Page 75 of Gifted & Talented

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Unbeknownst to all but Meredith, Jamie was in the crowd at that moment, standing somewhere along the perimeter of the circle. Unclear how he had known about the memorial or whether he had been invited, although it hadn’t been by Meredith, so likely not. He had texted Meredith that he was leaving the rental car in the parking lot of the funeral home. She said have you really had the rental car the whole time? And he said yeah, enjoy the late fees. And god help her, she loved him. She really did.

She loved him, and in the moment, she felt this immensity—this true, honest-to-god enormity of feeling that was substantially, unavoidably pain. Oh, she thought, oh. This was what she couldn’t do; she couldn’t make happiness from nothing because of some law of physics, or color theory, or any reason that could be logically understood. She couldn’t do it, not because she hadn’t earnestly tried or because the technology did not exist, but because she simply couldn’t mimic the necessary depth of time and experience—not in a year, certainly not in a clinical study paid for by a man whose profits ticked up by the second, by an industry that exploited more than it served—so how could she really create vibrancy; how could she make beauty without carnage, how could she make anything inorganic feel somehow natural and complete?

Perfection isn’t symmetry; it isn’t the approval of a man who isn’t even listening; it’s closer to calamity, an irreplicable accident.

Oh god, Meredith thought then. Oh fuck. I built my whole life on a lie.