Page 77 of The Wife Upstairs

Jealous.

Her name is Jane.

I got Eddie to tell me that much.

Today when he came in, I had just gotten out of the shower. That wasn’t intentional—I never know when he’ll show up, after all—but it still worked in my favor.

As soon as he saw me, standing there in a towel, his eyes went dark, hungry, and it was the easiest thing in the world to let the towel drop to the floor, to open my arms to him.

Afterward, he was like he always is after sex—looser, more vulnerable.

Easier.

“What she’s like?” I asked, and almost without thinking, he replied, “Jane?”

Jane.

Her name is Jane. A simple one. A plain one. Is she a simple, plain girl?

“She’s…” He trailed off, and I saw the guilt flicker across his face as he summoned her up in his mind even as he lay here in my bed.

“She’s nothing like you,” he finally said, and I wondered how he meant that.

But mostly, I wondered about her.

Was she downstairs in my house even now? Did she think about me, Eddie’s poor dead wife?

Did she hate me?

I would hate me if I were someone else.

APRIL, NINE MONTHS AFTER BLANCHE

It was stupid, the thing with the bed. I just wondered if she’d be able to hear it,Jane,somewhere below. I needed her to know that all of this—the house, the husband—are still mine.

Eddie asked me about it when he came up later. “Were you making noise up here?”

I spread my hands wide, inviting him to take in the room, to take in me. “How could I?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“Right,” he said, and turned to go.

I took his hand.

He didn’t leave.

MAY, TEN MONTHS AFTER BLANCHE

The days are relentlessly ticking by and I feel sanity slipping from me again. How has it been so many months since Blanche and I disappeared? And why am I still up here?

Sometimes it feels like I have my husband back. Some mornings I wake up convinced that this is the day that he’s going to tell me it’s all over, that I can come out of hiding now—until I rememberher.

I know a lot about Jane now. She was a foster kid, she lived in Arizona. Eddie met her because she was walking dogs in the neighborhood, but she lived in Center Point with some creep. She has brown hair, like me, but a few shades lighter. Apparently, she’s funny.

And she’s twenty-three.

Twenty-three.

There was a softness in Eddie’s face when he talked about her. It wasn’t a look I was familiar with. Eddie had looked at me with hunger, with anger, with admiration, but never softness.