Page 121 of Gifted & Talented

“To err is human,” she said. “But maybe it’s not so bad. Did you talk to Meredith?”

“Yes. Well—” It’s hard to lie to my mother. “No.”

“Lulu,” said Mom.

“What?”

“You might as well get what you came for.” She gave me a pointed look.

“I only came because they asked me to,” I reminded her. “And because Eilidh’s problem is actually really weird. Like, worth witnessing firsthand, if you’re into prophecies and end times. This really had nothing to do with Meredith.”

“If you say so,” said Mom in a way that suggested precisely the opposite.

“Mom,” I sighed. “Do you really think I’m that butthurt about someone I knew a million years ago?”

“Those are not the words I would use,” said Mom. “But yes.”

“Car!” said Monster joyfully.

“Isn’t the mature thing to just forgive and forget?” I said. “Move on? We were kids.”

“Hija, if Meredith wanted to move on, she would have hired a shamaninstead of looking for you,” said Mom, who, despite her illness, was still very capable of powerful side-eye. “I’ve had my fair share of anger at Little Miss Meredith, so I’m not saying you have to forgive her. Or forget her. I’m saying say what you need to say and do what you need to do.” She walked over to Monster, then, and gave him a tickle and a kiss. “I’ll take care of this one,” she reminded me. “And you should let me do it while I still can.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said, but then again, I was wearing black because mortality is relentless. It was jarring to me, actually, that Thayer Wren had been there just a week ago, and suddenly he was gone.

The first time I saw Thayer Wren in my Wrenfare store after all those years, perusing the absurd open floor plan upon which he had been so personally insistent, I was struck by two things: One, he was shorter than I remembered. The line of potted greenery made him look small, almost frail by comparison. Two, he looked dazed beside the latest line of Wrenfare’s smart devices, eyeing the rows of minimalist, expressionless, Tyche-dupe titanium screens like he’d gone into the kitchen for something and now couldn’t remember what it was.

“Sir?” I said, although I knew exactly who he was, and when his gaze locked on mine I knew he knew who I was, too.

“Funny,” he said, clearing his throat. Thayer had a hell of a dry mucus problem and did this relentlessly, I would later learn. “I had you pegged as the successful one.”

“No, Meredith is much more cutthroat,” I said, disregarding any plausible efforts at pretense.

“She is that.” He considered me for a long moment, then turned to look at one of the tablets. “Why a Wrenfare store?”

“They were hiring. I have a technomancy degree.” I didn’t think it would help to mention that the operating system Thayer had built remained elegant, adaptive, unmatched—that from a purely technomantic perspective I could see why Thayer Wren had become Thayer Wren, or why Meredith so longed for the prestige that was inherent to Wrenfare. Thayer didn’t need my help in the arena of adoration. I also doubted he would see me as a peer, even though I could have been. Instinctive awareness of all this made me sympathize more with Meredith, whom I hated. I don’t mean to say that in the past tense, but it was true in a different way back then. “Your watches break down a lot,” I added, which was also true. They were nearly identical to the watch Tyche had brought to market, but with less craftsmanship and worse design.

“They do not,” he said gruffly.

“They do,” I replied, because what did I have to lose, really? I mean, my job, sure, there was always that. But I could fuck off and be underpaid basically anywhere. Ben would hire me if things got really dire, and frankly, I’d always wanted to know what to make of godlike Thayer Wren, who was both the monster under Meredith’s bed and the star of her narrative—the specter haunting everything she did, for better or (more often) worse.

“Yeah, well, I suppose I lost interest in the product side after Marike passed,” Thayer grunted. “She always had more patience for tedium.” His eyes were squinty now, as if from permanent refusal to acknowledge his own nearsightedness. “Have you spoken to Meredith since high school?”

“Not since she got me expelled, no.”

Thayer barked a laugh. “Little shit. Gets it from me.” He looked at me squarely then. “I’m sorry. You ended up here?”

Thanks to her, he meant. I bristled. “Well, I sold a start-up to Tyche a few years ago,” I said. “Then I had a baby. Now I’m here.”

He arched a brow. “You one of those pro-lifers?”

“The baby was on purpose.” I was a little stunned by it, the sense that he took in my optics and concluded I was nothing. Some trash floating on the wind. That first Meredith had ruined my life, and then Monster had been the nail in my coffin. Was that what I was to him, just some rudderless debris? Probably yes. In some sense I had known it even before he opened his mouth. “And by the way,” I added with a lift of my chin, “all ofmyproducts work.”

Thayer seemed to find me amusing the way all men find combative women amusing. Something to squash as a treat.

“You get off soon?” he asked. “Let me take you to lunch.”

I’m familiar with the idiom of there being no such thing as free lunch, but you already know I’m a morbidly curious person and good steak doesn’t buy itself, so I went. Then I pitched him, formally, three times. I thought he was humoring me. I didn’t really care. I hated him a little more every time, but I still did it, thinking it would successfully harden my heart, keep me safely out of the industry and free of its serpentine promises. I thought I could finally achieve indifference if I gave it a real shot.

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