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 pinkish-red 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.