Page 41 of Gifted & Talented

But there was Dzhuliya, wasn’t there? Yes, Dzhuliya, an amicable colleague! And unlike Eilidh’s siblings, Dzhuliya had spent all of Thayer’s last days beside him. In many ways, Dzhuliya had known him better and more completely than Meredith or Arthur ever had.

Eilidh thought, then, of Dzhuliya’s faithful presence within the radiusof her father. She thought of the many scheduling messages on her phone from Dhuliya’s familiar Wrenfare contact bubble; the little smiles she and Dzhuliya exchanged when they passed each other coming and going from Thayer’s office; Dzhuliya pausing her conversation to wave to Eilidh from beside the tree of noxious flavored coffee pods; Dzhuliya asking Eilidh about her day whenever she answered Thayer’s phone.

Then, inevitably, Eilidh’s mind went to other things. The first wicked smile she’d clocked on Dzhuliya’s face, that first little line of innuendo. The temporary relief of their hasty one-shot in the car, inadvisable and secret. Dzhuliya’s shoulder, lean muscle and luminous glow, slipping out from beneath her navy hoodie. The shape of it, the way her sweat would taste.

Her sweat? Jesus Christ. The thing in Eilidh’s chest seemed confusingly ravenous, holding three, four sensations at once, juggling them in turns.

Do you want to meet somewhere and talk?Eilidh asked Dzhuliya, telling herself gentle lies like it’s fine, there’s no agenda here. Amicable collagues talk all the time.

A message bubble appeared, then disappeared.

Appeared, then disappeared.

Appeared…

Disappeared.

Sure, Dzhuliya eventually said.I can be there in like twenty minutes.

17

Meredith Wren felt sure she was going to kill someone, as she often claimed to feel, though as Jamie had pointed out to her the day prior, all evidence suggested she didn’t have the stomach for murder. This was meant to be a neutral statement on Jamie’s part, but Meredith had taken it as an assault on her character.

“Of course I could kill you if I really thought it was necessary,” she had told him in the car. “I could kill anyone if the circumstances were right. That’s the thing, really. I’m just above any sort of moral absolutism. Sometimes the circumstances do prescribe an unlikely moral course of action, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Meredith, I think you’re doing the thing where you just say words in any order to avoid voicing anything meaningful,” said Jamie, which had set Meredith off again. But we don’t need to focus on the conversation with Jamie right now. We’ll inevitably come back to that.

At the moment, Meredith was contending not only with her stye, which was definitely worse today than it had been yesterday and she felt certain everyone else had noticed, but also the knowledge that she had placed all her eggs in the spineless basket that was her business partner, Ward.

That morning, Meredith had awoken in bed with Cass, picked up her phone to start her day as she always did—arranging her schedule and producing a to-do list that she would then attend to with a dutifulness that was borderline compulsive, like administrative zealotry—when she realized she had a string of messages from Ward.

It’s not out of the question Mer if he says he knows then he knows

We don’t need anyone looking into these allegations

If he publishes we both go to prison

No offense but I will absolutely turn on you Mer

Fuck they’re going to subpoena our messages

You’re going to look so guilty

I look bad obviously but whatever happens to me will be nothing compared to you

There’s no legal precedent for this holy fuck it’s going to be everywhere

Tyche will let you burn for sure

The feds will make an example of you

They’ll charge you for way more than fraud

I could still get a cushy white collar prison situation out of this but you

There is truly no way out of this for you unless you get him to pull the article

Answer the phone Meredith

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