"Sponsorships. Advertising. But how many of those we get depend on how many downloads we receive." Mallory worries her bottom lip with her teeth. "Our numbers have been steadily decreasing. Jolene wants to bring in a digital marketer. Her goal is to get picked up by a podcast network, but right now we don't have the numbers for it."
We arrive at my car, and I open her door. Mallory slides in, and I place her bags in the trunk. "How did you get into podcasting?" I ask, when we're exiting the parking lot.
"I took psychology classes when I first got to college,and I was fascinated. But instead of going toward psychology, I got a degree in journalism and became an investigative reporter. Then I wrote an article about a true crime case that helped to exonerate the woman who had been found guilty and imprisoned. After that, Case Files was born."
I stare at her in awe. "That's one of the coolest things I've ever heard. You should walk around telling that story to everybody you meet."
"Right, the same way you tell everybody you meet that you're a gold medal Olympian?"
"That's different," I argue.
"How?" she shoots back.
"One is bragging, the other is just a really cool story."
Mallory looks south as I take the on-ramp for the freeway. "Do you see that little mountain over there?" She points at a large hill in the near-distance. "My mom and her husband have a house at the base of it."
"Do you want to stop and visit?"
Mallory shakes her head, sad but determined. "We don't talk much. After Maggie died, my mom couldn't bear to look at me. Fourteen years later, and she still can't."
"Because she's so fucked up over what happened?"
Mallory goes silent. Just when I think she's finished talking, she says in a voice so full of pain it rips my heart out, too. "Because it was my fault."
That makes me mad. NotatMallory, butforMallory. I understand her thinking that way when she was a kid,because I did the same. It's not abnormal for a child to find a way to blame themselves. But it has been fourteen years. Has nobody stepped up and told Mallory she's not to blame? And is Mallory really going to sit there and shoulder the blame? The guilt alone must be eating her alive.
"You are not responsible for what happened to Maggie. At all."
"I left her alone that day. I took her to the water park, and I was supposed to watch out for her, but I didn't."
If what Mallory needs is for me to defend her to herself, I will. I'll take her away from skeezy night managers, I'll rip dresses with broken zippers, and I'll keep her from continuing to play this unhealthy narrative she's spent far too long believing.
"Mallory," I say with every ounce of seriousness in my body. "If I wasn't driving in five lanes of traffic going seventy-five miles an hour, I would look you in the eyes while I say this: your sister died because a crazed lunatic decided to end her life. The same way my dad died. You didn't cause that. You didn't make it happen. You didn't ask that psychopath to make that choice. And the way your mom has acted since it happened is reflective of her, not of you. She's missing out on you, and that's really fucking sad."
Tears roll down Mallory's cheeks, and she dashes them away with the backs of her hands. Fucking traffic. Fuck this freeway. I want to hold her. Wipe her tears.
"Thank you," she says. "That's three times." I feel hereyes on me, the warmth of her gaze seeping into me. "Three times you've rescued me."
If my heart had biceps, it would be flexing them right now. That is how much I feel like Mallory's hero.
I am so far beyond fucked, I can't even see it in my rearview anymore.
Chapter 27
Mallory
I've been lookingfor Maggie. I went to the last place I saw her, those plastic beach chairs. Cold panic set in the longer I looked.
There was a scream, and it drew me here.
To this bathroom on the far end of the water park, shaded by fake palm trees, beside a Sno-Cone hut with a Closed sign hanging unevenly.
I push my way through the small crowd blocking the entrance to the bathroom, women in shorts and one-piece swimsuits, some turning away to cover their children's eyes.
The tile floor of the bathroom is old. Cracked. Worn from years of parkgoers. The smell inside is unpleasant, like the chemicals they use in the water but also of sulphur from the drains.
Three stalls, and a fourth at the end, larger than the others. Door flung open.
