Good for You: A Novel (70)

Wild.

Trapped.

Yet determined to get out of there and keep living.

The video had stopped. Grimacing, Aly scrolled down and braced herself for horrible comments.

But there weren’t any.

Instead, she scanned through a long string of remarks that, with few exceptions, seemed to agree that Innovate—not Aly—was the problem.

Whoever posted this is going to get flattened by a tree or struck by lightning. Sleep w/ one eye open, creep!

Seriously bad karma on the part of the person who put this up.

Just cancelled my subscription to All Good. I’ll renew when they start treating their staff right.

This poor girl. I lost my brother, too. It’s rough.

Take this s&*t down and let her grieve.

Gross. Why would you crap on someone in crisis?! Take this down.

This is a REALLY bad look for Innovate. They’re already paying freelancers less than a dollar a word, and they’ve been taking six months to pay photographers, too. They’d better not fire this chick.

No lies detected from this editor. Magazines are dead. Kudos to her for being brave enough to say why.

Aly’s jaw hung open. The reason she’d been removed from the masthead had nothing to do with her losing control. It was because she’d revealed the magazine’s biggest problem—which was James and his management team. And because she hadn’t said a single thing that wasn’t true, they’d probably had to triple-check with Legal to make sure she couldn’t sue them, hence her month-long break. She’d listened to Harry talk shop long enough to know that as a private employer, Innovate had every right to can her—but they knew doing so would probably lead to even more negative publicity. Which was why they’d quietly shuffled her offstage with a promise of autonomy and a little more money.

More importantly, she understood why Harry had encouraged her to watch it, and why Meagan had commended her for finally—finally—speaking the truth instead of continuing to act like . . . well, a robot, to be honest.

It turned out that Aly wasn’t broken. She was . . . normal.

She had been all along.

Because grief? That was normal.

So was trauma, even—or maybe especially—if it had been lingering for decades.

And anger? As normal as a clear blue sky in June, especially when it involved telling the truth about a career and an industry that you loved, but that didn’t love you back.

Maybe normal was even forgetting all the things you’d yelled at your coworkers, then having to watch yourself on video—right along with anyone else with internet access and the will to Google you—in order to remember.

Wyatt had nailed it: it was almost certain that Aly had PTSD. And that was a relief, too. Now that she could put a name to it, she could get help.

As Aly turned off her phone that night, she felt at peace for the first time in a very long while. Because although she wasn’t clear on what she needed to do next, she knew one thing: finally facing what was wrong with her was the first step to making whatever came next right.





THIRTY-SEVEN


“I cannot thank you enough for doing this,” said Mari as they pulled up in front of the children’s center. She’d called Aly that morning to see if there was any chance she’d fill in for her volunteering shift; her supervisor at the restaurant had fallen ill, and she needed to cover for him.

Aly’d been tempted to say no; deliberately spending time with children who weren’t Beckett sounded ill advised. But with Wyatt still gone—he had yet to come back for his belongings, and she had a feeling he’d wait until she’d left the state to get them—she had nothing but free time on her hands. And although she doubted her ability to actually make a difference, a small part of her thought that maybe this would be another thing that helped her heal.

“You nervous?” asked Mari.

“Not too nervous,” said Aly, but she smiled when she met Mari’s eye. “Okay, I am a little. I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but I’m not great with kids.”

“You might have mentioned it seven or eight times,” said Mari, smiling warmly at her. “But I have a feeling you’re going to do just fine. Anyway, it’s just for today. Remember—the main thing is to try. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Aly nodded, thinking of her mother. “I’m happy to at least do that.”

The center was located down a long dirt road near the river, right next to an arts colony. Three separate barns housed the children’s center, each with a metal corrugated roof; the sides of one were painted red, another navy, and the last one was white. “This used to be a farm,” said Mari, answering Aly’s unspoken question. “The family who owned it couldn’t have children, but they’d always wanted to, so they started setting up after-school activities for kids who needed something to do. Before they died, they created the children’s center and donated their entire estate toward its funding.”

“Incredible,” said Aly, thinking of the money Luke had left her. She’d been feeling so guilty about it that it hadn’t occurred to her that she didn’t have to keep all of it for herself. She could use some, or even most, of it to do . . . well, she wasn’t sure what, but something of service that would honor her brother. Luke had rented space at the marina to operate his sailing school, and it had already been closed for the season at the time of his death. But where had he stored the extra sailboats? Maybe she could find a new purpose for those. She made a note to ask Wyatt when she saw him again.