“You’re nothing like he described.”
I stand there in the hallway, my arm still aching from where I hit Eddie with that goddamn pineapple. I hit him too hard, I know that. And in a weird spot. I could still feel bone crunching, could see the teeth on the carpet. We had left him in there, closing and locking the doors behind us, and there’s no sound, no sign that he’s conscious or even alive in there.
And Bea Rochester is standing in front of me.
Alive.
Because Eddie had her locked in their fucking panic room. Oh, and apparently talked to her about me.
It’s all so bizarre I can’t even think how to reply, finally stuttering, “The p-police. We need to call—”
“What I need,” Bea says, loudly sighing, “is a fucking drink.”
Bea moves down the stairs with the same confidence and focus I’d always imagined she’d have, her head high, her movements sure. I trail behind, arms wrapped around my middle, wishing I weren’t still in my jogging gear from earlier this morning.
Bea is already in the kitchen when I get downstairs, going into the butler’s closet. It’s a narrow room between the kitchen and the laundry room with a little sink, wineglasses, and several bottles of wine, plus the whiskey Eddie likes.
I hang back as Bea opens a cabinet, her eyes moving over the bottles of wine in their little wooden cubbies. “Did the two of you drink the 2009 Mouton Rothschild?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder at me, and I stand there, my hands at my sides, arm still aching from the force I’d used in my hit to Eddie’s head.
I feel like what I am—an imposter.
And I can’t believe how … calm she is. How in control. I feel like the entire world has been turned on its head, and she’s selecting wine.
But Bea only shakes her head, fingers dancing over the bottles. “The 2007 is still here. That’ll do.”
She plucks the bottle from its hiding place, then slides two glasses from the rack affixed under the counter, her movements smooth and sure.
And for the first time, I realize that this really was her house. It could never have been mine, and it sure as fuck wasn’t Eddie’s.
Pausing between the kitchen and the dining room, she glances at me again. “Grab the corkscrew, will you?”
That I can do, at least, and I open one of the drawers in the kitchen, pulling out the corkscrew before following Bea into the dining room.
She opens the wine, pouring us each a glass, then gestures for me to sit. She takes her own seat at the head of the table, and for a moment, I wonder if I’m supposed to sit at the other end, the two of us facing off like medieval queens.
Instead, I sit at her left, not in the chair closest to her, but one over, leaving some space between us, but not a football field length of oak table.
This is the same place where she posed for that Southern Living interview a few years ago, only now she’s wearing wrinkled silk pajamas, her nails a ragged mess. But even though she looks like hell—pale, her hair longer, split ends fraying over her shoulders, dark circles beneath her eyes—underneath I can see the Bea Rochester I’d spent so much time imagining. The woman who built an empire out of gingham and bowls shaped like fruit, a brand modeled after a certain lifestyle she hadn’t been born into but clawed her way toward just the same.
One of those bowls sits on the table now, filled with lemons, and she reaches out, pulling the bowl close to her before plucking a lemon free and rolling it in her hands as she thinks.
I pick up my glass now, taking a deep sip, the rich cabernet exploding on my tongue as Bea rolls that lemon back and forth between her palms.
Finally, she puts it back in the bowl and looks at me.
“So. Jane.”
“So. Bea,” I reply in the same tone and she smiles at me. Well, smirks, really, just one corner of her mouth lifting, and I realize I’ve seen that exact expression on Eddie’s face before. Did she pick it up from him or vice versa?
Spreading her hands, she asks, “What do we do now?”
I like that word, we. And I like the way Bea looks at me, like she’s actually seeing me, not Jane-the-Dog-Walker, not the sad girl her asshole husband almost tricked into marrying him. The real me.
Lifting the wine bottle, I top off my glass. Hers is still full, so I set the bottle back on the table with a thump. Outside, a storm rages, rain splattering against the glass, thunder shaking the house every few minutes. There might also be the occasional thump from upstairs, but I can’t tell.
I think of Eddie, sprawled on the floor of the panic room and wait to feel guilt, or regret, or … something.
Nothing comes except a queasy sort of relief. I was right. All those suspicions I had, all those bad feelings, they weren’t lying to me. My instincts were as sharp as they’d ever been. And now Bea was safe.
“We need to call the police,” I say again. “Tell them the whole story, all of it.”
Bea nods, thinking that over. “The whole story. What do you think that is?”
Even though my mind has been reeling for the last few hours, ever since Tripp, ever since I found the diary, I’ve gotten good at thinking on my feet over the years and getting past shock as quickly as possible. That’s been a necessary survival skill.
It serves me well now.
“I’m guessing Blanche is really dead,” I say to Bea. “But it probably wasn’t an accident like everyone thinks.”
“They were having an affair,” Bea answers, her voice mild, but a muscle quivers in her jaw, and she briefly clenches her teeth before continuing. “Eddie, of course, thought I’d never find out, but I knew almost from the start. He’s never been as smart as he thinks he is.”
I remember his story about “transitional seasons” and “raccoons in the attic,” and snort, picking up my wine. The ground underneath my feet is starting to feel more solid now.
“But then Blanche had an attack of conscience, I guess. We’d been friends since we were kids, and maybe loyalty meant more to her than she thought. Or hell, maybe she just wanted to rub my face in it. Anyways, I knew the reason she’d invited me to the lake that weekend was to tell me.”
She sips her wine delicately. “And I guess Eddie knew, too. And he’d rather kill Blanche than have me hear the truth.”
Except that Bea invited Blanche. It was her lake house.
I frown a little, but don’t say anything, and Bea goes on.
“Classic Eddie. Always wanted just one more slice of cake, just one extra turn at bat. But he also knew that all of this”—she spreads her hands again, taking in the house, the neighborhood, probably their entire lives—“is mine. Couldn’t have me divorcing him, now, could he?”
“So why not kill you, too, then?” I am doing a good job, I think, of sounding calm, but now my heart is racing because this isn’t true. None of what she’s saying is true.
She’s a good liar, I’ll give her that. Definitely better than Eddie. But I recognize this shit, and nothing she’s saying is adding up.
Leaning forward, Bea folds her arms on the table, the sleeves of her pajama top riding up to reveal thin, elegant wrists. “I could never quite figure that out,” she admits. “And trust me, I’ve had some time to mull it over. I think—”
“He loved you,” I say, the words sour in my mouth. Because even though the story Bea is telling me doesn’t make sense, somehow this explanation … does.
He loved her. Whatever happened here was fucked up and twisted, and Eddie could be ruthless. I remembered him with John. If he’d thought Bea was in his way, really in his way, I didn’t doubt he could’ve killed her.
Instead, she was still here.
Bea looks at me, and for just a second, her confidence falters. She didn’t expect that answer.
I watch her look down at the table, and then, after a beat, she lifts her head, shrugs. “Maybe. In any case, that’s the story I can tell. He murdered Blanche, faked my death, then kept me locked away in this house like something out of a goddamn gothic novel while he seduced the naïve young woman who walked his dog.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Thoughts?”
I take a long, deliberate sip of wine. “I guess that’s a version of the truth.”
“But you don’t like it.”
I don’t. I don’t want to be the tragic ingenue, the idiot who got duped by a handsome face and a huge bank account.
A victim.
I sit back in my chair, looking at Bea. Maybe it’s the wine, but she’s not looking quite so pale now, and even with her messy hair and pajamas, she looks almost … elegant.
“Why aren’t you more freaked out?” I ask her now, and she meets my eyes across the table. She has pretty eyes, big and dark, her lashes thick without mascara.
“Why aren’t you?” she counters. “You just found out the man you love is a murderer and his dead wife is alive. A little screaming and crying wouldn’t be unheard of.”
I don’t answer.
“Do you know what I think?” she continues. “I think there’s a reason Eddie fell for both of us. No”—she holds up a hand, cutting off my attempt to demur—“he genuinely cares for you. He wouldn’t have risked bringing you into his life if he didn’t. But I think we’re a lot alike, Jane.”
“That’s not my real name,” I say, before I can stop myself, and she smiles.
“And Bea isn’t mine.”
“I knew that,” I tell her. “Tripp.”
She rolls her eyes. “Fucking Tripp.”
I almost laugh at that because I know how she feels. But there’s still something so … wrong about all this. She’s too calm, too collected, too in control for a woman who just went through the most harrowing thing I can think of.
Then she leans forward and says, “Eddie said you were nothing like me. I don’t think that’s the case.”
I look at her, sitting there like a queen, lying through her teeth, and I know they’re the only truthful words she’s uttered.