Like most nights, Tim and I watched TV after we ate the salmon burgers that he’d made while I was putting Clara down. We were watching one of the greatest episodes of The Office ever, when Michael and Jan host a torturous six-hour dinner party, but I couldn’t focus on it at all. All I could think about was what I’d be doing merely hours from now. Was I making a huge mistake? How had I let myself be talked into killing some guy I barely knew, to help a woman who I also barely knew? What the hell was I thinking? I had a great life. And I was jeopardizing it all to help Isabel.
It wasn’t just for Isabel, though. It was also for Allison, Vanessa’s sister. It was for me, so that I could say goodbye to that awful night once and for all. It was for every woman who’d become entangled in a situation she couldn’t safely or feasibly get out of. It was for Naomi, so that she wouldn’t have to grow up with a dad who was in all likelihood incapable of love and kindness.
And I was pretty sure that these women would do something this big for me, if I needed it. Having that in my life felt good.
The plan, which we’d pored over painstakingly in Montauk, seemed straightforward enough. At first, Connor would think it was just a confrontation. An act of rebellion on Isabel’s part that he’d later punish her for.
He’d pour himself a drink—something Isabel assured us he nearly always did when he came home, no matter how drunk he might already be, and would be certain to do tonight, given the crowd he’d be coming home to.
Apparently he used the same glass every night—a thick crystal tumbler, heavy as a cannonball and elaborately engraved with CH.
I’ve always hated monograms.
Unbeknownst to him, on this night, his special glass would be lightly doused with GHB, to slow him down and disorient him so that he wouldn’t be inclined （or at least able） to lash out or fight back.
Then, at the right moment, when he was distracted or weak, Vanessa would inject him with a lethal amount of a drug called Trilaptin that would freeze his muscles, including his heart, and make it appear that he’d had a heart attack. Vanessa had access to all the medical supplies we needed through her job. After the fact, Isabel would tell medical examiners he’d been complaining of arm pain and shortness of breath, to corroborate the likelihood of a heart attack. Oh, he had such a high-stress job. The poor guy was always working. Heart problems ran in his family. Not to mention he’d just endured the stress of his wife’s disappearance. A heart attack, even at his young age, seemed believable enough.
Officially, he would be alone in the house at the time of his death: just that afternoon, Isabel and Naomi and the dog would have gone to stay at her mom’s in Tarrytown for a couple of nights, as her mom was helping her recuperate from her recent ordeal. Connor worked long hours, after all, and Isabel was still fragile. She needed her mom’s help. So Connor likely wouldn’t be discovered until the next morning, or even afternoon, after failing to show up to work.
And any evidence of our footprint there, the moms’ group, would be easily explained by our meeting earlier that day, before Isabel left for Tarrytown. If it came up at all.
Of course, the Nest cameras would be offline, unfortunately. The town house frequently had Wi-Fi issues; it was surprising, considering how wealthy they were, that they hadn’t addressed this problem earlier. Freaking cable company.
So Connor would die alone in his home of a heart attack. End of story.
And yet, a big part of me wondered whether we could pull this off. And I knew I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to have made this huge decision. I hadn’t slept properly in nearly four months. I’d drunk what seemed like hundreds of bottles of wine. I was always in a fog. It was just days ago that I had convinced myself that I had had something to do with Isabel’s death. In some distant, imaginative corner of my mind, I’d even wondered if Tim could have been involved, after I’d seen his call log—if they’d been having an affair. It was so absurd, now, in retrospect. The fact was that it had been a while since I’d been at peace with myself, my thought processes, my rationale. And somehow, in this compromised state, I’d signed on to kill someone.
But it felt too late for hesitation. The choice had been made. I had to honor what I’d decided and trust myself. And the other moms.
Tim and I went to bed early, and I lay there beside him wide awake, waiting for it to be time for me to go. I wasn’t remotely worried that I’d fall asleep; I couldn’t have if my life had depended on it. Tim slept soundly beside me, snoring softly, though I could barely hear his snores over the drum of my own pounding heart. All these months I’d cursed him silently for being such a sound sleeper, but tonight I was relieved.