As it turns out, the man Andy fell in love with is more of a mystery than she first thought. When they give their relationship another chance, it's not long before Lex's secrets begin to unravel, threatening their happily ever after.
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Lex's sister lay back in her chair, and I could see she tried to figure out where to start. How to explain the enigma that was her little brother.
"He told you about our parents, right?" she asked me, and I recognized the animosity in her voice. There was the same one in Lex's whenever he spoke of them. I nodded, hoping the little I knew about them would be enough to understand what was about to follow.
"So, you already know Richard and Miriam Coleman were never meant to have kids. They only had us because society demanded it, trying until they had a son. But they never really took care of us, letting other people do the parenting. Their lives were too busy to care for four children, so they paid people to do it. When it turned out that their long-awaited son was a certified genius, they paraded him around with pride, like a trophy."
It was clear she blamed her parents greatly for their behavior. I could entirely understand why, despising the idea they had used Lex like this, displaying him like a show pony. No child deserved such treatment.
"They felt superior for having conceived one of the greatest minds of our time. They gladly took the genius part of him, but were blind to what it entailed. The world through Lex's eyes was never the same as the one we know. He can see things we can't, anticipate, interpret, calculate... Nothing was ever simple for him, every single thing always means so much more. It never occurred to our parents that a child with an IQ like his needed a different type of education. That they needed to care for him in a better way than they had my sisters and me."
I knew Lex was smart. I knew he was a genius. But her mentioning his IQ made me insanely curious. He'd been tested, obviously, and I was dying to know just how smart the man was.
Since she seemed so open, I decided to ask, knowing I'd blame myself if I didn't. "Can I ask how high his IQ is?"
She thought about it for a moment, as if the answer was more complicated than a basic number. "He was tested about twenty times because our parents wouldn't let it go. The lowest number was 173, I think, and the highest one was 212. After a battery of tests, it was settled he is at 193."
Holy shit... An IQ this high was making him one of the smartest people alive. I didn't have numbers in mind, but both Einstein and Hawking were a little above 160. And Lex was way above them. That truth triggered hundreds of questions in my head. Why didn't a man like him end up working with quantum physics, or astrophysics, or mathematics...? What was it like for him to be around ordinary people all the time? Also, it explained why coding was so ridiculously easy to him. He was like a machine. He could see everything.
My amazement almost seemed to amuse Lucy, and she gave me a friendly smile. "From what I've heard, you're not doing too bad yourself. What's your number?"
Her compliment, implying I was also wickedly smart, made me uncomfortable for some reason. It suggested Lex had told her about me, and I didn't know what to think of it. Anyhow, I didn't even have a response for her.
