Chapter 50
Ilena
Thursday Morning
Seven Days After the Outing
The Day AIM Actually Goes Public
Ilena wakes to total darkness. She fumbles to free herself from the silk eye mask, but it’s still too dim to make out anything
but the barest of outlines. A frame on the opposite wall hanging above something long and squat . . . a driftwood chest. Her driftwood chest. She casts off the duvet and rushes to the window, yanking the cord on the blackout shade so hard it snaps.
White flowers burst forth amid lush green leaves on the ring of hydrangeas encircling the manicured lawn of the small backyard
she never quite used enough. She presses a palm to the glass, her opal ring tapping against it, and breathes.
She leans against the window, her body taking longer than she expects to meet the sill. This body—her body—is as foreign as
it is familiar. She wraps her arms around her midsection, telling herself that you can’t lose something you never actually
had. Unlike Mallory, she’s never been a very good liar.
She stays there, accepting the sorrow she knew would come.
As the pink of the sky gives way to blue, she turns to check the time on the compass rose clock.
Not even 6 a.m., but Jonah’s side of the bed remains smooth, not a corner of the white bamboo sheet out of place.
She clicks on the lamp. It’s the only object on a nightstand usually crowded with medical journals and chargers and his stack of sci-fi Tbrs.
She nears the driftwood chest and opens it.
His sweaters remain, but his running clothes and polo shirts are gone.
He’s not just on call for the night. He’s living somewhere else.
For how long? Since when? She has no memory of what’s transpired in the time she’s been gone. Maybe she and Jonah discussed
his moving out at length. Maybe they didn’t discuss it at all. Or maybe he just told her and she just said “fine” like with
the divorce. As she circles the bed, she passes the clothes she wore to the outing here. She must have worn them last night,
just as they’d planned. Unless the outing was last night.
She lunges for her phone, housed in its usual crisp, clear case. The same amount of time has passed. Part of her was wishing
it hadn’t, as if that would confirm it all having been a dream and not something she can never really explain. She starts
a text to Mallory, debating what to say. Something that won’t make her seem unhinged if this was all a delusion, something
that’ll tell her if she’s the only one who remembers the other reality or the only one who made it back.
Ilena: I’m not pregnant.
Three little dots appear.
Mallory: Thank god.
Mallory: But I’m sorry. It looked good on you.
Ilena: So that happened then.
Mallory: Christ, this is wild. How are you?
Ilena’s eyes sweep over the linen-tufted headboard and the blue porcelain lamps that she and Jonah picked out after having
lunch on Newbury Street. The bottle of wine they split meant they spent more on the lamps than they would have otherwise.
More than they should have. But they’ve never regretted it. It was the first thing they bought for the house.
Ilena: It’s difficult. But—
She was going to say right. But she’s not sure if it is. A feeling she’s going to have to learn to live with.
Ilena: At least we’re here together.
Mallory sends an uncharacteristic string of hearts that Ilena is sure is a direct result of Harley’s influence.
Ilena: I’ll check on Aubrey.
She sends the same text to Aubrey, whose response brings both relief and sadness.
Aubrey: Oh, oh, I didn’t know you thought you were! To find out the same day as we go public and with Jonah moving out. I’m so sorry,
Ilena. If you need to skip the bell ringing at the office, M and I will cover. Xoxo
So that’s it: This Aubrey won’t share the same memories of the past week.
She won’t have slept with Kai or learned that Ethan was an ass.
She won’t understand the loss Ilena’s feeling and the relief that Mallory is.
But she knows about Jonah and the apparent separation.
Though she has no memory of doing it, Ilena is glad that sometime in the past week, she must have told her friends.
And Aubrey remembering means she was here—somehow she was here.
They all must have been. It strikes her that they could write a damn good academic paper on the many-worlds theory.
Ilena assures Aubrey that she’ll be at AIM and returns to her text chain with Mallory, filling her in on Aubrey’s memories
as well as the celebration at nine thirty, when trading begins on Wall Street. When AIM goes public.
Public, AIM’s going public. Problems and all. And not insubstantial ones. But for the first time in a long time, Ilena’s excited
to fix them—provided the same thing hasn’t happened here. That thing being Grayson. He may be an arrogant manipulator, but
that doesn’t mean he should die by nut cracker.
Ilena: Grayson. Do you know if he’s . . .
Mallory: Slithering around like the snake he is? Yes, and apparently I’ve taken a passive-aggressive approach. Since the outing, it
appears we’ve been communicating solely through Noreen and Patrick.
Ilena: I’ll take passive-aggressive. Better than the alternative.
Mallory gives a thumbs-up. Followed with a Do you think she’s okay?
Ilena: Aubrey?
Mallory: Our Aubrey—both of our Aubreys. And us.
Ilena: Absolutely. No doubt whatsoever.
Mallory: You’re a good liar too. See you at AIM. One tiny benefit of not being pregnant . . . ????
Into Ilena’s head comes the mimosas they faked at Grayson’s apartment. They have ruined the drink for her for a lifetime.
Mallory: On second thought, NO.
She sends a peach and a bell, and Ilena understands. Peach Bellini. That’s what it means to know someone for twenty-one years.
The same amount of time she’s known Jonah. She turns off the lamp and grabs her purse. Then she trails a finger along the
Coventry Gray wall that’s as perfect as she remembered.
She picks up cupcakes on the way, from the same bakery her father would frequent, the bakery whose box she was carrying the
day Jonah held the subway for her. Still in business after all these years. Proof that good things can last.
A note in her phone lets her know that Jonah had checked in to the B&B four blocks from the apartment in Cambridge where they
lived for most of their married life. They had snuck in once on their way home from work, back when they used to time their
schedules to come home together. Through the B&B window, they saw the flickering flames in the fireplace, the table of charcuterie,
the bottles of wine, and the cans of local beer. Jonah had grabbed her arm and whisked her inside before she knew what was
happening. He’d started talking loudly about being famished from following the Free Trail all day. The clerk behind the desk
with long, dark hair and a streak of white like a skunk’s running down one side politely corrected him with “Freedom Trail”
and suggested he relax in front of the fire and enjoy the guests-only happy hour.
That Jonah is staying here fills her with hope. He’s not here for the B&B. Jonah is viscerally repelled by grandmotherly vibes of frill and flowers. Which means he’s here because it reminds him of that night. Of who they used to be.
“May I help you?” a voice says.
Ilena turns to see the same clerk from all those years ago, her hair no longer streaked but fully white. If Ilena believed
in signs, this would be one. And why shouldn’t she believe in signs after what she’s just experienced?
Ilena greets the clerk and explains she’s looking for a guest, her husband, and the woman cocks her head.
“That’s it!” the clerk says. “That’s why he looked so familiar. He was with you, and you—I hope it’s not inappropriate to
say—cannot be forgotten.”
Ilena smiles politely as the clerk points to a bulletin board behind her. Thumbtacked to it are photographs beneath a handwritten
note that says, “Crashers.”
Ilena grips the cupcake box as a baby-faced version of herself and Jonah stare back at her. “That’s been hanging here all
this time?”
“You two gave us the idea,” the woman says.
“I’m sorry. We were young, and, well, we did know better.” She sets the box on the counter and reaches for her purse. “Let
me make it right. We had two glasses each and—”
“A loaf of bread and a pound of that cheddar.”
A voice she would recognize in any universe.
“Gouda, I think,” Ilena says over the frenetic beating of her heart.
The clerk nods. “Women always remember better. It was definitely Gouda. Back then I took home the leftovers, and I hate cheddar.
No more leftovers now. Lactose intolerant.”
Ilena again forces a smile before she returns to rummaging in her purse for her wallet.
Jonah steps toward her. “I’ve got this. It was my idea.” He faces the clerk. “Are we adjusting for inflation? Interest added?”
The clerk’s cheeks flush as Jonah smiles at her. Ilena knows the feeling.
The clerk gestures to the cupcakes. “How about you leave those, and we’ll call it even?”
“Hard bargain. Counteroffer: I keep the chocolate–peanut butter, and you’ve got a deal.”
The clerk lifts her chin. “And how do you know there’s a chocolate–peanut butter?”
“Because I know my wife as well as she knows me.” From a shopping bag in his hand, he pulls out a smaller pink box. “We both
hate sleeping alone.”
Ilena’s heart tumbles over itself.
He opens his cupcake box. “Congratulations on the listing, and I’m an asshat.”
The ache in her chest morphs into laughter. Across each of the six chocolate–peanut butter cupcakes is written one letter,
the sum total equaling “asshat.”
“You’re not an asshat,” she says.
“Jerk?”
“Pea brain?”
“Clod?”
The clerk interjects, “Partial to ‘chowderhead,’ myself. Keep it local.”
Ilena leaves her box with the clerk and takes Jonah’s, carrying it into the small sitting room where they ate all that Gouda.
Jonah follows, a hand pushing back the abundance of gray hairs absent from their photograph on the bulletin board. She places
the cupcakes on the coffee table and sits on the settee that is even harder than its stark frame makes it look. He takes the
chair across from it.
“It feels so long ago,” she says.
“And not.”
“And not,” she says. “Would you do it again?”
“Considering what they charge for a single night, we should have crashed happy hour every week.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” His smile is sad and pained, which is both so much worse and so much better than the expression he’s worn around
her lately. That expression has just been blank. Feeling something means they each still care. “I’d do it again. With better
choices, though, so we never end up here.”
Ilena shakes her head. She believed that was possible once. Not anymore. “But you couldn’t know. Hindsight is the only way
a choice becomes right or wrong. All we can do is recognize it and adjust. I’m starting to think life is one big pivot.”
He grins, at her, and it feels glorious. “Since when do you speak like a desk calendar?”
“Since I realized what life would be like without you.”
“And how is life without me?”
“No one steals the covers.”
“I don’t—”
“And no one complains that they don’t steal the covers. But also, there’s no one to share the covers with.”
“You could find someone else. Someone who wouldn’t mind that you accuse them of stealing the covers.”
“I could, but then that someone would probably floss in front of an open fridge door.”
“Revolting.”
“Right?” This is how it felt on the subway when she was eighteen. “And besides, I don’t want someone, I want you.”
His breath is heavy, laden with all they’ve been through and all they’ll have to go through. “I want you too. It’s why I was bringing these cupcakes to celebrate with you at AIM. But our problems, they don’t magically go away.”
Ilena never thought problems would magically disappear. But the woman she was before all of this would have insisted that
if she only tried harder, did everything perfectly, she had the power to eliminate them. Happiness might not be the journey,
but it’s also not something static, that once achieved means everything falls into place.
“No, they don’t,” Ilena says. “But these are the problems I’m choosing to work on. Because the trade-off is so very worth
it.”
The lines around his eyes crinkle. He looks at her as if seeing her for the first time but also seeing every version of who
she has been and will ever be. The heat of embarrassment sneaks into her cheeks in a way it hasn’t since before they were
married.
“Let’s go to Plum Island,” he says.
“It’s horsefly season.”
“Then let’s embrace those little demons and let’s talk. I want to talk.”
“Me too.” She picks up the box of cupcakes. “But first . . . how late is checkout?”
As she follows him up the creaky staircase with the butterfly wallpaper, she pulls her phone from her purse. She can’t miss
the opening bell at AIM. Just enough time. She lets her phone fall back into her bag, where it clanks against something hard.
She pauses, puts her hand inside, and feels around. Impossible. There’s no part of coherence link that explains this. This is . . . something else. Still, she knows it, somewhere deep inside,
before she sees it. The diamond-encrusted emerald ring that Ilena wore in another reality, that Mallory swears she saw Ilena
wearing here, the night they watched Ethan die.