A fact that Mallory files away just in case. Even amid all this, whatever “this” is, Mallory’s brain never fully disconnects from her career. She refuses to apologize for being ambitious, for wanting her company to succeed, for the hope that AIM being on the morning show was happening at home. She’s worked half her life for this, and she deserves it. They deserve it. And maybe it will be the key to changing Ilena’s mind about leaving AIM. Because one thingThe Shandy Shane Showmade clear is that Mallory can and will take AIM public without Ilena. The thought punches a hole in her heart, same as the thought of taking AIM publichere. Because here isn’t home. Here is where Grayson Fields is dead.
She steadies her racing pulse and types “theories for parallel universes” into her browser. She watches the links pop up and begins skimming articles, her heart pounding in time with her scrolling, her brain hurting with every article she attempts to read. By the time she sets down her phone and drinks her untouched coffee, it’s long past cold. She blinks, trying to reinvigorate her tired eyes. She searches the tote she grabbed at Grayson’s for drops and finds a pair of cat-eyed reading glasses. Oh, for Chrissake. Her oval face is entirely the wrong shape for cat eyes. Still, she puts them on, and instantly the shaky letters sharpen. Is it possible that this Mallory is older?
Feeling superior physically, Mallory wonders which of them is lacking mentally. Trying to make sense of all this is about to give her an aneurysm.
She’s been here nearly an hour. Ilena’s going to send out the National Guard, or at the very least, Noreen.Noreen.Mallory better have Noreen here, or a Noreen equivalent. As Harley wriggles inside the carrier, Mallory finishes her cold coffee, tucks her phone in her bag, and hits the sidewalk.
She follows her mental grid of the city streets and chews on “Schrödinger’s cat” and “Copenhagen interpretation” and “Einstein’s wormholes” and “collapsing wave functions.” Terms and theories that make her long for Jonah’s science fiction–honed mind. She should have paid more attention when he recounted his latest geeky read.
Still, no matter her level of comprehension, everything she scrolled through points to the same conclusion: parallel universes are theoretically possible. Controversial, complicated, for sure, but not solely the stuff of science fiction books and movies. As much as, logically, the multiverse theory screams otherwise.
How is this physics and math and not woo-woo crap? That every time a decision is made, the outcome not taken branches off into a different reality?Every time.That means the universe, Mallory’s universe—the one where Grayson’s alive and her wardrobe doesn’t appear to come from a cruise ship’s gift shop—has split and is still splitting into near-infinite alternatives, each slightly or wildly different from one another. That’s what this is. But then again, itcan’tbe what this is. Every article she read and those she simply scanned and searched for terms likecollideormeetorcrosssaid the same thing: they shouldn’t be able to intersect.
But what if they can?
What if they have?
Is there a third and a fourth and a fifth Mallory about to approach an animal shelter with hands shaking from having possibly, probably, potentially just committed intentional or unintentional murder?
At her feet, Harley gives that same small whimper, and Mallory bends before the carrier. Her trembling fingers unzip the flap. What if the thing has to go? She can’t let him soil himself in there. The shelter might not take a dog with crap matted into its fur.
The dog creeps forward, and Mallory’s fingertips graze its soft hair, not fur. He tilts his head to look at her, and she reaches into the carrier’s side pocket for the bag of dried minnows. The security guard, Archie, had given the treats to her as the three of them left Grayson’s building, Mallory quelling the tremble in her voice at the image of Grayson underneath that blanket. She nodded along as if dogs eating fish was something she knew, otherwise she might have undermined her whole dog-sitting story.
Harley sniffs the stinky creature but doesn’t move to eat it. He pads closer to Mallory. She never thought puppy dog eyes were real until this moment.
“It’s temporary,” she says.
Harley places a paw on her leg, and all Mallory can see is Grayson’s loafer, his leg bent in a way it couldn’t possibly be.
But was.
Because he was dead. Most likely of anaphylactic shock. Yet the question is how that could have happened. She both wants to know and doesn’t want to know. Because she’d have never put out the crackers by mistake. Sure, sure, because of her position as CEO of a health and wellness company, but also because of what nearly happened a year ago. The night of the launch party for “How Wide’s My Smile,” the night she and Graysonwent to that vegan restaurant. The server had been new. Rather disturbing to wonder what he must have thought it referred to, he hadn’t known the chef’s reference of “Brazilians” in the amuse-bouche of a shot glass of carrot soup meant “Brazilian nuts.” Thankfully, the host who’d taken the reservation and noted Grayson’s nut allergy had intervened right before Grayson lifted the glass.
Grayson didn’t carry an EpiPen. Hubris or stupidity or both. He could have died. While Mallory watched. They hadn’t slept together yet, that would happen hours later, but the image had curdled the launch party cocktail in her stomach.
After, she had Noreen poll the entire company on allergies, each one noted in a searchable database and listed on foods served at every AIM event since. And that day, Mallory swore off the nut crackers that had once been her snack bag staple.
Her breaths shorten, echoing in her ears, and she wants to focus on the sound. If she focuses on the sound, she’s not focusing on Grayson, her hands on his cold skin, her fingertips on his lifeless eyelids, his palm on her warm inner thigh, their synchronous fist pumps when they got their first valuation for AIM. All replaced by their clipped tones at the outing. He was the first investor who had truly believed in her. They are so very alike.Wereso very alike.
“It’s temporary,” she says again.
Screw the internet. If these worlds intersected once, they can intersect again, which means she’ll be back in her world with Grayson alive and everything will be as it was. Maybe not good, but also not this.
She leans over the dog, and he scurries into her lap, those goddamn puppy dog eyes so trusting, so searching, so sad. Or maybe she’s projecting that last part.
She needs to do a hell of a lot more googling. Including onhow to take care of a dog. And get urine out of linen because the furball did have to go.Christ.
Now, why hadn’t she thought of that? This Mallory punched through the walls on either side of her original office to make a suite. A lounge area with a couch, wet bar, kitchenette—she could live here. Or at least, Harley could.
She opens the front of the carrier, and he lazily stretches himself out of it, as if knowing he’s won. She needs to set a reminder to walk him, or better yet, have Noreen set a reminder, and she really, really hopes she has not just a Noreen equivalent here butherNoreen, craving the familiarity. The shaking of her hands has traveled up her arms and into her neck, and she’s on the verge of becoming one of those plastic bobbleheads.
Mallory breathes in and out as she circles her office suite, Harley her shadow. Her eyes land on a glass bowl filled with individually wrapped chocolates bearing the blocky AIM logo she saw on the morning show. It’s not the sleek, somewhat abstract logo the three of them had landed on all those years ago. It’s better.
Shit.She shoves the bowl, and chocolates fall to the floor. Harley scurries back. Yet his nose quickly overcomes his fear, and he begins to flip one, end over end. Mallory picks up the chocolate, peels the paper back, and Harley sits. A slight smile creeps in as she imagines Grayson training him, or more likely, paying someone to train him.Those cloudy eyes. That blue skin.Mallory can’t breathe. She breaks off a piece of the chocolate.
“Don’t!” echoes through the office as Ilena comes rushing in, though Mallory mentally puts air quotes around the “rushing.”
“What?” Mallory says. “I know the no-pets rule was mine, but it’s not like I could leave him in my condo.”
