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 23

Girl, I swear you've gotten even skinnier! Emily is smiling as she says it to me, and I think

it's a compliment, but I can barely make

myself smile back at her. We're standing in the open courtyard at the first Methodist church,

people milling all around us, and I'm too aware of both how hot the evening is, even though

the sun is going down, and also how wrong my outfit is. In my defense, I had no idea what the fuck one was

supposed to wear to a silent auction at a church on a Wednesday night, and black had seemed a

safe choice, sophisticated, respectable. But all the other women are in bright colors, flower prints,

that kind of thing, and I feel like

a crow standing around a bunch of flamingos.

Eddie must have known it was wrong, but he hadn't said anything.

And I fight the urge to glare at his back as he stands there, talking to the Reverend.

Now I smoothed my dress over my thighs and say,

Pre-wedding jitters, to Emily who nods and pats my arm sympathetically.

You're lucky. When I got married to Saul, my stress response was to eat everything in sight.

Her husband is over near a giant Azalea bush, chatting with Campbell's husband Mark and Caroline's husband Matt. I realize that I hardly ever see Eddie with those guys and that he never mentions

them. Did the neighborhood pull back from him after everything with B. and Blanche? Or does he find

these people as insufferable as I do?

...