He stands still, watching me, waiting. “Okay,” he says, and his voice is soft, patient. “Want to start now?”

I nod, and then I take one of the bigger gambles of my life. I tell him the truth.

“I was in foster care from the time I was three until I aged out of the system. That dad I mentioned the other day … he wasn’t my real dad, he was my foster dad, and not a very nice one at that. I don’t even know who my parents were. I mean, I know their names, but just on paper. I have no memories of them. I don’t even know who I really am. Is that actually someone you want to be with? Someone who comes from nothing?”

He sets his glass down on the counter and crosses over to me in a few strides.

“Yes,” he says. His voice is low, and his hands are resting on my bare arms. I feel that touch all the way down to my toes, and when I tug my lower lip between my teeth, I see the way his eyes follow the motion.

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Jane. Knowing that about you, imagining all that you must have gone through…” He trails off, his eyes searching mine, and there’s so much empathy and kindness there, my legs buckle a little. “It doesn’t make me want you less. It makes me want you more,” he finishes, and it is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

“Eddie,” I start, and his grip tightens.

“No,” he replies. “If I wanted an Emily Clark or a Campbell Reed, I’d be with them. I’m with you because I want you, Jane.”

Eddie lowers his head, and his lips brush mine, just barely. A sharp sting, his teeth biting lightly, desire flooding through me so hard I nearly shake with it.

“My Jane,” he says, his voice low and rough, and I swallow hard, nothing feigned now, no illusion.

“I’m not yours,” I manage to say. “I’m free as a fucking bird.”

That makes him smile, and when he kisses me again, I use my teeth this time, nipping at the same place on his mouth where he bit mine.

I’m not leaving tonight, and we both know it.

I’m not leaving ever again.

PART II

 

BEA

JULY, ONE DAY AFTER BLANCHE

I don’t know who I’m writing this for.

Me, I think. A way to get this all down while it’s still fresh in my mind. I can’t let myself hope that someone will find it. It hurts too much to hope for anything right now.

But maybe if I write everything down in black and white, some of it will start to make sense to me, and I can keep from going crazy.

Last night was the first time I understood how easily sanity can slip right through your fingers.

Eddie included a book in the supplies he brought me, a cheap paperback I’d had since college, and I found a pen wedged in the back of a drawer in the bedside table we carried up here just a few months ago.

There’s something especially bizarre about this, about writing my own story over the words I read and reread when I was younger.

But it’s even harder to write the truth.

Last night, my husband, Edward Rochester, murdered my best friend, Blanche Ingraham.

Blanche is dead. Eddie killed her. I’m locked away in our house. No matter how many times I repeat these facts to myself, they still feel so wrong, so crazy, that I can’t help but wonder if this is all some kind of awful hallucination. Or that maybe I drowned along with Blanche and this is hell.

That almost makes more sense than this.

But no. Blanche and I went to the lake house for the weekend, a girls’ trip that was supposed to give us a chance to spend some time together. We’d both been so busy—me with running Southern Manors, Blanche dealing with Tripp—and to just sit and talk with my best friend, to drink wine and laugh like we’d been doing since we were teenagers had been … perfect. That weekend was perfect.

I’m replaying it all in my head to convince myself that there wasn’t any sign of what would happen next.

It’s hard to untangle, you see.

I remember Eddie showing up unexpectedly, and the three of us deciding to take the boat out for a midnight cruise. Eddie was driving, Blanche and I were dancing to the music piping out of the speakers. Then my head was heavy, my thoughts fuzzy, and it was dark. Blanche was screaming, I was in the water, and it was warm, warm like a bath, and I knew I had to keep swimming and swimming, but when I got to the shore, Eddie was already there, and there was a blinding pain in my head, and then blackness. When I opened my eyes, I was … here.

In this room.

It was Eddie’s idea to add a panic room to the third floor, after watching some 60 Minutes episode about how they were all the rage in new construction. I’d gone along with it when he’d renovated the house because I wanted our new home to have the best of everything, and if it made him happy, why not?

I would’ve done anything to make Eddie happy.

And it had been his idea to make it more than just an empty space, too. He’d been the one to suggest the bed.

“In case we get stuck in here for a while,” he’d teased, grabbing me around the waist, pulling me close, and even though we’d been married for almost a year by that point, I felt the same thrill that had shot through me the first night he’d kissed me.

I’d never stopped feeling that for Eddie. Maybe that’s why I’d never seen this coming. I’d been too in love, too trusting, too—

 

* * *

 

Eddie came in as I was writing that last entry. I was able to shove the book under the bed before the door was open, so he didn’t see that I was writing, thank god. I’m going to have to be more careful in the future.

It’s not much consolation, but he looks awful. Eddie has always been so polished, but today his eyes were red and his skin looked a little slack, almost gray. And as insane and fucked up as it is, for a second, I felt sorry for him. I wanted to help him. That’s how our marriage had always gone, after all. I was the planner, Eddie was the doer.

I waited for him to say something, for him to at least try to explain what the fuck is going on. I probably should have screamed at him, rushed toward him, hit him. Anything.

But I just sat there, frozen.

I’d like to blame it on the lingering effects of whatever drug he slipped me and Blanche, but from the second he’d walked in, I’d felt paralyzed with some combination of fear and shock.