Probably because he was little more than an image himself.

PART V

JANE

18

Eddie takes the detective out to the backyard. There’s no ride to the police station, no Eddie in the back of a car, and I tell myself that this isn’t serious. This is nothing, really.

If it were something, he wouldn’t be offering the detective bottled water with a smile.

I stand in the kitchen, absentmindedly cleaning the counters, putting glasses in the dishwasher, anything to keep my hands busy and make me look just as relaxed as Eddie does right now.

But I’m not Eddie, and when Detective Laurent comes back inside, I have to fight the urge to go hide in the bedroom and lock the door.

It sounds stupid, but I’d thought this kind of money and lifestyle insulated you from things like this, the police showing up at your door with questions and hard eyes.

The detective is friendly enough, though, holding up her empty bottle. “Recycling?” she asks, and I take it from her, smiling like I’m totally unbothered.

She leans on the counter, casual, and asks, “How long have the two of you been seeing each other?”

I have no idea if this is an actual question she’s asking as a police officer, or if she’s just making small talk, and my palms sweat as I reach up to tuck my hair behind my ear.

“A few months?” I say. “Eddie and I met back in February, started dating in March?”

Great, I’m doing the questioning thing that makes me sound like an unsure little girl, not the kind of woman who belongs in a house like this.

But the detective just smiles at me, her dark eyes warm, the skin around them crinkling.

“Your fiancé says you used to be his dog-walker.” Wrinkling her nose, she gestures around us. “I said, ‘What the hell do people in this neighborhood need a dog-walker for?’ but that’s the bougie set for you, isn’t it?”

I laugh along with her, nodding even as my heart keeps pounding and my hands keep shaking. “I said the same thing. But it was a good job, and I like dogs.”

I could not sound more insipid if I tried, but that’s the point, right? Make her think I’m no one worth even talking to. And whatever this is, it has nothing to do with me. Plain Jane, blending into the background again.

Drumming her nails on the counter—sensible, short, square, only one thin gold band on her left hand—Detective Laurent nods. “We all have to do what we can to get by,” she says, not unkindly, and then gives me a nod before checking the phone she has clipped to her belt.

“I better get going. Sorry again for interrupting y’all’s evening.”

“It was no problem at all,” I tell her, dying to ask why she’s here, what she said to Eddie, but also wanting her to go, to pretend that this night never even happened.

“Let me walk you out,” I offer, but she waves me off.

“No need.” Then, reaching into her jacket, she pulls out a business card and hands it to me. Unlike the card Eddie handed to John that day, this one is thin, the paper cheap. It’s stamped with the Mountain Brook PD’s crest, and has her name—Detective Tori Laurent—and number. “I told Mr. Rochester to call if he has any questions. You do the same, okay?”

And then she’s off, her sensible shoes squeaking on the floor, the front door opening and closing.

As though he’d been waiting for her to leave, Eddie comes in through the back sliding glass door and lets out a long breath, shoving his hands through his hair.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and I make myself smile up at him as I wrap my arms around his waist.

“Yeah, fine,” I say, even though I definitely am not. “What did she want?”

He leans in close, resting his chin on the top of my head. “To talk about Blanche. And Bea.”

“Did they find her?” My voice is quiet. It’s such a gruesome question, a gruesome image, them finding Bea after she’s been in the water this long …

“Not Bea,” Eddie replies, his voice rough. “Blanche, though. They found Blanche.”

“Jesus,” I mutter, trying hard not to think about what exactly they found as I pull out of his embrace.

His skin has gone a sort of grayish-green, and a muscle keeps ticking in his jaw. He looks more like the Eddie I first met than he has in ages, and my stomach lurches.

“Is there more?”

“She was … there was a fracture on her skull. Like she’d been hit by something. Or someone.”

He turns away from me, then, rubbing the back of his neck, and I stand there, absorbing the news, peeling through the shock and fear to see what this means.

Now I’m not just nauseous, I’m cold. Numb, almost as I reach up and press my fingers to my lips. “She was murdered?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.

Eddie still has his back to me, his shoulders tense, and I can’t help but add, “And Bea?”

“Considered a homicide, now, too,” he says. “That’s what they wanted to talk to me about. To tell me they’re now investigating her disappearance as a murder.”

I feel like my vision is graying out, and my knees are suddenly weak, watery. “Oh, god. Eddie.”

I don’t know what else to say.

We were finally starting to make peace with Bea’s ghost. We’re engaged, for fuck’s sake. Talking about a wedding. And it’s one thing to have lost your wife in a tragic accident. But to find out someone did it on purpose? That’s a nightmare.

And then another thought occurs to me. “They don’t…” I don’t even want to finish the sentence. Don’t want it hanging there in the air between us.

“Think I did it?” he asks, turning around. He’s still pale, but his expression isn’t quite so intense now. “No, they just wanted to let me know that things had changed. They’ll have questions, of course, but I got the impression they were looking at me as the grieving widower, not a suspect.”

The more he talks, the more that the normal Eddie, the Eddie I’m used to, starts bleeding back into his face and voice. I can practically see his other persona sliding on like a shell. Or a mask.

He looks at me then, frowning. “Christ, Jane, I’m so sorry.”