Chapter 15
Mallory
Friday Afternoon
One Day After the 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 drink for 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.
Ilena hadn’t wanted it, then suddenly wanted it. It wasn’t the first difference between them, but Ilena wanting a baby as
much as Mallory didn’t had been defining them in a way nothing had before. She wished Ilena didn’t want it. What a fucking selfish thought. But it has been her thought. Mallory’s mom loved her and supported her in a way Ilena’s didn’t, yet neither of them had had Norman Rockwell
childhoods. Mallory has never felt any urge, no tick tick tick inside her; when parents show her pictures of their kids with faces covered in chocolate ice cream, she chokes back bile
and offers to buy them napkins.
Still, Mallory had been supporting Ilena in the way she could, sitting by Ilena’s side in waiting rooms, reading brochures,
listening when Ilena said that Jonah wasn’t dealing with it the way she’d hoped. Mallory understood how hard it all was, but
honestly, she’d been more focused on how hard it all was on herself.
Was this part of it? Why Ilena wanted to leave AIM? Because it would also let her leave Mallory?
“Good amount of trees,” Mallory says, heart racing as she props open the car door. “Nice shielding.”
The neighborhood where her mom lives is the same one of Mallory’s childhood, though in this world, their particular street
is three blocks farther from the Green Line. This Mallory didn’t have to fall asleep to the soundtrack of trains screeching
against the tracks.
Her mom’s contact information listed “Unit 1,” meaning the apartment was on the first floor, just like in her world. A quick internet search showed not one but two pandemics in the past fifteen years. Both gave Mallory hope that her mom was still her mom: a low-grade hoarder.
“Bargain shopper,” her mom had called it, stocking up on 75 percent–off blenders (even though they already had one they hardly
used and two still in boxes) because who knows when you’d get invited to a wedding and need a gift. Shelves overflowed with
enough gift wrap to Tyvek a skyscraper because fifty cents a roll is fifty cents a roll even if it was just the two of them
and they couldn’t really afford a lot of gifts. The $1.99 chicken thighs and two-for-one frozen peas came later, after the
first pandemic, the same one this Mallory had lived through.
One text and one white lie later, and they had somewhere to put Grayson until they could figure out something better. Though
Mallory suspects she’s reaching the end of “they.”
Still, Aubrey’s here. All five feet four and one hundred and thirty pounds of her—though probably less considering the fit
of those pink pants.
Mallory unlocks the back door and enters the kitchen of a railroad apartment just like the one she grew up in. Her mother
still loves roosters. Tea towels, a fruit bowl, a sign above the sink, they cock-a-doodle-do at her.
Her mom had assured Mallory that the house was nearly always empty during the day, the owners of the other two units at work
or school. Her mom is a physician’s assistant here, not a paralegal. But also not a doctor or a lawyer, the same things apparently
holding her back from aiming that high in play here too.
Perhaps they needed to be for Mallory to become Mallory in both worlds: ambitious and tenacious enough to found a company worth two point two billion dollars. She can’t help but wonder what her younger self would have thought. Fuck yeah, or more likely, Why not three? Four?
She spies her mother’s rooster cookie jar and remembers opening the lid, pulling out two gingersnaps or vanilla wafers or
whatever had been on sale that week, and setting them on a carefully torn-in-two paper towel. She’d carry them into the living
room where her mom would be laughing at some sitcom as she marked up something from work, getting in overtime, sipping Lipton
tea or the occasional “splurge” of cheap prosecco. Mallory’s younger self would stare at the silver bangle some boy had given
her or her report card filled with As and Bs she only half deserved and wonder why she couldn’t be more like her mom—content
with what they had, which was more than so many, which was enough. Except that hole in Mallory’s chest never closed.
A part of Mallory uncharacteristically wants to pass through the kitchen to the bedroom on the right, the bedroom that would
have been hers, but it’s nearly eighty degrees, and Grayson’s under a blanket in a parked hatchback with the air-conditioning
off.
She finds the door to the basement, her mom’s private half crudely finished and accessible only through this unit. In the
far corner is the white, utilitarian chest freezer. Secured with a padlock. Pandemics bring out the worst in people. She loves
that her mom doesn’t trust anyone.
Mallory rotates each little dial, lining up the combination, and lifts the lid.
“Goddammit, Mom.”
Mallory grabs an empty box from the recycling bin and loads in the equivalent of five chickens, two pigs, and a farm’s worth
of frozen vegetables. Then, she goes to get Aubrey.
Under the cover of the open hatchback and those leafy trees, they shift the blanket-shrouded Grayson into the wheelchair, trying not to touch his cold skin or imagine the warm fingers that tied those double knots on his expensive loafers, as they half roll, half drag him down the stairs and into the basement.
“It’s temporary,” Mallory says to Aubrey as they settle Grayson into his second freezer of the day.
Aubrey nods.
Mallory pulls the car keys out of her pocket and hands them to Aubrey. “Listen, grab the overnight bag, will you?”
A nod and perhaps a slight grunt of assent, and Aubrey aims for the stairs. Mallory turns back to the freezer. Her mom thinks
it’s being stacked with a special mood-enhancing serum that needs to be kept icy cold until AIM begins its giveaway. When
Mallory had called, her mom had been thrilled to help. She even said she’d tell her patients all about it, to which Mallory
launched into words like “confidentiality agreement” and “first to market” and “competitive advantage” that were enough for
her mom to promise to keep it under wraps until she was told otherwise. Mallory’s success was the only thing her mom had ever
wanted.
And Mallory had given it to her. Despite attention span and focus and all things that would be diagnosed as something warranting
help today. Mallory saw her mom’s tired eyes and never full enough bank account and used to think life wasn’t fair, but then
she realized that life doesn’t owe you shit. Women like to think that it does, those raised to be “good girls,” to be honest
and helpful and polite and kind. Deferential, not wanting too much or assuming too much. Do the “right thing.” Don’t make
waves. You’ll be rewarded. Good things will come.
Bullshit. No one grew a company into the billions by making good choices.
Good choices left you in overworked, underpaid jobs where brushes of side boob and hands on waists still happened but without the compensation; her mom was proof of that.
Her mom did the right thing her entire life and all it got her was a daughter who would do anything to not follow in her footsteps.
So Mallory developed a skill more valuable than anything she’d learn in books: how to read people. She knew the school librarian’s
self-esteem rose with every analysis Mallory sat wide-eyed through then regurgitated in her book report. She knew the class
brainiac would trade math homework for lip-gloss shopping. She knew the boys would let her copy their test answers if she
let them drape their meaty arms across her in the halls. All things that never occurred to her weren’t okay.
Mallory grabs three racks of ribs to spread over Grayson’s legs and accidentally yanks the blanket, which slips to reveal
the top of his head, hair like dark porcupine spines. The product he uses must have hardened. Used.
A ghastly, violent sob punches through her. Her fingertips instinctually reach out, pressing the pointy tips. There’s nothing
temporary about this for this Grayson.
What if there’s also nothing temporary about this for her? What if this place is all they have?
She pushes back the sleeves of her shirt, tracing the marks on her forearm in the shape of fingers, fingers that must be Grayson’s, fingers that reached for her last night with intensity or urgency or anger or fear or all of it combined.
She considers extracting his hand, holding his cold, stiff fingers against the lines on her skin to see if they match.
Because maybe they don’t. Maybe whatever happened last night to cause them wasn’t Mallory’s fault, maybe someone else was there, maybe she’d tried to stop it.
Maybe here, Grayson hasn’t manipulated her but someone else.
Maybe AIM’s valuation is real. And maybe she didn’t have a motive to kill him.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe’s a good place to be. She leaves Grayson’s hand where it is.
As Aubrey returns, Mallory straightens. She trades the overnight bag for the cardboard box full of food that could feed the
neighborhood for a week. Aubrey passes Noreen’s keys to Mallory, but they’re both shaking so much that the charm-filled key
chain falls straight into the freezer.
Horror consumes Aubrey’s face, and Mallory says, “I’ve got it.”
Aubrey hesitates, shifting the box onto her hip. “I have to ask, do you actually have a plan? Because this . . .” She juts
the box at the freezer. “This is starting to feel like scrambling.”
Mallory places her hand on Aubrey’s arm and chokes back the self-doubt that’s nearly strangling her. “I’ll figure it out,
promise.”
Aubrey eyes the frozen cauliflower rice. “Maybe we could start with getting something to eat? This Aubrey’s apparently a vegan,
and dairy-free cheese is disgusting.”
“Understood. I’ll meet you at the car. We can see if Gracie’s still exists?”
Their favorite sandwich place with the cocktail slushies. She really, really hopes Gracie’s exists.
Aubrey’s back to nodding, giving a tight head bob before carrying the box of frozen food up the stairs. Mallory stifles a
grimace as she slides her hand into the freezer beside Grayson’s blanketed torso. She finds the keys, but they resist. She
yanks and hears the slight tearing of fabric as the keys snag on the way out. She breathes deeply, shoves the key chain into
her pocket, and gently sets the overnight bag at Grayson’s feet.
“I’m sorry,” she says, realizing she hasn’t done that yet. Apologized to Grayson for whatever she might have done.
Her hand lingers on the bag, her fingers grazing his ankle, covered by a sock of purple-and-gold argyle, and this unexpected splash of whimsy suddenly makes Mallory feel weighed down by a knight’s armor.
She stares at her hand, the pop of blue veins slicing across her skin like a line of mold on some stinky French cheese.
Even without her reading glasses on, she’s repulsed by it.
How could her hands look like this? How could these be her hands?
Hands that might have packed her emergency snack bag with the means to kill the man she’s not falling in love with because Mallory doesn’t fall in anything, let alone love?
The sprout of uncharacteristic tears in her eyes brings back her usual focus. She won’t give in to it. She gives a firm shake
of her head. She can do this. For all of them.
Her hand disappears into the side of the overnight bag. She slides Grayson’s phone into her pocket. She doesn’t exactly have
a plan, but she has the first piece of it: making Grayson disappear.
She closes the lid to the freezer, plugs a new combination into the padlock, and bounds up the stairs. A Moscow mule, no,
a paloma slushie. Please, Gracie’s, please. But just in case, for Aubrey, she heads for the fridge, hoping for an actual cheese stick to tide them over.
The fridge at home was a matte black, clean and clear, not even a magnet. Here, the white fridge is a jigsaw puzzle of stickies
reminding her mom to pick up half-and-half and cat food—Mom has a cat?—and of business cards for plumbers and locksmiths and of photographs, lots of photographs. Mallory as a baby eating her own
toes, as a toddler dancing with the incoming ocean tide, as an eye-rolling preteen in between her mom and an attractive man
holding a World’s Best Dad mug.
Mallory stumbles back. That same man beams in half a dozen photographs. A man with the same color hair as Mallory. A man with the same height Mallory has but her mother lacks. A man whose cheek her mother is kissing. A man holding Mallory’s hand outside the elementary school.
That very same man in a uniform. Mallory’s father is not absent here. And Mallory’s not-absent father is a police officer.