They've always been different in this way -- where Charlie feels white hot anger, Meyer feels nothing but cold calculation. There's the potential for anger there, of course, there always has been, but it's buried so deeply below the surface that even something like this doesn't draw it out. He doesn't reproach Charlie for kicking a chair over, doesn't admonish him for throwing a salt shaker. Though he can't necessarily relate to that kind of out of control anger, he understands it. That's how Charlie is.

His own fear is gone by now, but he knows Charlie's feeling it, too. After all, when Meyer had had the conversation with Ned, it had scared him so much he'd thrown up in the sink. What would Charlie think if he knew that, he wonders vaguely. That's not a level of fear he cares to reveal.

"What we do," he says, sighing, "is become the best goddamn friends he can imagine. We don't give him any reason to tell anyone what he knows. If he needs help fixing something around the house, we fix it. If he needs help baking a pie, we bake it. If he needs a shoulder to cry on, we offer it. We make ourselves indispensable, so that he can't even imagine sharing anything about us. And if he decides to tell someone anyway..."

There's a pause, and a cold shrug. "Then we handle it."