Page 128 of Gifted & Talented

“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, andI’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.

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