Page 35 of Gifted & Talented

Arthur had learned the night previous of Cass’s true identity—not Gillian’s lover, as Arthur had been so initially certain, but actually Meredith’s. Which, in its way, made sense, and yet delivered Arthur to another confusing blow of emotions, in that it was a nearly identical pairing of disappointment and relief. The inverse, he supposed, of his initial thought process when he’d thought Gillian might not only not lovehim,but actively love someone else. Even if the someone else in question was one who did, upon further consideration, seem much more suited to Meredith.

“Ah. Okay.” Arthur looked up at the books again, moving toward them to pull one off the shelf. They were all missing their dust jackets—predictably, none of them were anything important or even relevant to their father’s interests. A vintage cookbook. An encyclopedia of common show dogs.

“He hired someone,” Meredith confirmed, sidling up to Arthur. “A bookstore, I think. Paid a ton of money just to create the illusion of leather-bound tomes.”

“Do you think he was worried about not coming off smart enough or something?” asked Arthur, testing the weight of an encyclopedia volume markedS. “I guess it can be hard to carry around the title of genius. Must get heavy from time to time.”

“I’m glad you’ve noticed,” said Meredith. “I try my best to make it look effortless, but I’d hate for you to think it was as easy as it looks.”

Arthur rolled his eyes, elbowing her in the ribs. “Did he ever talk to you about it?”

His voice had gotten quiet then, which was a little embarrassing, as it was venturing into an arena of sentimentality that Meredith did not like. She, like their father, did not have the patience for softness, though she tolerated it in Arthur, or at least did not comment on it as often as Thayer once had. “I mean, you and Dad did have a lot in common,” he pointed out.

Meredith snorted in apparent disagreement. “In that we were both pigheaded, emotionally closed off, and incapable of meaningful relationships?”

Arthur shifted to face her. “I can’t tell if you’re joking,” he said, “because yes, that’sexactlywhat I mean.”

“That’s not true,” Meredith said matter-of-factly. “I had Jamie. And,” she added as an apparent afterthought, “I had Lou.”

“You mean your ex-boyfriend and your ex–best friend, neither of which have been in your life for at least the past decade?” But the mention of Lou was too accessible, too tempting to overlook. For the countless time that day, Arthur felt the past like a door being opened in his chest, creaking from disuse. The awkward fumble of clothes,Is this okay?, Yes it’s fine shut up. “You know, it’s funny you should mention Lou.” Funny, unfunny, devastating the way history was devastating. Had she been haunting Meredith as she did Arthur? “She’s been on the mind lately.”

“Mm,” said Meredith with the feigned indifference she reserved for any mention of Lou. Arthur hadn’t even realized Meredith could say Lou’s name aloud without cursing it. Was this the result of age, time, maturity? Sadistically, he leapt at the chance to find out.

“Did you ever speak to her again? After you ruined her life.”

“I didn’t ruin her life,” said Meredith mechanically.

“You narced, Death.” Such was the verbiage appropriate for getting your best friend expelled, in Arthur’s mind. Then again, hewaswidely reviled for his sinister complicity. “It’s not actually up for debate.”

“I didn’tnarc,” said Meredith irritably, which Arthur considered countering with things like timelines and facts, but in the end he just couldn’t hear the story again. It wasn’t even a story, really, as Meredith did not have the means to tell it. She just had a list of blatant excuses that she recited like poetry—likeboringpoetry, which Arthur couldn’t abide.

He supposed there was nothing new to unearth, no new-old secrets to share. He began to change the subject—to what, he still wasn’t sure—breakfast, maybe—or the vulturous picking over of their father’s things, which still needed doing—when Meredith abruptly spoke again.

“You know, sometimes she really seemed to prefer you.” Meredith tilted her head in thought, gazing over the spines of their father’s worthless books. Many of them, Arthur realized, were the equivalent of airport Westerns or dime-a-dozen mysteries. Then he realized Meredith was still talking aboutLou, which was unprecedented. Typically she slammed the gavel and court was tidily dismissed. “Sometimes,” Meredith murmured, “I really hated being around the two of you.”

Arthur thought about saying that wasn’t true, that he was the hanger-on when it came to Meredith’s relationships, not because he liked his sister so much but because his sister likedhim,which seemed so rare and peculiar given everything about Meredith that Arthur found it kind of dementedly flattering, like being the prettiest girl in the small-town parade. He loved Meredith, even liked her a great deal, because they were both inadequate in their father’s eyes; because neither of them were Eilidh, and therefore they were almost always on the same team.

Except when it came to Lou. Arthur remembered the old feeling of exclusion, the way it felt when Meredith and Lou would disappear together to discuss something in whispers, and the way that, in retaliation, Arthur liked to coax Lou into then doing exactly the same thing to Meredith, just so she would have to be the one left out. One of those lightly punitive things between siblings.

“Yeah,” said Arthur. “Me too.”

He wondered why Lou kept coming to mind, inserting herself into the conversation as if she’d existed in any meaningful way since the day she walked out of this house. A minor chapter in the Wren family gothic, or whatever she was to the pair of newly orphaned assholes idly rolling back her tomb.

Would she be able to fix it, any of it? She had once before.

But then again, that was before.

Arthur and Meredith stood in silence for a long time before descending back into small talk. “So, you said Gillian was out?”

“She mentioned picking up some things before the lawyer gets here at nine. Have you gotten any calls, by the way?”

“Calls?”

“Condolence calls, you know.So sorry, such a good man,blah blah.” So Meredith did recall their father’s passing, then.

“Oh, those.” Yes, The Notifications. Not all of them were from faceless strangers on the internet. “I’ve been ignoring them.” With the help of Yves’s medicinal aids.

Meredith was blinking in a strange way, as if she had something in her eye, and she reached up before restraining herself.

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