Honeymoon

Chapter 19

THE FIRST THING Nora did was to clean up the broken glass off the bathroom floor.

The second thing was to scrape the remains of the omelet down the disposal, turn on the disposal, then thoroughly wash the plate, fork, and omelet pan.

The third was to fix herself a stiff drink.

Half a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue, straight up, and it was gone in about half a second. She poured herself a little more and sat down at the kitchen table. She gathered her thoughts. Went over her lines. Drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

It was showtime.

Nora calmly walked over to the phone and dialed. She reminded herself: The cleverest liars don’t give details.

After two rings, a woman picked up and said, “Nine-one-one Emergency.”

“Oh, God!” Nora screamed into the phone. “Please help me, he’s not breathing!”

“Who’s not breathing, ma’am?”

“I don’t know what happened, he was eating when all of a—”

“Ma’am,” the operator interrupted. “Who’s not breathing?”

Nora sniffed, her lungs heaving. “My fiancé!” she wailed.

“Is he choking?”

“No!” she cried. “He just started to feel sick and… and… then he…” Nora stopped. She thought unfinished sentences might be more convincing on 911 tapes.

“Where are you, ma’am? What’s your address?” asked the operator. “I need an address.”

Nora alternated between sputtered words and more crying until she’d finally given Connor’s address in Briarcliff Manor.

“Okay, ma’am, stay put. Try to be calm. An ambulance will be there right away.”

“Oh, please hurry!”

Nora hung up the phone. She figured she had maybe six or seven more minutes to herself. Plenty of time for the last bit of cleanup.

The bottle of Johnnie Walker would stay out, she decided, as would the glass she poured it in. After all, who could blame her for having a drink at a time like this? The pill bottle, on the other hand, would definitely not stay out.

She placed it back in her suitcase, burying it deep in her medicine bag, which itself was buried deep beneath her clothes. Were anyone ever to find it and read the label, they’d see that she took 10 mg tabs of Zyrtec for her seasonal allergies. Asking to borrow one would be extremely ill advised, though.

Nora zipped the suitcase closed and carried it up to the master bedroom. There, she applied the finishing touches in front of a full-length mirror. She untucked her T-shirt from her jeans and yanked on the collar a few times. She followed that by vigorously rubbing her eyes to make them red. With a flurry of blinks she forced out a few more tears to further streak her makeup.

There, that ought to do it.

Nora was ready for the next act.