Page 43 of Gifted & Talented

“It’s a strong offer,” said Meredith to her hands. “I really thought you’d be proud.”

Later, she would wish she hadn’t said it.

“If I thought your product was worth anywhere near as much as Tyche was offering,” her father told her without even a moment’s hesitation, “I would have outbid them by now.”

Meredith shook herself free of the memory and thought, in a very cold, firm internal voice, he’s dead now. Lots of incredible people had shitty fathers. Lots of people worked hard because they had something to prove. Really, she ought to thank him. She could put his body in the ground and step over it, outpace him, use his legacy and the memory of his disappointment to raise herself back up.

She shouldn’t have had the thoughtWhat would my father do,because the answer was that her father would never have been in this predicament. Her father wouldn’t have been swayed by someone telling him he’d done something brilliant, patting him on the head and practically leading him by the hand. He wouldn’t have been so desperate to have the resources, the money, the reach. He wouldn’t have cheated, and if he knew that Meredith had, he would cut her off from everything. His estimation. His legacy. Whatever he claimed to be his love.

His last will and testament. She shivered a little, wondering what would have driven Thayer Wren to draw up a new will with a new attorney a month ago; whether such a thought somehow concurred with a larger shift in the zeitgeist, riding the same invisible current that had driven Jamie to suspect her of flying too close to the sun. How long had everyone been mobilizing against her? She felt like the butt of the joke; that her months—years—spent waiting for the shoe to drop were not only earned, but worsened by retrospect. She’d done nothing but scour the sky and still she’d failed to see it falling. Was it because success was never a real outcome—had that always been doom in her future, the thing she’d misread as brightness the whole time?

The glass cliff, thought Meredith, searching around for some justifiable anger. It meant the phenomenon of women being awarded captaincy over men only when a company is in trouble, when leadership is more likely to fail. It meant letting a woman win the battle only when she was sure to lose the war. Philosophically, Meredith could intellectualize the inequity of this, falling back on the reliability of her sociological, systemic rage—the onewhere she’d been doomed from the start by the narrative, by the institution, by a deep, patriarchal flaw.

As always, though, her darker thoughts were quick to whisperNot you, though, dummy!You’vedeserved this all along.

Inevitably, Meredith thought of Lou again; of what a typical Tuesday might look like in Lou’s current life. Meredith had always imagined it would go something like this:

7:00AM: Awaken sweetly beside long-term partner, perhaps to morning cunnilingus.

8:00AM: Accept an award.

9:00AM: Throw the first pitch for the season opener at Tyche Stadium.

10:00AM: Cure cancer, uninvent childhood hunger.

11:00AM: Throw darts at an effigy of Meredith.

12:00PM: More cunnilingus.

1:00PM: Board meeting for whatever magitech venture Lou was pursuing lately (curing cancer being more of a philanthropic hobby).

2:00PM: Burn aforementioned effigy of Meredith.

3:00PM: Receive secret document detailing Meredith’s many professional failures; laugh maniacally.

4:00PM: Engage sudden craving for complex souffle; bake perfectly.

5:00PM: Nap.

6:00PM: Wake up.

6:15PM: Contemplate Meredith’s destruction.

6:19PM: Suddenly recall that Meredith did not need any help destroying herself, on account of being a complete and total hack.

6:30PM: Forget about Meredith completely, attend Posh Gala with Handsome Celebrity.

And so on. Leave it to Meredith to not know baseball season was well underway.

In any case, before Meredith could linger too long down that particular spiral, Ward called again, freaking out about the investors this time—They must have heard by now, they’re asking for more clarification on our testing parameters, nobody would ask for this unless they really knew—THEY KNOW, MEREDITH, THEY KNOW—and then, around ten that morning, her phone buzzed with a message.

Coffee?asked Jamie Ammar.

Meredith stared at his name on her screen, wondering why she wasn’tsurprised. Shouldn’t she be? She thought about Cass, who was working upstairs from her bed.Theirbed. He’d asked her how yesterday’s spontaneous drive had gone and she said fine, she’d tried to talk Jamie out of publishing the article and he’d refused, so now it was over.

“Tyche will bury it if it’s any legitimate threat,” Cass had said with a shrug, because he didn’t understand that actually, Thayer was right; that Tyche would use this as an excuse to toss Meredith aside, to buryherunder the weight of their misdeeds because everyone was just waiting for her to fail. There was no love for her in this industry. If Jamie published an article proving Chirp to be an insidious con, in all likelihood, Tyche still profited. Jamie couldn’t take them down without taking Meredith down harder, ending her career, making her the sacrificial lamb, the obvious agent for Tyche’s financial crimes while Kip Hughes and Merritt Foster settled easily out of court. While they kept selling the thing she’d spent decades trying to make, only to warp it beyond recognition the moment her check had cleared. Possibly long before that.

Because she’d taken the money. Her hands were filthy, with no way to walk that reality back. She knew who she’d gotten in bed with. No one had said anything when Tyche was accused of tracking users’ data. Nothing had changed when people criticized the conditions of Tyche’s factories, their history of labor abuse, the thousands of workers who were undertrained and injured on the job. People still bought their products, still used their services. The only difference was that now everyone knew it was bad, Meredith included, so everything she said yes to was just another bite from the poisonous tree.

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