Page 70 of The Wife Upstairs

But I did hold her. I held her as she gasped for breath and shook and finally went still.

Pneumonia. It might have killed her even if the Brocks had gotten her to a hospital. She was so weak already.

I would never know.

So it had felt like a kind of poetic justice, that night that it was just me and Mr. Brock in the house. Mrs. Brock was at bingo, and by then, I was the only foster kid in their care.

He’d been watching TV, a baseball game, and some call had pissed him off. Sometimes that had meant one of us got hit, but that night, he’d just stood up, screaming at the television, his face red.

I’d been sitting at the kitchen table, filling out paperwork for a shitty fast-food job when he’d suddenly gasped, clutched his chest.

He’d had heart issues for a while. I never knew what was actually wrong with him, but I’d assumed a diet of whiskey, fries, and Pure Fucking Evil hadn’t helped.

He had pills for it. Big ones in an orange bottle, and he’d choked that word out as he turned to me, his face the color of old milk.

Pills.

I hadn’t gotten them.

He’d hit his knees, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, his eyes bugging out of his head.

Mr. Brock wasn’t a big man, wasn’t much bigger than me, really,but I still liked him there on his knees. I’d gotten up, stood over him while he stared at me, uncomprehending.

The word had come so easily to my lips.

Die.

I wanted him to die. For Jane.

So, I stood there, and watched him struggle and gasp, and when he tried to reach for his pills, just there on the little table between the two recliners, I’d taken them. Held them in front of him. Let him see that I had them.

And then I’d gone into the kitchen and poured them down the sink with shaking hands, turning on the garbage disposal for good measure.

I only left the house when I was sure he’d stopped breathing.

For the past five years, I’ve run from that night, from the knowledge that surely people remembered I was the only one at home when Mr. Brock dropped dead.

But I’d forgotten how disposable people like me really were. No one connected me leaving with him dying.

He had a heart condition, after all. And Helen had simply left town. She’d been just shy of her eighteenth birthday, a high school graduate, ageing out of the system already.

I’d left with Jane’s ID in my purse. Jane, who looked enough like me to be my real sister.

And I’d started over.

Successfully, it turned out.

Smiling, I start the car and head home. My new home.

My real home.

27

“Which dress should I wear?” I ask, and Eddie glances at the options I’ve laid out on the bed.

There are three: a simple cream-colored sheath dress, a sexier black number, and then a dress I’d ordered off of Southern Manors. Deep plum purple, green leaves embroidered on the Peter Pan collar, the sleeves capped. It’s way more twee than anything I’d usually wear, but I was curious what the dresses Bea had designed were like, and I wanted to see if Eddie would recognize it. And if he did, would he say anything?

But if the dress is familiar at all, he doesn’t show it. He just nods at the cream one and says, “I like that.”