Aubrey doesn’t smile back, her eyes wander, like she’s somewhere else.
“What’s with you?” Mallory says.
“Me? I’m trying to help.” She grabs Grayson’s phone and something sparkles on her wrist.
“A tattoo?” Mallory twists Aubrey’s hand to see it better. “You didn’t tell us this Aubrey has a tattoo. And a glittery one? Of a lion’s head?”
Aubrey yanks her hand back. “It’s nothing. It’s temporary.”
Mallory cocks her head. “Are you mocking me?”
“No, no, it is. A temporary tattoo from the arcade in Southie. It’s no big deal.”
“Everything in that sentence is a big deal because there’s nothing in that sentence that’s the Aubrey I know.”
“Okay,” Aubrey says. “So I went on a date with Ethan.”
Mallory’s hackles rise, the Pavlovian response to Aubrey’s fiancé.
Aubrey strokes the glitter of her tattoo. “It’s strange and weird and inappropriate. It is inappropriate, isn’t it? Considering everything? But I... I had to see him.”
And all Mallory can see is the last time they all saw Ethan, the folded-back hospital sheet, the way Ilena squeezed her hand, the stillness of Aubrey, the words Mallory couldn’t bring herself to say. “I understand. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like we all hung out all that much as a group. He’s not Jonah or anything.”
Mallory’s heart sputters. She didn’t realize that Aubrey sensed a difference. But of course she did. She’s one of the smartest people Mallory knows. Even if Aubrey doesn’t see it.
Mallory had never liked Ethan. It was instinctive, from the moment they’d all met at the reception for Grayson’s speech. Ethan had that attractive, broody thing that Mallory had no patience for. He’d glommed on to them all night. Mallory had figured he was hitting on her, because Mallory figured everyone was hitting on her (and they usually were). But it was Aubrey who he’d asked out. Aubrey who uncharacteristically overcameher nerves to say yes. And so even though Mallory had a bad taste in the back of her throat like after mis-swallowing a multivitamin, she’d feigned excitement. A second date became a third, and Aubrey was smiling as wide as her grandmother had wanted her to. The chance to speak up was gone.
Still, Mallory would have liked to take Ethan’s “Aubreyisms” and shove them right down his throat. Perhaps Aubrey did wonder about a lot of things like wasn’t partly sunny and partly cloudy the same thing. And so what if Aubrey thought it was “curl up in a feeble position” instead of “fetal”? That didn’t require five minutes of laughing and Ethan requesting a new partner in charades at Ilena and Jonah’s. Jonah had never thrown a punch in his life, but Mallory had watched his hand clench into a fist. But Aubrey had stood and bowed, and they all followed her lead, trying to support her. She didn’t make choices easily, and who were they to say this one was wrong?
Though Mallory knew it was. Aubrey was brilliant and deserved someone who treated her that way.
Dying wasn’t the ideal way for things to end between them (especially for Ethan), but Aubrey is better off. Mallory has been hanging back, Ilena too, unsure how far they should go to help her see that. Being here complicates it even more. And so Mallory pushes through her guilt and disgust and forces enthusiasm. “And how was it?”
Aubrey’s cheeks twinge pink.
“That good?” Mallory raises an eyebrow. “Oh,thatgood, did you—”
“No, no, of course not. It was our first date. Or second, or our hundredth. I don’t know, it’s confusing.”
Mallory stills as she gets a flash from a month ago: the booth in the bar in her world, the woman with the white coat, Ethan running out, dabbing at his shirt, the screaming in the street, the wounded look that came over Aubrey’s face and neverleft... until now. “Just... we don’t know what’s going on here so be careful.”
Aubrey nods. “I’ll say the same to you. Because if all you’re looking for is time and don’t really care about what the data might show if someone beyond Heidi Hoffman starts looking, well, then, there actually is a relatively easy way of unlocking the phone.”
One Mallory isn’t sure she can bring herself to do. She closes her eyes. “I know.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Mallory smiles a thanks before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a key chain with a dozen dangling states of Texas. “I’ve got it. Noreen let me borrow her car all weekend. Besides, I owe you. Because of Ethan and everything.”
Aubrey shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. I know you’re just looking out for me.”
I was, truly, I was.
21
Mallory
