of him with Bea.

There aren’t any in the living room, but I can see spaces on the wall where photographs must have hung. And the mantel is weirdly bare, which makes me think it once held more than just a pair of silver candlesticks.

I wander down the hall, sneakers squeaking, and there’s more emptiness.

Upstairs.

The hardwood is smooth underfoot, and there are no blank spaces here, only tasteful pieces of art.

On the landing, there’s a table with that glass bowl I recognize from Southern Manors, the one shaped like an apple, and I let my fingers drift over it before moving on, up the shorter flight of stairs to the second floor.

It’s dim up here, the lights off, and the morning sun not yet high enough to reach through the windows. There are doors on either side, but I don’t try to open any of them.

Instead, I make my way to a small wooden table under a round stained-glass window, there at the end of the hall.

There’s only one thing on it, a silver-framed photograph, and it’s both exactly what I wanted to see, and something I wish I’d never seen at all.

I had wondered what Bea and Eddie looked like together, and now I know.

They’re beautiful.

But it’s more than just that. Lots of people are beautiful, especially in this neighborhood where everyone can afford the upkeep, so it’s not her perfect hair and flawless figure, her bright smile and designer bathing suit. It’s that they look like they fit. Both of them, standing on that gorgeous beach, her smiling at the camera, Eddie smiling at her.

They’d found the person for them. That thing most of us look for and never find, that thing I always assumed didn’t exist, because in this whole wide world, how could there ever be one person who was just right for you?

But Bea was right for Eddie, I can see that now, and I suddenly feel so stupid and small. Sure, he’d flirted with me, but he was probably one of those guys for whom it was second nature. He’d had this. He certainly didn’t want me.

“That was in Hawaii.”

I whirl around, the keys falling from my suddenly numb fingers.

Eddie is standing in the hallway, just at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall with one ankle crossed in front of the other. He’s wearing jeans today and a blue button-down, the kind that looks casual, but probably costs more than I’d make in a couple of weeks at the coffee shop or walking dogs. I wonder what that’s like, to have so much money that spending someone’s rent on one shirt doesn’t even register.

His sunglasses dangle from his hand, and he nods at the table. “That picture,” he tells me, as if I hadn’t known what he was referring to. “That’s me and Bea in Hawaii last year. We met there, actually.”

I swallow hard, shoving my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, straightening my shoulders. “I was just looking for the bathroom,” I tell him, and he smiles a little.

“Of course you were,” he says, pushing off from the wall and walking closer. The hall is wide and bright, filled with light from the inset window above us, but it feels smaller, closer, as he moves nearer.

“It was the one picture I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of,” he says now, and I’m very aware of him standing right next to me, his elbow nearly brushing my side.

“The rest were mostly shots of our wedding, a few pictures of when we were building this house. But that one …” Trailing off, he picks up the frame, studying the image. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t throw it out.”

“You threw the rest of them away?” I ask. “Even your wedding pictures?”

He sets the frame back on the table with a soft clunk. “Burned them, actually. In the backyard three days after the accident.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say quietly, trying not to imagine Eddie standing in front of a fire as Bea’s face melted.

But then he looks at me, his blue eyes narrowing just a little bit. “I don’t think you are, Jane,” he says, and my mouth is dry, my heart hammering. I wish I’d never come upstairs into this hallway, and I am so glad I came into this hallway because if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be standing here right now, and he wouldn’t be looking at me like that.

“What happened was awful,” I try again, and he nods, but his hand is already coming up to cup my elbow. His fingers fold around the sharp point, and I stare down at where he’s touching me, at the sight of that hand on my skin.

“Awful,” he echoes. “But you’re not sorry, because her not being here means that you can be here. With me.”

I want to protest, because what a horrible thing to think about me. What a horrible thing for me to be.

But he’s right—I’m glad that Bea Rochester was on that boat with Blanche Ingraham that night. I’m glad because it means Eddie is alone.

Free.

The fact that he sees that in me should make me feel ashamed, but it only makes me giddy.

“I’m not with you,” I say to him, though, because that’s the truth. We may be standing here, his hand on my arm, but we’re not together. There’s still a big fucking canyon between the Eddie Rochesters of the world and me.

But then he smiles, that slow smile that only lifts one corner of his mouth and makes him look younger and more charming.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” he says.

I like that. How it’s not a question.

“Yes,” I hear myself say, and it’s that easy.

It’s like walking through a door.

7

I don’t let him pick me up.

I’d be insane to let Eddie see where I really live, and the thought of him and John crossing paths is enough to make me shudder. No, I want to exist only in Eddie’s world, like I’d sprung from somewhere else, fully formed, unknowable.

It’s true enough, really.

So, I meet him in English Village, a part of Mountain Brook I’ve never been to, although I’d heard Emily mention it. There are lots of “villages” in Mountain Brook: Cahaba Village, Overton Village, and Mountain Brook Village itself. It seemed silly to me, using a word like village to mean different part of the same community—just use neighborhood, you pretentious assholes, we don’t live in the English countryside—but what did I know?

I park far away from the French bistro where Eddie made a reservation, praying he won’t ask to walk me to my car later, and meet him under the gold-and-black-striped awning of the restaurant.

He’s wearing charcoal slacks and a white shirt, a nice complement to the deep eggplant of my dress, and his hand is warm on my lower back when the maître d’ shows us to our table.

Low lights, white tablecloths, a bottle of wine. That’s the part that stands out to me most, how casually he orders an entire bottle of wine while I was still looking at the by-the-glass prices, wondering what would sound sophisticated, but wouldn’t be too expensive.

The bottle he selects is over a hundred dollars, and my cheeks flush at knowing I’m worth an expensive bottle of wine to him. After that, I put the menu away entirely, happy to let him order for me.

“What if I pick something you don’t like?” he asks, but he’s smiling, His skin doesn’t seem as pale as it did that first day. His blue eyes are no longer rimmed with red, and I wonder if I’ve made him happy. It’s a heady thought, even more intoxicating than the wine.

“I like everything,” I reply. I don’t mean for the words to sound sexy, but they do, and when the dimple in his cheek deepens, I wonder what else I can say that will make him look at me like that.

Then his eyes drop lower.

At first, I think he’s looking at the low neckline of my dress, but then he says, “That necklace.”

Fuck.

It had been stupid to wear it. Reckless, something I very rarely was, but when I’d looked in the mirror before leaving, I’d looked so plain with no jewelry. The chain I’d taken from Mrs. McLaren wasn’t anything fancy, no diamonds or jewels, just a simple silver chain with a little gold-and-silver charm on it.

A bee, I now realize, and my stomach sinks, fingers twisting in my napkin.

“A friend gave it to me,” I say, striving for lightness, but I’m already touching the charm, feeling it warm against my chest.

“It’s pretty,” he says, then glances down. “My late wife’s company makes one similar, so …”

Eddie trails off, and his fingers start that drumming on the table again.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I … I heard about Southern Manors, and it’s—”

“Let’s not talk about it. Her.” His head shoots up, his smile fixed in place, but it’s not real, and I want to reach across the table and take his hands, but we’re not there yet, are we? I want to ask him everything about Bea, and forget she existed, all at the same time.

I want.

I want.

As the waiter approaches with our expensive wine, I smile at Eddie. “Then let’s talk about you.”

He raises his eyebrows, leaning back in his seat. “What do you want to know?” he asks.

I wait until the server has finished pouring a sample of the wine into Eddie’s glass, then wait for Eddie to take a sip, nod, and gesture for our glasses to be filled, a thing I’ve only ever seen happen in movies or on reality shows about rich housewives. And now it’s happening to me. Now I’m one of the people who has those kinds of dinners.

Once we have full glasses, I mimic Eddie’s posture, sitting back. “Where did you grow up?”

“Maine,” he answers easily, “little town called Searsport. My mom still lives there; so does my brother. I got out as soon as I could, though. Went to college in Bangor.” Eddie sips his wine, looking at me. “Have you ever been to Maine?”

I shake my head. “No. But I read a lot of Stephen King as a teenager, so I feel like I have a good idea of what it’s like.”

That makes him laugh, like I’d hoped it would. “Well, fewer pet cemeteries and killer clowns, but yeah, basically.”

Leaning forward, I fold my arms on the table, not missing the way his gaze drifts from my face to the neckline of my dress. It’s a fleeting glance, one I’m used to getting from men, but coming from him, it doesn’t feel creepy or unwanted. I actually like him looking at me.

Another novelty. “Living here must be a big change,” I say, and he shrugs.

“I moved around a lot after college. Worked with a friend flipping houses all over the Midwest. Settled in California for a bit. That’s where I first got my contractor’s license. Thought I’d stay there forever, but then I went on vacation, and …”

He trails off, and I jump in, not wanting another loaded silence.

“Have you ever thought of going back?”

Surprised, he pours himself a little more wine. “To Maine?”

I shrug. “Or California.” I wonder why he stays in a place that must have so many bad memories for him, a place in which he seems to stick out, just the slightest bit, to be set apart, even with all his money and nice clothes.

“Well, Southern Manors is based here,” he replies. “I could run the contracting business from somewhere else, but Bea was really set on Southern Manors being an Alabama company. It would feel … I don’t know. Like a betrayal, I guess. Moving it somewhere else. Or selling it.”

His expression softens a little. “It’s her legacy, and I feel a responsibility to protect it.”

I nod, glad our food arrives just at that moment so that this conversation can die a natural death. I already know how important Southern Manors is to him. In my Google stalking, I found several articles about how just a few months after Bea went missing, Eddie fought for a court order to have her declared legally dead. It had something to do with Southern Manors, and there was a lot of business and legal jargon in it I hadn’t understood, but I’d gotten the gist—Bea had to be dead on paper for Eddie to take over and run the company the way she would’ve wanted it to be run.

I wondered how that had made him feel, declaring his wife’s death in such a formal, final way.

As he cuts into his steak, he looks up at me, smiling a little. “Enough about me. I want to hear about you.”

I provide a few charming anecdotes, painting Jane’s life in a flattering light. Some of the stories are real (high school in Arizona), some are half-truths, and some are stolen from friends.

But he seems to enjoy them, smiling and nodding throughout the meal, and by the time the check comes, I’m more relaxed and confident than I’d ever thought I’d be on this date.

And when we leave, he takes my hand, slipping it into the crook of his elbow as we exit the restaurant.

It’s ridiculous, I know that. Me, here with him. Me, with my arm linked through his.

Me, in his life.

But here I am, and as we make our way to the sidewalk, I hold my head up higher, stepping closer to him, the edge of my skirt brushing his thighs.

The night is warm and damp, my hair curling around my face, streetlights reflecting in puddles and potholes, and I wonder if he’ll kiss me.

If he’ll ask me to stay the night.

I’m going to.

He’d ordered a piece of pie to go, and I think about eating it with him in his gorgeous kitchen. Or in his bed. Is that why he’d ordered it?

I think about walking into that house at night, how pretty the recessed lighting will be in the darkness. What the backyard will look like when the sun comes up. What his sheets feel and smell like, what it’s like to wake up in that house.

“You’re quiet,” Eddie says, tucking me closer to his side as we wander, and I tilt my head up to smile at him.

“Can I be honest?”

“Can I stop you?”

I nudge him slightly at that, feeling how solid and warm he is beside me. “I was thinking that it’s been a long time since I’ve been on a date.”

“Me, too,” he replies.

In the streetlights, he’s so handsome it makes my chest ache, and my fingers rub against the softness of his jacket, the material expensive and well-made. Nicer than anything I own.

“I’m—” I start, and he turns his head. I think he might kiss me there, right there on the street in English Village where anyone might see us, but before he can, there’s a voice.

“Eddie!”

We turn at almost the same time, facing a man on the sidewalk who looks like Tripp Ingraham or Matt McLaren or Saul Clark or any of the other pastel guys in Thornfield Estates.

He’s got his face screwed up, that expression of sympathy that twists mouths down and eyebrows together. His thinning blond hair looks orange in the streetlights, and when he lifts a hand to shake Eddie’s, I catch the glint of a wedding ring.

“Good to see you, man,” he says. “And so sorry about Bea.”

Eddie’s body is stiff against me. “Chris,” he says, shaking the man’s hand. “Nice to see you, too. And thank you. I really appreciated the flowers.”

Chris only shakes his head. He’s wearing a light gray suit, and there’s a Mercedes parked against the curb just behind him. A woman is still sitting in the passenger seat, watching us, and I feel like her eyes land on me.

I don’t tug at the skirt of my dress, the only nice one I have, but my fingers itch at my side.

“Awful thing, just awful,” Chris goes on, like Eddie doesn’t know that his wife drowning is a bad thing, but Eddie just grimaces and nods.

“Thanks again,” he says, because what can you say, I guess, but then Chris’s eyes flick briefly to me.

“She was a helluva woman,” he adds, and I can feel the questions that are clearly burning a hole in the roof of his mouth.

Who the hell am I, is this a date, is Eddie seriously going to replace Bea with me, this pale-faced plain girl in a dress that’s one size too big?

“She was,” Eddie replies, and I wait for it, the moment he’s going to introduce me.

Chris is waiting for it, too, but it passes with an awkward smile from Eddie and a firm pat on Chris’s shoulder. “See you around,” he says. “Tell Beth I said hello.”

Then we’re moving down the sidewalk, and Eddie has not looked at me since Chris appeared, since Bea’s name rose up like a ghost between us.

He doesn’t ask to walk me to my car.

And he doesn’t kiss me good night.

8

Everything in the Ingraham house feels like it’s waiting for Blanche to return.

I walk in the next morning, feeling heavy and slow, last night’s failed date with Eddie sitting like a rock low in my stomach. It somehow seems fitting that this should be the day I’d agreed to go over and start packing up some of Blanche’s stuff for Tripp.

Bea’s ghost last night, Blanche’s today.

It’s been months since she went missing, but one of her handbags is still sitting on the table in the foyer. There’s a pile of jewelry there, too, a coiled necklace, a careless pile of rings. I imagine her coming home from a dinner out, taking off all that stuff, tossing it casually against the wide glass base of the lamp, kicking her shoes just under the table.

The pair of pink gingham flats is still lying there, too. It was July when she went missing, and I imagine her wearing them with a matching pink blouse, a pair of white capris. Women here always dress like flowers in the summer, bright splashes of color against the violently green lawns, the blindingly blue sky. It’s so different from how things were back East, where I grew up. There, black was always the chicest color. Here, I think people would wear lavender to a funeral. Poppy-red to a wedding.

I’ve never tried to take anything from Tripp. Trust me, he’d notice.

Unlike Eddie, Tripp has kept all the pictures of Blanche up and in plain sight. I think he might have actually added some. Every available surface seems overcrowded with framed photos.

There are at least five of their wedding day, Blanche smiling and very blond, Tripp looking vaguely like her brother, and nowhere near as paunchy and deflated as he looks now.

He’s sitting in the living room when I come in, a plastic tumbler full of ice and an amber-colored liquid that I’m sure is not iced tea.

It’s 9:23 A.M.

“Hi, Mr. Ingraham,” I call, rattling my keys in my hand just in case he’s forgotten that he gave me a key so that I could let myself in. That was back when he still pretended like he might go into work. I’m not even sure what he does, if I’m honest. I thought he was a lawyer, but maybe I just assumed that because he looked like the type. He doesn’t seem to own any other clothes besides polo shirts and khakis, and there’s golf detritus all over the house—a bag of clubs leaning by the front door, multiple pairs of golfing shoes jumbled in a rattan basket just inside the front door, tees dropped as carelessly as his wife’s jewelry.

Even the cup he’s currently drinking his sad breakfast booze in has some kind of golf club insignia on it.

There’s a photo album spread across his lap and as I step farther into the dim living room, Tripp finally looks up at me, his eyes bleary behind designer glasses.

“Jan,” he says, and I don’t bother to remind him it’s Jane. I’ve already done that a few times, and it never seems to actually penetrate the muck of Woodford Reserve his brain is permanently steeped in.

“You asked me to start on the second guest room today,” I tell him, pointing upstairs, and after a beat, he nods.

I head up there, but my mind isn’t on Tripp and Blanche.

It’s still on Eddie, on our dinner last night. The way he’d just nodded when I had said I’d walk to my car on my own. How we’d hugged awkwardly on the sidewalk, and how quickly he’d walked away from me.

I’d thought—

Fuck, it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’d thought something was happening there, but clearly, I’d been wrong, and the only thing currently happening was that I was heading into the “second guest room” at the Ingrahams’ house to pack up … who knew what.

The bedroom was on the second floor, and it was relatively small, done all in shades of blue and semi-tropical floral patterns. There were boxes and plastic storage containers on the floor, but I had the feeling Tripp hadn’t put them there. He had sisters. Maybe they had come to prepare the room for me to pick up, a sort of pre-cleaning to maintain the fiction that Tripp had his shit together.

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.

9

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

BEA

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—

Eddie came in as I was writing that last entry. I was able to shove the book under the bed before the door was open, so he didn’t see that I was writing, thank god. I’m going to have to be more careful in the future.

It’s not much consolation, but he looks awful. Eddie has always been so polished, but today his eyes were red and his skin looked a little slack, almost gray. And as insane and fucked up as it is, for a second, I felt sorry for him. I wanted to help him. That’s how our marriage had always gone, after all. I was the planner, Eddie was the doer.

I waited for him to say something, for him to at least try to explain what the fuck is going on. I probably should have screamed at him, rushed toward him, hit him. Anything.

But I just sat there, frozen.

I’d like to blame it on the lingering effects of whatever drug he slipped me and Blanche, but from the second he’d walked in, I’d felt paralyzed with some combination of fear and shock.

All I could do was watch as he put bottles of water and packets of peanut butter crackers, plus a couple of apples and a banana, on the table near the door, his back to me.

Eddie killed Blanche.

He killed her, and he could kill me.

Eddie, my husband, my partner. The man I thought I knew so well. Who smiled at me the day we met with such sweetness in his eyes. Who always listened so carefully when I talked about my day, my business, my dreams. Who remembered little, silly things—like my favorite hot sauce or how I always liked my coffee with one regular sugar, one Splenda.

That man, my Eddie, was a murderer.

If I think too much, I feel like screaming, and I’m afraid if I start screaming, I’ll never stop, so instead, I’m taking deep breaths, even though the pattern—in for four, hold for four, out for six—reminds me of the yoga class Blanche and I took together just last month.

God, one month ago. It already feels like another lifetime.

Eddie didn’t speak to me, just set the food and water down, then went back out the door, and when he was gone, I laid down on the floor and cried, shaking so hard that my teeth chattered together.

How had I married a monster and never seen it until it was too late?

FOUR DAYS AFTER BLANCHE

Today, Eddie came in again, more water, more food, and this time, I tried to talk to him, but as soon as I said his name, he held up a hand, his face closed to me.

It was like looking at a stranger who shared Eddie’s familiar features. This cold, dangerous man was no one I knew, and when he left, all I felt was relief. This time, there were no tears, no shaking. Maybe writing all this down is helping after all.

SIX DAYS AFTER BLANCHE

It’s been two days since Eddie was last here, and in that time, I’ve felt myself growing calmer, saner.

I still don’t understand what his plan is, or why he’s keeping me here, why I’m not at the bottom of the lake with Blanche. But there has to be a reason, and I’m going to figure it out.

I have to be smart.

Smarter than Eddie.

It’s the only way I’m getting out of this alive.

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