“What would you like to talk about? Felix was in charge of the steak, and it was perfect. But this?”
“Seriously? You’re playing house?” Mallory tosses her hands in the air. “This isn’t real, none of this is real life!”
“So you’ve found the portal?”
“The what?”
“Portal, time machine, wormhole, universe Uber that’s going to zoom us back to a world I’m starting to think maybe is the one that’s not real.”
“Don’t you mean the one you wish wasn’t real?”
“Do not do this, Mallory.”
“What? State the obvious? A squeaky clean AIM, a fawning hubby, and a baby? One that isn’t Jonah’s, but that doesn’t seem to matter to you. So tell me, has it worked? Are you finally happy? Is it everything you hoped it’d be? Even if I go to prison?”
Ilena’s jaw clenches. “I thought this was all starting to get to you and I was feeling sorry for you and doubting myself, but, you know what, Mallory, fuck you.” Ilena yanks off the oven mitts. She rests her hand with the diamond-encrusted emerald on top.
That ring. Mallory had been so sure that night in the bar: Ethan about to sleep with another woman. But that was only because she’d been looking at it through the lens of Ethan, not thewoman. Now her lens shifts to this woman Mallory has known for more than half her life. A woman who has an immutable sense of right and wrong. But she was with Ethan. And never told Mallory.
She seizes Ilena’s hand, regretting not bringing her reading glasses. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Mallory, you’re hurting me.”
Crunch of glass, smell of wine, pooling of blood.
Mallory lets go. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...”
Right leg bent at an unnatural angle, body still, eyes open, opaque and not moving.
Mallory’s breaths shorten, and she leans over the marble island, head between her elbows. Ilena met with Ethan. Ethan was at Grayson’s penthouse. Is there a connection? Could Ilena be,shit, involved? And Mallory thought waking up here was the most lost she could ever feel.
Ilena presses her hand between Mallory’s shoulder blades, and the warmth brings Mallory back to the first time she did this, when Mallory was hunched over a grungy dorm toilet. Vodka-sherbet slushies and the special cupcakes Ilena had gotten for her birthday were less colorful on the way out. That was the first time Mallory had met Jonah. Jonah, who has been as much a part of her life as Ilena and Aubrey. She’ll lose him too in the divorce.
She misses him. How can Ilena not?
Ilena draws Mallory’s long hair back from her face and looks at her with those blue eyes that Mallory still wants to prove herself worthy of, same as when they first met.
“Do you want to tell me what this is about?” Ilena says, sounding very much like a mom.
Mallory squeezes her eyes shut, but all she sees is pieces of herself scattered like a never-finished jigsaw puzzle. She’s spent her entire life not being this person. Someone who falls apart.“Ethan... our Ethan... I need you to tell me the truth. I know you met with him the night he died.”
Shock slackens Ilena’s face, and she doesn’t deny it. “How do you know?”
“Because I was there. At the bar. I saw you. Or at least, I saw your ring.”
“What ring?”
Mallory gently retakes Ilena’s hand. “This ring, which I’d never seen you wear before.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“You were there, weren’t you? All I could see from my stool was a white coat and a woman’s hand, fingernails painted beige, wearing this ring. Just like you are now. But you don’t own a white coat.”
Ridges form between Ilena’s eyebrows. “That can’t be.”
“It wasn’t you?” Mallory says.
A heavy sigh releases. “It was. I’d just gotten the coat, but I left it in the bar and never went back for it. But I wasn’t wearing the ring. I didn’t own it. It’s my engagement ring. FromFelix.”
