Welcome to Case Closed.

You're listening to The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins,

narrated by Emily Schaefer, Lauren Fortgang, and Kirby Haybourne.

Let's pick up where we left off last time.

Chapter 6

Eddie isn't there when I walk Adele the next morning. His car is missing from the garage,

and I tell myself I'm not disappointed when I take the puppy from

the backyard and out for her walk. Thornfield Estates is just up the hill from Mountain Brook

Village, where I used to work. So this morning, I take Adele there, her little legs trotting happily

as we turn out of the neighborhood. I tell myself it's because I'm bored with the same streets,

but really it's because I want people to see us. I want people who don't know I'm the dog

walker to see me with Eddie's dog, which means in their heads I'm linked with Eddie. It makes me

hold my head up higher as I walk past Roasted, past the

little boutique selling things I now recognize as knockoffs of Southern Manors. I pass three

stores with brightly patterned quilted bags in the windows, and I think how many of those bags are

probably tucked away in closets in Thornfield Estates.

What would it feel like to be the kind of woman who spent $250 on an ugly bag just because you could?

At my side, Adele trots along, her nails clicking on the sidewalk,

and I'm just about to turn by the bookstore when I hear,

Jane? It's Mrs. McLaren. I walk her Dalmatian Mary Beth every Wednesday, and now she's

standing in front of me, a roasted cup in hand. Like Emily Clark, she wears fancy yoga clothes

half the time,

...