Page 81 of Gifted & Talented

“Stop. What’s your name?” Arthur asked Monster, who turned to bury his head deeper into my shoulder.

“Thegis silent,” I said.

Arthur sighed audibly and gestured us forward. “Into the woods, I suppose.”

“Into the woods,” I agreed, hoisting Monster higher up on my hip. I had intended to leave him with my mother, and I’m still not sure why I brought him on that particular morning. Sometimes I just really like to be with my son, even when it annoys me that he refuses to walk because it means I’ll have to carry him, and it’s not like he’s tiny anymore. I used to carry him everywhere in one of those little baby wraps, partially because it was the only way I could get anything done when he was a newborn. He would cry for multiple hours a day, who knows why, though at the same time I understood completely. I used to strip us both down and walk around naked with him on my chest. The doctors call it skin-to-skin bonding but it shouldn’t even have a name, it’s that primal. There is something animal about motherhood, about the way that the first thing Monster did when they handed him to me was shit all down my bare tits and I didn’t mind. In fairness, my perineum was split completely in half, what was there to mind about a little shit?

I was grumbling a little at Monster, which Arthur noticed because he was thinking about Riot—Schrödinger’s baby, who both existed and didn’t exist. Riot would enjoy hiking, Arthur thought. Riot would probably love the feeling of being out in nature, exploring the wild deep. This part of Muir Woods probably wouldn’t be enough for Riot! There were too many tourists, you couldn’t do witchcraft here. Arthur was thinking about how Riot would want something that felt more undiscovered, or maybe she’d want to visitthe tide pools at Stinson Beach. Arthur was thinking again about what Gillian said about Philippa not being pregnant, and about the fact that it was feeling increasingly likely that Philippa had lied to him. Had Yves known that already? It wasn’t often that Arthur felt like the stupid one among the three of them, but he supposed he was. It had been a while, he suddenly realized, since the last time he even saw Yves and Philippa together outside the context of sex. But if he accepted that what Gillian had said was true, then Riot would go away, back into the ether, and Arthur couldn’t do that to her. In his mind he was carrying her, she was sleepy and he was taking her from the car up to her bedroom and she had her arms around his neck, and she was his, and he just couldn’t let her go.

41

Meredith woke up to find Cass sitting on the edge of the bed. She couldn’t see what he was looking at—only that he was curled around himself, probably scrolling on his phone. She sat up and crept toward him, resting her chin on the edge of his shoulder. He turned and kissed her forehead and she thought, to her own massive disappointment,You don’t smell like Jamie.

From this angle, she could see there was nothing on his phone screen. He hadn’t been scrolling. He’d just been staring into space.

“You’ve been neglecting Ward,” Cass said. Meredith rolled her eyes. She’d ignored several of Ward’s calls the previous evening, mostly because she no longer knew what to say to a man who couldn’t keep his house in order.

“My father died. Ward isn’t a priority right now.”

“Meredith.” Cass turned to face her, cool air splitting them as he shifted to look her in the eye. “Ward is going to turn on you.”

Right. Well. She certainly hadn’t chosen Ward for his impressive feats of loyalty. “I see.”

Cass looked like he was contemplating what to say next. He seemed to have been thinking about it for a long time.

“Kip knows the difference between what he bought and what he brought to market,” he eventually said. “The possibility that the ax might fall on Birdsong was always a consideration.”

There it is again, thought Meredith, reminded of the partially filled Tyche auditorium. I’m not a genius. I’m just a face. (THIS APP WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY AS LONG AS HAPPINESS MEANS50% OFF ORGANIC PEANUT BUTTER AND BOGO CONFLICT-FREE LEMONADE! :))

“But I don’t think he realized the extent of the data you and Ward covered up,” Cass continued, running a hand over the stubble on his cheeks. “Now that Ward’s on the record blaming you, once the article goes to print, I thinkTyche’s neatest course of action will be to remove you as Birdsong’s CEO, or—” He grimaced. “Incentivizeyou to step down.”

“I didn’t,” Meredith began, and stopped. She didn’t know why. She’d had every intention to keep going, to say that nothing had been covered up, to insist that this was ridiculous and that everything involved with Chirp was sound. Instead she said nothing.

“Yeah,” Cass said in apparent agreement. “Save it for Kip, or for whoever is putting out the article inMagitek. Is it the journalist you were talking to on Monday? Your ex?”

“Yes.” It stung a little more now, knowing that Jamie was done with her, that the article was going to print, that there was nothing more she could do. Well, not true, her career wasn’t necessarily dead yet. There was a long, arduous distance from an accusatory article going public and whatever burden of proof it might require for Tyche to point the finger at her alone. She could sue Jamie for libel; that would tie him up financially for long enough that nothing dire would happen to Chirp. It wasn’t ideal that Ward was turning on her, but she’d seen that coming a mile away. He’d been waffling on the whole thing for the last five years, and why shouldn’t he put some distance between his reputation and hers? She’d have done it if she had the choice, but even if she’d blamed him first, people would find some way to make it her fault regardless. She was the woman in charge. She should have known better. The woman always knows.

She felt a small deflation in her certainty then.Kip knows the difference between what he bought and what he brought to market.What Cass meant was the same thing Thayer had once told her.Kip knew that if you could be bought, you could easily be sold.

Blood in the water. She couldn’t even blame them, any of them. She knew what it was to be a shark.

“Well, get a lawyer,” Cass said reasonably. “Your ex did right by you that way, he gave you enough warning to assemble a defense. You’ve got someone in PR on staff, right? They can put together a statement for you. Tyche will release one as well, but as far as I know they aren’t aware what’s in the article yet, so you can make sure yours is ready first.”

“A lot of talk about me and mine when you were all about we and ours yesterday,” Meredith observed dully, even though that hadn’t even been true.

Cass shook his head. “I think it’s better if I use my eyes and ears at Tyche to help your defense,” he said. “I think that’s far more valuable to you right now. You’ll need someone advocating for you, trust me.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Cass sounded surprised that she’d ask, though she supposed he had a right to be. “Come on, Meredith. You know why.”

Because Kip would let her drown. Because Ward would hold her head underwater himself just to make sure she drowned alone. There were a couple of women on the Tyche board, two or three in the company’s leadership, but they didn’t like Meredith, never had, and the men found her abrasive for the mere fact of her existence—her success, which somehow took inherently from theirs.

Her father’s voice came back to her again, unhelpfully.You have to learn to play the game, Meredith.It was never enough to be smarter or better, to run farther or faster. In the end there would always be an easy victim, and in order to not become one, you had to fight alone.

“Your father’s death buys you some time,” Cass pointed out. “Nobody will blame you if you don’t mobilize right away. But Thayer Wren wasn’t universally beloved, especially near the end, and a lot of people will be plenty happy to see the billionaire’s daughter take the fall.”

Meredith thought about what Jamie had said about Wrenfare, about whoever wound up with the reins ending up with the blame for bad investments. Even Meredith could admit Wrenfare’s profits had publicly flagged over the last five years, maybe longer, though a good portion of the attention she’d paid her father’s company had been jealousy, hate-watching the performance of the thing she had wanted for herself. Oh god, and she had wanted Wrenfare! With Thayer no longer alive she could finally admit that to herself, that Wrenfare had always been the finish line. To inherit the house her father had built with his bare hands while he was still invincible to her—hisrealhouse, where his true artistry lived—had always been the dream.

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