Ilena refuses to feel guilt. Aubrey saying Ethan was alive ignited deep pangs for not seeking out her husband. Jonah could be someone else’s husband. Someone’s father, the impossibility in her world not the same here. Or maybe there is no Jonah here. If Ethan is alive here, but not in their world, the opposite could be true of Jonah.
She places her hand on the back of the wheelchair, the bulge of the wedding band from Felix that she couldn’t get off judging her from beneath the plastic glove. It doesn’t have the right. She’s not the one who asked for a divorce.
Aubrey snaps the elastic around her wrist a third time. Ilena bites her tongue. She knows that the last dead body they all saw makes this harder, not easier.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Ilena says as Mallory’s and Aubrey’s arms lower into the chest, their hands reaching for the edges of the blanket they wrapped Grayson in what already feels like a lifetime ago. “Morally, ethically, legally, it doesn’tmatter where we are, this is wrong. And it’s only going to make things worse because we won’t get away with this.”
Mallory bends her legs to bear more of Grayson’s weight.
Ilena presses, “You can’t expect to keep lying without consequences.”
“Yes, I can.” Mallory grimaces as she heaves Grayson onto the edge of the chest.
Aubrey looks like she’s going to be sick, but still she hoists his legs out. She tests letting go, one hand, then the other. The rigidity holds him in place. “I need a minute.”
Mallory adjusts her end of Grayson more firmly. “Go.”
Aubrey rushes into the powder room in the hall, closing the door behind her.
“She’s going to break,” Ilena says.
“We’ll take care of her,” Mallory says. “We always do.”
“Do we? Because Ethan—”
“Fucking Ethan. We can’t let her get sucked in by him again.”
“He’s her fiancé,” Ilena says. “Who died.”
“Unfortunately, not here.”
“You didn’t just say that.”
“We have to protect her,” Mallory says, and it’s déjà vu.
“And ourselves?” Ilena says. “Yourself? AIM’s all-important reputation?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with that?”
That Mallory could even ask the question at this very moment, with her hands on a dead Grayson, makes Ilena want to scream. But then Mallory shifts the positions of those hands, revealing how much they’re shaking. She bites down hard on her lower lip. It’s her tell, the one only Ilena is attuned to. Mallory is scared.
And all the resistance in Ilena dissolves. Despite their differences, this is the same: Ilena would do anything to protect her best friends too.
Mallory leans against the chest and winces. She gestures to her pocket. “Can you... ? Texas is a pointy state.”
Ilena reluctantly steps into the cold air wafting from the open chest. She slides her hand into Mallory’s front pocket and pulls out a key chain. Dangling from it are a dozen charms all in the shape of Texas. One silver with the single wordhomeat the bottom, another with the bright blue bonnet state flower, one covered with a fuzzy black-and-white cow print. Their Noreen wasn’t the kitschy type. “Did you get anything from Noreen other than her car?”
“You mean, did I ask her if she had ‘killing Grayson’ as an appointment on my calendar?”
“Okay, yes, that.”
“No,” Mallory says.
“But there was an outing, at the same place as ours, at least according to the receipt on my desk.”
“I know,” Mallory says. “It was in my calendar with about a thousand alerts not to forget. Oh, and Noreen asked for the strawberry mule recipe. She wants to make them for us when we go back the night before we go public. For luck.”
“That too, then? Same bizarre family tradition?” Ilena drops the keys on the seat of the wheelchair. “That makes Noreen, Ella, the outing, the direct listing, the valuation, all the same.” Ilena glances toward the bathroom. “I wonder then if—?”
