I couldn’t tell you why I went down to the lake.
Maybe it was because Tripp had stopped by, asking if I wanted a ride there, too, and I hadn’t known Bea had invited him.
Tripp and I hadn’t been friends or anything, but something about it, about the girls (women, I heard Jane say) going up there alone, then Bea texting Tripp to join them … something about it felt off.
I’d seen the way Tripp had been looking at Bea lately, with these sad puppy-dog eyes. I told myself it was because Blanche was making it so obvious that she was into me. He’d transferred affection or some shit.
But that didn’t mean I had to like it.
So, it had bothered me, Bea inviting him, and long after Tripp left, I’d sat there in the living room, thinking about it, probing it like a sore tooth.
Why would Bea want him there? She didn’t even like Tripp, and this was supposed to be some kind of girls’ bonding weekend.
The house is dark and empty when Eddie gets there.
Or he thinks it’s empty. After standing there in the living room, calling out to someone, he hears a snore from upstairs.
Tripp is in the guest room, passed out, his mouth open, his hand hanging off the bed. His snores are deep, congested, his breaths taking a while to come, and something about it strikes Eddie as weird. Unnatural.
But then again, Tripp is a drunk, maybe this is how they all sound.
The boat is gone, and there are signs they’d all three been there—Blanche’s purse hanging up by the door, Tripp’s keys on the counter, Bea’s overnight bag on one of the bar chairs by the counter.
Standing there in the living room, Eddie tells himself he’d been a complete jackass, that the girls had taken the boat out and were having a great time, and he’d let Blanche get to him with all that shit about Bea’s mom.
Then he looks out the back door and sees her.
Bea. Walking up the dock, soaking wet.
And Eddie knows.
And she had known he knew. He would remember the look on her face for the rest of his life, the way her jaw had clenched and her shoulders had gone back, head lifting as if to say, Try it, motherfucker.
And at first, Eddie makes the right decision. Taking her into his arms. Telling her he understands. Blanche knew this horrible thing about her, and she was telling people, what else could Bea do? She was protecting them, protecting everything they’d built, and wasn’t she smart, getting Tripp down here to take the fall? He was so drunk, they would say. He and Blanche got into a fight, and he hit her, hit her so hard. Bea had tried to save her—Blanche was her best friend!—but she’d been drinking, too, and it was so dark. She’d been so brave, diving into the water, swimming away to get help.
Smiling at Eddie, Bea rises up on tiptoes and kisses him. “I knew you’d get it,” she says.
Which is when Eddie grabs her, his arm cutting off her air, her feet scrabbling on the ground, fingers tearing a button off his shirt that he forgets about until days later, once Bea was safe in the panic room.
Safe.
That’s what he tells himself.
I couldn’t turn her in, or let her go to prison. Not for a murder this calculated, not in a death-penalty state, not when they might start asking the same questions about her mother that I’d been asking.
(Not to mention that a trial would kill the business. No one wants charming knickknacks from a murderer.)
But I also couldn’t let her just do this, couldn’t stomach the thought that the next time someone failed to fall in line with what Bea wanted, she’d just do away with them.
The panic room had been a solution.
Not the smartest, not the best, but fuck, what else could I have done?
Some of the pain was starting to recede now, or maybe I was just getting used to it. In any case, I could move more now, and even though my stomach roiled again, I was able to sit up.
Jane.
I didn’t love her, not really. I knew that now.
I’d wanted to. So much. In the beginning, it had felt so easy. I could just love someone else. I could have a fresh start. I could put everything with Bea behind me, forget what she’d done, what I’d done, what we’d done, and start over with Jane. Smart, funny Jane who saw the good parts of me, never the bad.
Bea had learned the truth about my family eventually. That I hadn’t spoken to my mom or my brother since I was eighteen even though they were both good people who hadn’t done anything wrong. Their only crime was that they were a reminder of how thoroughly mediocre my beginnings had been.
Jane didn’t know that, though. She didn’t know that my mom still tried to email me through the public address I had at Southern Manors, or that I deleted them as soon as they came in. Or that when my brother had tried to send us a Christmas card, I’d sicced our lawyers on him, implying that he was harassing us.
With Jane, I was getting a blank slate.
But a part of me had always known it was never going to be that easy. I might’ve told myself that I hid Bea away to protect the business, that it was better the world think she was dead than a murderer, but the truth was … I couldn’t bear to give her up.
It was that simple. That fucking terrifying.
I still loved her.
That’s what this had been, fucked up as it was. Love. Trying to save her from the outside world—and from herself.
“This is the best thing for you,” I’d told her that first night when I’d put her in the panic room as she’d gaped at me, confused and angry, and maybe a little scared.
And I’d believed that. I still did. But Jesus, now she was loose, in the house with Jane, resilient Jane who I should’ve let go from the start. She didn’t deserve this. I should never have proposed to her, not when I was still going into Bea’s room, seeing her, talking to her, sleeping with her. But I’d wanted to give Jane the thing she’d wanted. I’d somehow, stupidly, thought this might work out. That there was a way out that ended with all of us getting what we wanted.
And I’d wanted both Jane and Bea. Hadn’t been willing to give either of them up, keeping Bea upstairs, keeping Jane by promising to marry her, and now we were all fucked.
I should’ve known that Jane would figure this out. She kept getting so close, and for all that naïve young woman act, I knew she was as sharp as a drawer of fucking knives.
I, on the other hand? Curious, impulsive, greedy.
With a groan, I managed to get on my knees. I wasn’t tied up or restrained in any way, just locked in an inescapable room.
Except that it had never been completely inescapable. There was one guaranteed way out. There always had been. I was just the only one who knew it because I was the one who’d built this fucking house.
It was dangerous, though. Stupid, even. And possibly deadly.
But I had to try.