Page 5 of Over Her Dead Body

My gate is twenty feet away in the other direction. They're boarding my group. I can hear it. I can see the line moving through the door. Vienna. The Bauer sale. My checked bag is on that plane. My career is on that plane. Everything sensible I have ever done is on that plane.

I should be on that plane.

Instead, I am looking at my dead husband.

The screen above his gate says Lisbon. Boarding.

Lisbon is not the moon. The Bauer sale doesn't start until Friday. Margot can cover a day. All I need is five minutes alone with him and one honest answer to a very simple question: why did you let me bury you?

Then I can get on another plane and resume being a person whose problems fit on a calendar.

There are several things a reasonable person might do in this situation. Fall apart, for instance. Call someone. Sit down. Walk twenty feet to the left and get on the plane to Vienna and go do the job and never mention this to anyone.

I almost text Margot. Historically, that is what I do when I don’t know what to do. She sends back something unhelpful and correct, and I do exactly what she says.

But I already know what she will say.

Walk twenty feet to the left. Get on the plane to Vienna.

Margot would be right.

But nobody knows what they would really do in a moment like this until they are standing in the terminal.

I am a reasonable person. I am also the woman who once pulled a seven-figure Klimt from a sale because one date in thirty years of provenance was wrong and everyone involved wanted me to stop looking at it.

I was right.

I know how to read a situation.

I know when to walk away.

Which has never once guaranteed that I will.

I pick up my carry-on and walk to the airline counter.

I buy a full-fare ticket to Lisbon on a company card that is meant for client dinners and business travel. The charge is going to be spectacular. The explanation is going to be worse.

These are problems for a version of me that is not currently watching her dead husband board a plane. I file them under later and hand over the card.

I text Margot.

Cover for me.

Then a second message.

Encountered a slight delay. I’ll explain later.

I won't explain later. Not accurately. By then, I intend to be in Vienna, and explanations improve considerably when delivered from the place you were supposed to be. Until then, Margot will keep Bauer upright. She will also hold this over me until one of us is dead, which is a word I am apparently going to have to redefine.

I board the flight.

I take a window seat three rows behind him. He doesn't turn around. Of course he doesn't. As far as Reid is concerned I am a stranger on a plane.

I watch the back of his head and I think about the casket I picked out. The headstone with his name on it. The guest book I held through the entire service because no one told me where to put it down.

Ten hours to Lisbon. Ten hours in this seat, three rows behind a man I mourned for a decade.

The flight attendant begins the safety demonstration. Reid settles into his seat. I reach for the airsick bag in the seat pocket in front of me, lean forward, and throw up.