Page 49 of The Wife Upstairs
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The casseroles start showing up the next day.
First, it’s Caroline McLaren with chicken Divan and a big hug. “Oh god, this is all just soawful,” she says, before tapping the foil covering her glass dish and saying, “And this can’t go through a dishwasher.”
Emily and Campbell are just a couple of hours behind her. They bring three big paper bags full of things from the gourmet store in the village, the place that makes the fancy dinners you can pass off as your own.
As I stack the foil containers in the freezer, Emily and Campbell sit at the island, sipping the iced coffees they’d brought with them, which is kind of a shame because I already feel like drinking today. I know they’re just dying to ask a thousand questions, and I could use the fortification.
“How’s Eddie holding up?” Emily asks when I close the freezer and turn back to them. Outside, it’s started to rain, and I think back to that first day I met Eddie, the gray skies, the slick roads.
“Not great,” I reply. “I think he’s still in shock, really.”
“We all are,” Campbell says, stabbing her straw into her drink. “I mean… it just never occurred to any of us that they’d beenmurdered.I’ve never known anyone who was murdered.”
For the first time, I notice that her eyes are red, and that Emily isn’t wearing any makeup, and shit.
Shit.
I was so sure they were coming over here to get the dirt, but Bea and Blanche were their friends. Two women they’d loved whose deaths had seemed tragic, but at least accidental. Finding out that someone had killed them had to be awful, and here I am, thinking they just want gossip.
“How are the two of you?” I ask, leaning against the counter, and they glance at each other.
“Oh, honey, this isn’t about us,” Emily says, waving her hand, but Campbell says, “Not great, either.”
Another shared glance, and then Emily sighs, nodding. “It’s just a lot to absorb. That someone wanted them dead, that we’ve suddenly got the police around, asking questions…”
I’m starting to get too familiar with that feeling of my stomach dropping, the icy wave that breaks over me every time some new, ugly bit of information is revealed.
“They’re asking you questions?”
Campbell sighs as she rises. “Not yet, but I’ve got an interview scheduled with them later this week. Em?”
Emily nods again. “Yeah, Friday for me.”
I think of the two of them, sitting in a police station, answering questions about Bea and Blanche.
About me.
Because the detectives are going to ask, aren’t they? Where did I come from, how soon did Eddie and I start dating?
They’re going to look into whether I was around last summer or not, and suddenly I want both of them to leave, want to huddle in a ball on the sofa until this somehow magically all goes away.
But then Emily reaches across the counter and squeezes my hand. “I just hate that you have to deal with all this.”
My gut reaction is to snarl at her, to search her face for some sign that she’s actually loving this, but when I look at her, there isn’t any. Her gaze is genuinely warm and sympathetic, and I think back on all those times, sitting at lunch tables by myself, self-consciously tugging at the hem of a Salvation Army T-shirt, knowing it nevermattered what shoes people were talking about, or what CD everyone wanted, I was never going to be able to have those things.
I’d always thought it was just the money that I wanted, but looking at Emily now, I know I’ve wanted this, too. People to care about me. People to accept me.
And while it is weird as shit that, of all people, it would be this crew of Stepford Wives who let me in, they had.
And I was grateful for it.
“Thanks,” I reply, squeezing back.
My phone starts ringing on the counter, and as I glance at it, both Emily and Campbell stand up. “Get that, honey,” Emily says. “We can show ourselves out.”
I hear them make their way to the front door as I look at the screen.
