Check your system specs first...many computers made in recent years have auto-sensing Ethernet ports, where you can directly connect two computers with any standard Ethernet cable you have, and nothing else, no router. The port will figure it out and not need a crossover cable.
For Macs specifically, it has been maybe 15 years or more since they required crossover cables for peer-to-peer connections. Since then you have only needed a regular Ethernet cable.
I'm also not sure which kind of data transfer cable Meredith is using, since two Macs can also be connected peer-to-peer via IP Over Thunderbolt, Target Disk Mode, or (if it wasn't a new MacBook Pro) IP Over FireWire, all of which can use other types of data transfer cables.