A bubble of laughter floats up Ilena’s throat. This is what drew her to Mallory—that Mallory was blunt and irreverent and used it to get what she wanted. For a long time, what Ilena wanted too.
“AIM on morning television,” Ilena said. “Do you think it’s happening at home?”
“And there’s the Ilena who doubled our ad revenue twice in the past five years.”
She had, she’d made AIM a success as much as Mallory and Aubrey had. Jonah by her side, as invested as she was. Their careers had come first, and by the time Ilena had begun to question if they should, it seemed too late for anything else to find its way into that top position.
“Jonah asked for a divorce,” Ilena says suddenly.
“I’m sorry, what? A divorce? I’ll kill him.”
They both look at Grayson, and terror darkens Mallory’s eyes, and Ilena loses her grip on the wheelchair. It rolls, and the keys that were resting on the seat slide off, disappearing beneath the coffee table. Ilena starts to reach for them just as Aubrey exits the bathroom.
“Let me,” Aubrey says. “You shouldn’t be bending.”
Aubrey’s eyes are red, her face pale. Being in the presence of a dead body surely makes her think of Ethan. Ilena lost Jonah too, not in the same way of course, but she had. And she hadn’t cried once. Ilena begs her heart to beat harder or faster or even explode because she’s suddenly afraid it’s truly as glacial as her mother’s. Is this the kind of mother Ilena will be? One who hides dead bodies?
Aubrey returns to the chest, and Ilena silently rolls thewheelchair toward it. She holds it steady as Mallory and Aubrey heft Grayson into it, straightens the blanket to cover him, and releases it to Mallory to push to the elevator. There, she waits beside Aubrey as Mallory searches the penthouse for the things a last-minute traveling Grayson would have taken with him: wallet, passport, keys. Ilena wraps her arm around Aubrey’s shoulder to try to quell her tremble as Mallory packs an overnight bag. They leave the penthouse with enough evidence of the brunch they were supposed to have had: empty bottle of champagne that Mallory drank a quarter of before pouring down the drain on the counter beside three freshly washed flutes, a fourth juice glass in the dishwasher stacked with the dirty cheese board and set to run, and the floor cleaned of crumbs, dumped in the trash bag they’ll dispose of along the way.
In the service elevator, Grayson in the wheelchair between them, Ilena reaches for Mallory’s hand. Mallory meets her halfway, anticipating Ilena’s need, perhaps having the same need herself.
“We’ll have to move quickly,” Mallory says, gripping a tote bag of Harley’s frozen dog food. “So that means—”
“You take him out the back exit ahead of us,” Ilena says, because the honeydew slows her down. And after Ethan, even before Ethan, neither of them would have let Aubrey do it. “Aubrey and I will follow. If anyone’s around, I can handle it.”
Mallory squeezes Ilena’s hand. “Of course you can. The Ilena Cohen I know is capable of anything.”
Mallory is the most loyal and fierce friend Ilena has ever had, but she doesn’t let her sentimentality show. That she does now, when they are all at their most vulnerable, is as strong a display of friendship as tattooing Ilena’s name on her forehead.
Still, for the first time, Ilena wonders where her life would have taken her if she’d never walked into that hardware store in Harvard Square and bought a roll of duct tape.
When the elevator opens, Mallory grips the handles of the wheelchair and elongates her spine, forging ahead, no matter the turmoil—inner or outer. Because Mallory is a walking contradiction with a singular belief that the ends always justify the means.
This is a slippery slope, and Ilena’s footing is already off. The lies have to stop. Ilena needs to go have an ultrasound, make sure this honeydew’s on track, and then tell Felix the truth.
15
Mallory
Friday Afternoon
One DayAfterthe Outing
Mallory releases her grip on the steering wheel. Ilena and Jonah, Jonah and Ilena, they’d never had a cute, combined couple name. They’d started dating before that was even a thing. And even if they hadn’t, neither Ilena nor Mallory were prone to making cute couple names.
A divorce, really?
And Ilena waited how long exactly to tell Mallory?
Because they were fighting. About AIM.
Everything comes back to Grayson.
She shifts Noreen’s small hatchback into Park in the paved area behind a multifamily home nearly identical to the one Mallory grew up in. “We’re here,” Mallory says.
In the passenger seat, Aubrey nods, her preferred form of communication since leaving Grayson’s building. Mallory looks at the white of Aubrey’s coat and shuts her eyes against the memory that’s the one thing she wishes this world would erase—the night she told Aubrey she’d found the perfect drinkfor her wedding reception. The night she betrayed one best friend to save another.
Mallory shakes her head, staying focused on the present. Aubrey here, and Ilena at the hospital. They dropped her off on the way. Incredibly, Ilena is finally having a procedure that isn’t about creating a child but caring for one.
