Page 81 of Gifted & Talented

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There was a cocktail reception afterward, of course. Beneath the newly skylit beams, it was now sometime in the autumn afternoon, though everyone behaved as if it were midsummer. The Wren siblings’ various malaise was forgotten, collective relief overpowering for a while the sense that three adults in the room needed therapy stat . Thayer Wren was a holy figure again; an innovator, whose mere presence inspired enlightenment, inside and out.

Jamie didn’t stay. He didn’t belong there. He nodded to Meredith, who gave him a thin smile in return. Then he slipped out, hands in his pockets. She didn’t know where he was going, but there was a serenity in her now, a peace that hadn’t been there before.

Now, unlike before, she understood that she only had to ask.

Meredith sat on the ledge outside the entrance to the funeral home, staring contemplatively into the woods. Cass caught sight of her from the window and followed, walking up to her with a drink in each hand. A glass of wine for her, a beer for him. To have and to hold. Two coffee cups in the sink every morning. Two rings, one home.

She looked up at him with a smile, but not the right one. Not the one that says hello.

“Cass,” said Meredith.

She reached out a hand for his and he knew, of course. You always know.

Cass took her proffered hand and sat beside her on the ledge with a sigh, taking a sip of his beer. “Twenty-four hours,” he remarked to himself. “I thought I’d get at least a week before you admitted you couldn’t marry me.”

She kissed his knuckles. “Sorry.”

She sipped her wine. He drank his beer.

“Am I wrong?” he asked hopefully. “Is there a chance I’m jumping to conclusions? I do love a classic miscommunication caper,” he said, affecting an English accent.

“Not this time, I’m afraid,” Meredith replied in a worse version of the same accent. “I can’t marry you, no. I’m sorry.”

“Drat,” said Cass, now committed to the English bit. “I was really looking forward to my future with you.”

Meredith replied, increasingly cockneyed, “It did seem very comfortable, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.” They each took a sip.

“Did you think we’d ever wind up having kids?” Meredith asked suddenly.

“No, not really.” Cass turned to her with such surprise he was American again. “You want kids?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith said, and meant it. “Maybe not. Probably not. I guess I just want the chance to think about it, that’s all.” She shrugged.

“Think about motherhood, you mean?”

“No, the future.” She scooted back on the ledge and hugged her knees into her chest. “You know my mother was sick for a long time, right?”

Cass let his beer linger for a while on his tongue. “Was she? I thought she died suddenly.”

“Well, she starved herself for a long time before then.” Meredith turned her head away from him, looking into the woods again. “It was kind of like watching someone waste away, except nobody else seemed to see it that way. They just told her how great she looked and how jealous they were.”

Meredith tipped her chin down, speaking to her knees. “You know, I really thought that if I was good enough, if I did everything perfectly, she’d suddenly shout ‘I’m hungry’ and order a pizza. And then my dad could be proud of me and they’d stop fighting. And everything would be okay, if I could just fix everything that was wrong with me.”

She laughed at herself, at her childhood dreams, her desperation for simplicity. “I used to be a prodigy,” she commented wryly into her glass. “Now I’m nearly forty.”

“Meredith,” Cass sighed with a shake of his head, “you’re turning thirty-one.”

She gave a sardonic toast to the trees. “True, I’ve exceeded expectations. At nearly thirty-one, I’m about to be CEO of two failing companies, and I’m going to prison for fraud.” She sobered. “I wonder what my mom would think.”

“You’re not going to prison,” Cass reminded her.

Meredith had thoughts about this. We’ll skip them for now and focus on Cass, since we’re about to bid him adieu.

For what it’s worth, Cass understood with a deep pang in his chest that he would miss Meredith very much, even if he was also grateful to her for the escape hatch. He knew the kind of choice he’d been making. He knew he’d chosen a love that was safe because it demanded nothing from him. Still, he would love her forever. Two things can be true.

“Is it someone else?” he asked after a moment, because he had to. And because he didn’t think she’d lie, which was one of the reasons he’d wanted to be married to her in the first place.

“Yeah,” said Meredith.

“The journalist?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw him today,” Cass acknowledged aloud.

“Yeah. But I didn’t invite him, he just came.”

They both sipped their drinks quietly.

“What happened between the two of you?” Cass asked.

“Well,” Meredith sighed ruefully, “I was always pretty confident he’d ruin my life.”

“Yeah. I used to feel that way about my wife,” said Cass, eyeing the knuckles on his left hand. He wasn’t thinking about anything, really, just remembering. Just casually idling on the paths of nostalgia, reliving old feelings, shrugging them on like old skins.

He was still staring when Meredith’s hand gently covered his.

“You’ll feel that way again,” she assured him.

“Oh, Christ. I didn’t mean it like a good thing,” Cass told her with a grimace.

Meredith, the asshole, laughed and laughed.

“I know,” she eventually managed. “But still. That’s what I wish my mom had known.”

“What, that marriage is a scam?”

“No,” said Meredith. “That someday, if you want to—”

If you break a pattern. If you give the feeling a voice. If you ask the right person for help. Meredith was making a decision, a bad one, one she knew she’d be punished for but wouldn’t regret. She reveled in the precipice of danger. Meredith was many things, an asshole, a dried-up former prodigy, a criminal, but never afraid.

“—you’ll feel alive again.”