Page 127 of Gifted & Talented

From her chest was a summons, a longing call. It whispered to her gently:?

Eilidh knew what it was, and she let go.

Call it reflex, call it art, call it atavistic pain. Where words failed, her body answered. Eilidh twisted sharply, more sharply than she should have, as if to shake catharsis free. One hand shot up and the other out—a contorted, baroque interpretation of fourth position. The tips of her fingers stretched out for the sea she couldn’t see, the distant bugle call, the finish line. The very promising young woman that Eilidh Wren had once been. Her future stretched out beyond the horizon, invisible string she’d thought she could simply hold tauter the closer she got.

Closer to where, and to what?

She collapsed forward, knuckles brushing the ground, drawn back up like the flow of a sunrise. The indifference of a tide; life is hard and nothing matters. She pulled her arms close, hugged around her rib cage, then stepped forward, because that’s what you do. You step and you step and you step.

She held out her hands, Come join me, I’m not meant to do this alone!

—but then she pulled back again, afraid. Intimacy is exhausting. Love wears you to the bone. She didn’t have the reach she’d once had, everything felt strange, like shrugging on an old body, an old form, an old method of coping.

The thing in her chest inhaled deeply, as if to fill its dormant lungs.

Life was loving someoneon purpose! Intensity mattered! Every twist was painful and only a fraction of what she could accomplish at her prime; but there was a new compassion to her motions, to the softness she could finally allow herself to feel. It no longer had to bring tears to her eyes. She could honor it, accept it. She could embrace it without the teeth of chronic self-sabotage; without the sense that every moment should be a fracture, toeing up to and over (and over, and over) the edge of unending, undying self-harm.

It hurt, but not for nothing. Not for the weight of anyone else’s grief but hers.

The thing in her chest seemed to dissipate, to fill her veins, to dance off the edge of her fingertips into the circle of onlooking mourners, to thecrowd she very nearly forgot. It wasn’t for them this time, the performance. It wasn’t a performance at all. It felt right, it was theonlyright thing, this motion, this one, this one, this beat, this percussive step, this motion onward, this motion forward, this slight drag pulling her back, the undertow of uncertainty, capitulation to an unspoken communal rhythm, the sense that life would go on, and that if she had faith in the current—if she trusted the lightness in her chest—she would float.

It didn’t have to be flawless; it didn’t have to be perfect; the audience would always leave, she would always remain. What was still there when the lights went out? Only this: the monstrous, ravaging wanting that thundered constant, neglected, in the depths of her quiet heart.

I want to live,said Eilidh Wren’s fingers and toes, her outstretched limbs, the soles of her dirtied sneakers, the dance of her wordless prayer.I want to live!

She saw it then, her future. No more desk jobs cramping her spine. Marketing could take a hike—she would have fresh air and music. She would have beauty, and desperation to learn. She saw the barre and the pulse of it welcomed her. Four little girls and a cheery, devoted Monster looked up at her with shining eyes, with lightness and hope. She saw her future, a new apartment, a fresh glass of pink wine, a new Tuesday ritual. Friends and loved ones she always remembered to call, letters she wrote for the thrill of correspondence, fresh berries in the early summer, small business taxes she only sort of understood but would gladly learn.

The thing in her chest sang, and she understood it. The badness takes, but it also gives. She closed her eyes and felt it ask her what she wanted, like some primal prompt for fight or flight:Eilidh Wren, you are magic, and unto magic you may call.

She closed her eyes. LET THERE BE LIGHT! called Eilidh Wren into the void, flung like a dying wish into the ether.

When the sun broke from behind the canopy of trees, glinting like a half-remembered dream, the first thing Eilidh saw was her sister, Meredith. There were tears in her eyes, shining, and a look of thunder on her face, and it was love, all of it love, and Eilidh smiled, too, because finally, finally, she was happy.

She was happy, and she belonged.

76

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 therapystat. 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 toconclusions? I do love a classic miscommunication caper,” he said, affecting an English accent.

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