Page 84 of Gifted & Talented

“His coffee thermos,” suggested Dzhuliya. “Or the cup he used to use that kept the coffee warm all day. You know, instead of just drinking it.”

“Oh yeah, my other sibling,” Eilidh said, and Dzhuliya laughed. A husky, morning-after laugh, like lovers did—an unsolicited thought. Eilidh managed a playful, “Maybe one of those little vodka bottles you get on planes?”

“Probably more than one of them, I’m guessing?”

“Yeah, like a treasure chest of those.”

Dzhuliya came around the bed, idly tracing the material of Eilidh’s quilt with the tip of her finger. “I can’t tell if this conversation is wildly inappropriate or just… some kind of coping mechanism.”

“Both,” said Eilidh.

Dzhuliya was quiet for a moment, perching delicately on the edge of the bed and staring down at the quilt before locking eyes with Eilidh. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what? Not last night, I hope. Because I’m definitely not sorry.” Eilidh reached out to run a finger over a light bruise on Dzhuliya’s neck. “Even though I maybe should be.”

Dzhuliya leaned into Eilidh’s touch for a moment. “I meant… your father, I guess. I don’t know. Everything.” She exhaled. “I’m not sure last night would have happened if you weren’t… you know. Vulnerable.” She gave a sidelong search of Eilidh’s face. “I can’t help feeling like I should have turned you down.”

“I’m grieving,” replied Eilidh with a shrug, not wanting to engage withwhat it might mean if Dzhuliya was right. If last week’s Eilidh would have clung to the lie of amicable colleagues forever, then had her father always been the only thing in the way? Were Eilidh’s current feelings the mirage or was it the person she’d tried so hard for so long to be? The thing in her chest flicked an admonishment, like the tongue of a deadly asp. “There are basically no rules right now.”

“I’dhave done it a long time ago, you know, without the grief excuse. For the record.” Dzhuliya looked squarely at her then. “I didn’t think you were interested, given how things went last time.”

The abbreviated tryst in the car, she meant. And all the months of circling each other since then. “It’s not that I didn’t want to. It’s just… this isn’t a priority for me,” Eilidh said with a wave of her hand to gesture at the boudoir and its realm of recreation—something that felt both true and easy to explain, or maybe the easiest version of a heavier truth. “And I’ve been pretty stuck the last couple of years. Longer than that, really.” The thing in Eilidh’s chest seemed to take profound offense. “I just don’t think I had the bandwidth for whatever this was. Is. Could be.” Eilidh grimaced at the uncertainty in her voice, the way she didn’t seem to be answering the question, if there had even been one. “Is it okay if I don’t choose my verbs wisely just yet?”

Dzhuliya looked as if she might say something, but then changed her mind. “It’s fantastic, actually.” She leaned away, straightening her shoulders with a renewed sense of purpose. “But I really should get going.” She stood, seeming winded just from the effort of rising.

“Do you want me to come?” asked Eilidh. The question surprised her, having manifested from nowhere. If someone else had asked her if she wanted to pick out her father’s urn today, at this very moment, she’d have said absolutely not, thank you very much. “It feels like, I don’t know, maybe a cathartic exercise. Plus, I’m executor, right? And I’m kind of going crazy just waiting around for the lawyers to tell me what to execute.”

“Are you sure? I thought it might be… difficult for you,” Dzhuliya said. “Emotionally.”

Eilidh shrugged. “You’ll dry my tears, won’t you?” she joked.

Dzhuliya hesitated, wrestling for a moment with her response, and Eilidh wondered if she was doing it again. Being the boss’s daughter, crossing the line that should have stayed firmly in place. She was perpetually looking down from her vantage point of untouchable safety, making her out-of-touch, amicable jokes.

“I thought we weren’t specifying verb tenses?” Dzhuliya said. “Emotional labor seems pretty grammatically defined, relationship-wise.”

“I didn’t mean…” Eilidh trailed off. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“Although you’re not wrong about taking someone with me. Meredith and Arthur might want to weigh in, too,” Dzhuliya seemed to realize aloud.

“No.” Eilidh shook her head. “I doubt it. They never really understood him.” She meant to say that her siblings hadn’t understood their father’s decorative taste, but that phrasing worked just as well.

Dzhuliya must have heard something different, something else. “Maybe youshouldcome, then.” Dzhuliya was looking at her watchfully, overlong. “For practical reasons.”

“Makes sense. I can dry my own tears,” Eilidh agreed.

“No.” Dzhuliya’s intensity then surprised her. “No, I’ll do it for you, if you want.”

Eilidh had an odd sensation of lightness that she realized was the absence of heaviness. The thing that usually sat somewhere around her clavicle and had, up until that moment, been lazing around her shoulders like a shawl seemed to have temporarily lifted, the usual tension evaporating from her skin like midsummer rain. Not gone, but with a satiated presence somehow, as if it had eaten a filling meal and drifted off.

There was a buzz from the floor, where Dzhuliya had set her purse. “Oh, sorry, hang on.” Dzhuliya dug around for her phone, a pained expression crossing her face as she answered. “Hello?”

An explosive feminine voice began to rant from the other end of the call. “Oh, um. De León, you said? Yes, I think… I think so, maybe.” Dzhuliya was silent as the other voice picked up, growing more and more agitated as they spoke. “I can check his calendar if you want, but he did have a few meetings with someone who meets that description. I’m not sure what they discussed.” More intensity. “Right, I’ll check on it for you.”Blahblahblah!!!!From the other end. “Okay. Okay, bye.”

Dzhuliya hung up and gave Eilidh a vacant look. “Your sister is really quite the charmer.”

“Oh,” said Eilidh, shuddering. “Oh, god.”

“Yeah.” Dzhuliya rolled her eyes. “It seemed unwise at the moment to add fuel to whatever that was.”

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