“Dashing and preternaturally brilliant genetic material, I hope,” he jokes.
“I wouldn’t know,” Meret replies. “We don’t seem to have a lot in common.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong.” He looks up and grins. “We both love your mother.”
Meret’s lips are pressed tightly together.
“And,” Wyatt adds, “I, too, know all the words toHamilton.”
Meret’s eyes widen. “You do?”
“No. But I can stumble admirably through the first song.” He sobers. “I know you didn’t ask for any of this. I know it must feel like the carpet’s been ripped out from beneath you. Something else I believe we have in common. I also know it would be demeaning to you for me to assume that I could enter your life and be treated as anyone more important to you than a stranger on the street. I have no misconceptions that you think of me as a friend. But I’d like to hope that you’d give me the chance to become one.”
He fumbles in his pocket for his phone. “Oh, and there’s this,” he says.
He scrolls to a photo that has the chromatic richness of old Kodak prints. In it is a boy, with Wyatt’s telltale golden hair and wry smile, sitting beside a Bernese mountain dog on the steps of a stone building.
He means to show her a childhood pet, but both Meret and I are staring at the image of a young Wyatt—a boy who was chubby, husky, with round cheeks and the hint of a double chin.
“I don’t know if a passion for dog breeds is genetic, but—”
“You don’t look like that now,” Meret says, taking the phone from his hand.
He glances at the photo. “No.” Wyatt shrugs. “I suppose not. I was always big for my age, or at least that’s what they called it back then, to be polite. When it became clear that I couldn’t play rugby for shite I had to find a way to hide from the coach. He never went to the library on the school campus—I’m pretty sure he never read a book in his life. But I did. About pyramids and mummies and pharaonic dynasties.”
I stare at him. For all that I always imagined Wyatt to be perfect, there was a time when he felt he wasn’t.
I watch Meret touch her finger to the picture, enlarging it, as if she has to see it better to believe it. She sucks in her breath, and I can see all the answers falling into place: finally.Thisis where I came from.
“People change,” Wyatt says quietly. He looks at me, still speaking to Meret. “You may not think so right now, but sometimes it’s good to remember who you used to be.”
I feel my eyes sting. With one photograph, Wyatt has not only given Meret a sense of history, he’s also absolved me.
Meret hands him back his phone. “I loved that dog,” Wyatt muses. “I wanted to name him Narmer, after the first king to unify Egypt. But he was my brother’s pet, technically. So his name was Bailey.” His mouth twists. “How pedestrian.”
“Do you ever listen to podcasts?” Meret asks. An olive branch.
“No.”
“There’s one calledThe Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. It’s awesome. There’s an episode about how hair goes white overnight and deer that eat humans and death by molasses. One time they talked about monks who turn themselves into mummies,” she says. “I could send you a link.”
Wyatt nods gravely. “I would very much like that.”
A smile transforms Meret’s face. “I just started playing tennis. The coach says I’m a natural.”
“I’ll bet you are. I was the highest ranked singles player at boarding school when I was your age.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” He hesitates. “I haven’t played in a while. Maybe you could show me a few tricks, one day.”
“Maybe,” she says. “One day.”
I watch them for a little while, trading conversation as if it is a checkers game, one red piece taking one black one and vice versa, until each holds the full measure of the other’s color. An hour passes, and then another. I wonder what Brian is doing. If he is sitting somewhere in his own house, wondering how a stranger might be stealing his daughter’s allegiance.
As if I have conjured him, the door opens, and Brian steps outside. Wyatt immediately stands. I realize that where I am sitting, with my back against the porch wall, I am equidistant between them.
Brian stares at him, his jaw locked. Wyatt doesn’t blink under his regard.
