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Salvador: TOO SOON!!
Reese: What else could it have been?
Baljit: What becomes of the group now?
Simon: We carry on, right?
Salvador (finally releasing the caps lock key): We have to! It’s what Elaine would have wanted.
Baljit: Really?? The one who was going to detonate the group from the inside?
Salvador: I meant she’d want us to stay clean.
Baljit: On the plus side, at least her allegations won’t go viral now.
Salvador: JESUS CHRIST, BALJIT!
Baljit: Can’t bring her back from the dead.
Reese: We’ve all thought it, Salvador.
Simon finds himself nodding in agreement. His life would be less complicated and less expensive if his own accuser had gone a similar route.
Reese: JJ? You out there?
Simon realizes that JJ is the only member who hasn’t yet weighed in on the group chat.
JJ: This is fucking awful. I’m devastated. How can we go on?
No new texts appear in the chain for a few seconds, and then another pops up.
Baljit: And then there were six.
CHAPTER 14
Wednesday, April 10
Aaron and Holly have already hiked or walked—it’s an ongoing debate between them how to label their favorite four-mile loop, the Dartmoor Boat Canyon Trail—two miles and climbed over seven hundred vertical feet. But they haven’t shared more than a few words in that time.
Since Holly first informed him of Elaine’s death, two days earlier, Aaron hasn’t pressed for details, sensing his wife needed time to digest it. But as they pause now at a scenic lookout to sip their waters and admire the endless expanse of the Pacific below them, he decides the moment is right. “Two days,” he says.
“Huh?” she asks without looking up from her bottle.
“Is that enough time to process what happened to your client?”
“It took me one second to process what happened to her. An opioid overdose.”
Aaron chuckles. “End of story?”
Holly shrugs. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Grieve her?”
She studies the label on her water bottle before replying. “Do you know that twenty Californians die every single day from opioid overdoses?”
“I did not. At least, not so specifically.”
After another long sip, she finally says to him, “I never knew the exact number either. Not until Elaine shared that depressing stat with me.”
