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.