Honeymoon

Chapter 26

THE PINE WOODS Psychiatric Facility, a New York State- run institution, was in Lafayetteville, about an hour-and-a-quarter drive heading north from Westchester. Unless, of course, you were Nora in her new Benz convertible. Zipping along the winding, forest-lined Taconic Parkway at over eighty miles an hour, she turned up at the hospital a solid fifteen minutes sooner.

Nora found a parking space and put the top up with a single press of a button. Neat. She did a quick check in the vanity mirror and shook her hair back into place. No touch-up on the makeup was needed. She was barely wearing any to begin with. Then, for some crazy reason, she had a thought about Connor’s sister—the Ice Blonde. Something about Elizabeth bothered her. As if there hadn’t been closure between them.

Nora shrugged it off. She locked up the convertible—even out here in the boonies. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a simple white button-down shirt. Clutched under her arm was a bag from a bookstore. As she walked toward the entrance of the main redbrick building, there wasn’t another soul on the grounds.

She knew the routine inside by heart. A visit every month for the past fourteen years guaranteed that.

First came the obligatory check-in at the front desk. After showing a photo ID of herself, Nora signed in and was given a pass.

Next she made her way to the elevator bank, to the left of the desk. One was open and waiting.

During her first year of coming to the facility, it was the second-floor button she pushed. After twelve months, though, her mother was moved to an upper floor. Though no one ever admitted it to Nora, she knew that the higher up the room, the less likely the chance of the patient’s ever being released.

Nora stepped onto the elevator and pressed eight.

The top floor.