Chapter 20
Mallory
Sunday Afternoon
Three Days After the Outing
“Dammit,” Mallory says as a text comes in from Heidi Hoffman. Her name’s all she and Aubrey can see without being able to
unlock Grayson’s phone. There’s a codependency vibe to Heidi Hoffman that makes Mallory sure the woman’s not going to wait
much longer before doing something. Something that could end with Mallory in handcuffs.
“You really should have asked first,” Aubrey says. “I’m a programmer—”
“A genius one.”
“Flattery won’t help. I studied computer science at Williams College, not on the dark web.”
“But isn’t there, like—” Mallory flutters her hands “—equipment or something? In the movies they—”
“Do things that are impossible. But, yes, someone could hack his password, someone who has equipment to do so, but that someone
isn’t me. Besides, even if we could get in, any email or text you send will be encoded with your location, not Barbados or
Guam or wherever you’re sending him.”
“I know that. I am the CEO of a tech company.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because part of my job is to collaborate with experts in their field.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Still, my field is computer science not organized crime.”
Mallory slumps deeper into her sloped dining chair, fiddling with the arm of the ridiculous reading glasses she can’t believe
she needs. But without them, she nearly cut off her own finger trying to slice an apple. The screen of her own phone flashes
with notifications from three different dating apps, and she’s gotten two reminders for dates at the end of the week and one
to pay last month’s mortgage and another to cancel the trial of some streaming channel in all caps, bellowing “FINAL WARNING!
DO IT THIS TIME, MAL!”
This Mallory is an embarrassment. The question is which of them is a murderer.
The past purchases on her online grocery orders for the past six months don’t show a single box of nut crackers. Either she
hasn’t bought any or she has and didn’t want a paper trail.
Her hand finds the fading marks on her forearm and begins to rub, a compulsive tick she’s fully aware of doing and yet unable
to stop.
“This isn’t like you,” Aubrey says, placing her hand on Mallory’s forearm. “You understand the consequences of everything.
You’re a better forecaster than the National Weather Service. So tell me, what are you hoping to achieve? You do know someone
other than Grayson’s secretary is going to wonder where he is soon.”
“Not if she has a reasonable explanation to give them.”
“Which would be?”
Mallory hasn’t gotten to that yet. First, the phone. She only has one more try before it locks her out permanently.
But Aubrey presses, “Which would last the rest of his life?”
“It doesn’t have to last the rest of his life. It just has to last long enough for us to get home.”
Mallory feels like she’s infested with fleas, her entire body wriggling with every second that passes. She can’t stay here
in this slouchy chair, staring at that hideous sofa, every night obsessively reading about parallel universes and postmortem
signs of anaphylactic shock and how to smuggle hand sanitizer into jail, trying to reconcile the existence of her police officer
father, and mourning Grayson. Dammit she can’t. This has to stop. All of it. Home, that’s all she can focus on. Back to her
AIM, to taking it public, to proving that what she’s spent half her life on is worthwhile. No matter what Grayson did.
The computer error was like a virus—extremely well hidden and self-perpetuating. Without provocation to investigate, it would
have remained hidden—for months, probably longer. And if she hadn’t been at the penthouse at the exact right time, she’d have
likely never known Grayson was responsible. Those phrases she overheard had cracked her heart as much as they’d inflamed her
gut. In shock and knowing he’d only talk his way out of it, Mallory had plastered on a smile and stayed silent that night.
She’d spent the next few weeks searching for concrete proof of his involvement. That she hadn’t found any didn’t mean she
was wrong.
Mallory shudders and hugs her arms to her chest. Aubrey gives her a quizzical look, but Mallory can’t tell her about Grayson.
Telling her means telling her everything, and Mallory can’t relive it all again—not the bad and not the bad she’d mistakenly
thought was good for nearly a year. So instead, she simply smiles.
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 overcame her 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, that good, 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 never left .
. . 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.