by Minka Kent
If Harris were here, he’d tell me to stop judging. And I’d remind him that I judge when I’m anxious. When I lose control of my surroundings, I fixate on other people, picking them apart if only for the distraction it provides my frazzled mind. It’s a terrible habit, one I’ve been meaning to break over the years.
“All done, Ms. Ambrose,” the woman says, sealing the swabs in a plastic sleeve.
I don’t thank her. She doesn’t thank me. Gratitude is for happy occasions.
When Ronan returns, he takes a seat at his desk and fires up his computer, which chimes a melancholy jingle, the black screen flickering. The woman leaves a moment later, closing the door behind her, and I watch as he checks his e-mail.
“Were you able to contact that lead?” I ask.
“What’s that?” He peers over his screen at me, as if he’d forgotten I was here. I can only hope he’s so consumed by this case that he’s wrapped up in his own thoughts and unplugged from reality.
“The lead. You got a call . . . the tip line . . .”
“Right,” he says, tapping his fingers on the desk and directing his attention to me. Grabbing one of those squishy stress balls, he makes a fist around it before leaning back in his chair and scrutinizing me, like he’s trying to figure me out. Maybe it’s a detective thing. Maybe they do it to everyone: stare and examine. Only Ronan still looks like a nice guy, and when a nice guy does an assholeish thing, it takes everything I have not to scream. Closing my eyes for a moment, I think of Harris, imagining him taking my hand and telling me to breathe like he used to do, back when we’d opened our third shop and my neuroticism was at its peak. “They didn’t answer. I left a message. Gave her my cell.”
I couldn’t hide my disappointment if I tried.
He squeezes the ball tighter in his hand, his watchful gaze yet to retire. “You don’t look like her.”
“We’re half sisters,” I say. “She takes after her father’s side; I take after mine.”
Neither of us looks like our mother, and I’ve counted my lucky stars for that every day of my existence. Not that our mother isn’t a sight for sore eyes—she’s beautiful. I just wouldn’t want to look in the mirror every day and see . . . her.
“Born and raised in New York,” he states, as if that amuses him, like we’re novelties.
“How do you know?”
“I remember when I talked to her a few years back,” he says. “Said she was from Queens, and I asked her why she didn’t have an accent.”
“Not all of us have accents.”
“Yeah, but it was what she told me that stood out, I guess.” His eyes squint. “She said your mother used to make you watch the nightly news and practice talking like the anchors.”
My eyes fall to the ground as I recall all those dinners around the scratched oak table with the news blaring the day’s tragedies in the background, our mother dishing out Hamburger Helper and rambling on about the importance of speaking like the educated socialites we were never going to be.
“People hear you talking like you’re from Queens and they’re going to judge you, make assumptions about you,” she would say. “And if they’re not judging you, they’re going to be annoyed by you.”
Meredith was a natural, but she was younger. I had eight years on her, which meant eight years of unlearning everything about the way I spoke and replacing it with what felt like an accent.
“That’s Brenda Ambrose for you,” I say.
“You guys close? You and Meredith and your mother?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant to finding my sister.”
“Just trying to examine the case from all angles,” he says, tossing the stress ball on his desk. It rolls behind his keyboard, disappearing. “Evidence is everywhere.”
“Yeah, well, my sister went grocery shopping and vanished. I highly doubt our mother—or my relationship with her—had anything to do with that.” My words slice through the stale office air. “Now, if you’d kindly start looking for my sister and asking important questions to people who might actually know what happened, that’d be great.”
He smirks. “You are an important person, Greer.”
I rise, slinging my bag over my shoulder and tightening my grip on the strap. “My sister and I were separated by thousands of miles and dozens of states. I can assure you, whatever happened . . . I know nothing about it.”
“I’m not saying you know what happened,” he says, undeterred by my defensiveness. “I’m saying you might be able to provide some information that might lead me in a better direction.”
“If I knew anything, Detective, believe me, I would tell you.”
Ronan rises, his hands splayed on his desk as his back arches. His eyes brush past my shoulder, toward the sliver of window in his closed door.
“Look, I want to find her just as badly as you do,” he says. “And I’m going to. I just need you to cooperate. Tell me everything you can about her, even if you think it’s not important. You probably know her better than anyone, maybe even better than her husband.”
“I’m more than willing to cooperate and I don’t mean to sound harsh here, but how is rehashing childhood memories going to help you find my sister?”
His eyes narrow on mine. “We have to look at every possibility.” He sighs. “And that includes the possibility that maybe she wasn’t taken . . . that maybe she left on her own.”
“If my sister wanted out of her life, she would’ve told me. She wouldn’t just abandon her things in a grocery store parking lot,” I say.
Turning, I reach for the doorknob, intending to show myself out, but Ronan rushes around the desk and rests his hand on the glass, his stare searching mine.
“Is there any chance your sister was trying to get out of her marriage?” he asks. “For any reason? Is there anything she may have said or done in the past few years to hint at that? Any allusion or inclination? A gut feeling on your part? A strange conversation?”
I sigh. “She loved him. And if she wasn’t wanting to be with him anymore, she never said anything to me.”
“You never saw any warning signs that maybe they weren’t as happy as they seemed . . . anything in the way he spoke to her or treated her?”
“He treats her like a show pony, parades her around, spoils her.” I fold my arms across my chest. “He annoys the hell out of me, but he loves her. I can’t deny that.”
“So there was nothing,” he says, as if he needs clarification for the fourteenth time. I get the need to be thorough, but this is overkill.
“If my sister wanted out of her marriage, she’d have left him and moved back to New York. She knew my door was always open. I told her that. Before they were married.”
“So you had that conversation once?” he asks. “About what she would do if she wanted out of her marriage?”
“How about this?” I say, my patience suddenly paper-thin. “How about you put down your dog-eared copy of Gone Girl and come back to reality so you can find my sister? Maybe you should talk to that stalker. Maybe he had something to do with this?”
Ronan’s response is cut short by the piercing ring of his desktop phone. He abandons my side, swerving around his desk and answering in the middle of the second ring.
“Yeah, patch her through,” he says a few seconds later before covering the mouthpiece. “It’s the tip line.”
Ronan motions for me to leave.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I stand, feet planted.
“You can’t be in here,” he says, his words rushed. “Official police business. This is a confidential conversation. Department policy.”
Grabbing a small stack of business cards from an open box on the edge of his desk, he pushes them toward me.
“Hand those out to anyone who knew your sister,” he says. I hate that he uses the word “knew” . . . as if he thinks she’s gone for good. “If they so much as sold her a cup of coffee, I want to talk to them. I’ve been canvassing, but I could use your help.”
This could be a good thing, something to keep me busy. I get testy when I’m sitting around doing nothing, stuck inside my own head, drowning in my anxieties and powerlessness.
“Detective McCormack,” he says, his eyes meeting mine. He points to the door, and I opt to let him do his job because finding Meredith is the only thing that matters. Covering the mouthpiece once more, he says, “Wait by the front desk. I’ll take you back to the Price house as soon as I’m done.”
I head to the lobby, which is empty save for myself and a uniformed receptionist, who watches me from the corner of her eye. Maybe she’s curious, maybe she’s wondering what I’m thinking or how I’m processing this, asking herself how she’d handle something like this. Maybe it’s human nature, but I don’t care. She can observe all she wants, and she can assume all she wants. I stopped giving a shit about what anyone thinks a long time ago.
Just wish I could say the same for Meredith.
When we were younger, I always used to tell her to ditch the obsession with people pleasing. I’d tell her it was okay if people didn’t like her and that it meant she was doing something right.
We’re not meant to be best friends with every person who crosses our paths.
Not everyone has our best interests at heart.
Maybe I’m cynical, but those facts I know to be true.
I distinctly remember telling her once that if she continued telling people what they wanted to hear, one of these days it was going to backfire on her.
But my sister was tofu.
Absorbing the characteristics of whoever has managed to capture her attention at that point in her life, assimilating herself and becoming what they want her to become because it makes them like her better. And I can’t blame her. It’s in our genetics. Our mother is tofu.
I was always better at fighting the urge.
“You ready?” Ronan appears in the lobby doorway, his hands on his hips. There’s no pep in his step or life in his eyes that tells me he may have gotten a break in the case.
Glancing at the receptionist, I know better than to grill him on the phone call in front of her, but the second we get in the car, all bets are off.
CHAPTER 7
MEREDITH
Thirty Months Ago
“All packed?” I stand in my stepdaughter Isabeau’s doorway as she shoves wrinkled clothes into a monogrammed suitcase. She ignores me, and I ignore the fact that she has entirely too much attitude for a ten-year-old. I blame her mother. “Your mom’s going to be here any minute. You know how she gets when you’re not ready.”
God forbid Erica has to stand in the foyer an extra three minutes. She acts like she’s standing at the fiery gates of hell, refusing to move any closer than she has to.
I check my watch. Isabeau sighs. She doesn’t want me here. When I first moved in, she wasted no time informing her father that I wasn’t allowed in her room, to which he promptly responded by confiscating her cherished iPhone for five days, the worst punishment a parent could possibly inflict on a modern-day child.
She’s loathed my presence ever since.
“I know what time my mother arrives,” she says. “She comes at the same time every week. You don’t have to remind me.”
I lift my hands in protest. “Just trying to be helpful, Iz.”
She rises, zipping her bag. “I don’t like to be called that.”
I don’t blame her for hating me. One minute her family unit is intact, and the next her parents are divorced and her father’s doting over a complete stranger who’s suddenly trying to forge an unnatural bond with her.
Andrew tells me it’ll take time, that Isabeau doesn’t warm up to anyone right away, just like Greer. He’s positive that one day we’ll be the best of friends. But I don’t need to be her best friend—I just need for things not to be so strained and awkward 50 percent of my life.
The doorbell rings, Erica I’m sure, and I wonder how strange it must feel to ring the bell to a house she once shared with her husband. I also wonder if her resentment of me is reinforced each time I answer the door.
“Calder.” I yell for him as I traipse across the second-floor gallery, rapping on his door. There’s music blaring on the other side, so I knock louder. When he doesn’t answer, I open the door to find him zoned out in front of his TV, playing some kind of video game where he shoots at anything and everything. “Calder, your mom’s here.”
He pauses his game, shoulders slumping, and tosses his controller on the ground. His leather backpack is overflowing, half-unzipped, and he slings it over his shoulder as our eyes meet.
Calder doesn’t say much to me, and he hasn’t ever since his father found one of my thongs under his mattress and my favorite Agent Provocateur bra in the bottom of his pajama drawer. I regularly catch his eyes lingering in places they don’t belong, and he walked in on me in the shower last month—something that felt more intentional than accidental.
Andrew chalks it up to the fact that Calder is fourteen. He’s curious about the opposite sex, that’s all. It’s a phase, and once he bonds with me as a mother figure, all this will hopefully subside.
Never mind that I’m not nearly old enough to be his mother.
Calder pushes past me, not saying a word, and bounces down the curved staircase to the front door. I let him answer this time.
When I emerge from his messy teenage lair, I spot Isabeau making her way downstairs to her mother, tangled hair bouncing and chubby face lit.
The view from the gallery is a straight shot to the foyer, and I watch as Erica ruffles Calder’s dark hair before cupping his face.
“You look skinnier and skinnier every time I see you,” she says, tongue clucking. “Is Meredith feeding you?”
He jerks his face from her hand, his eyes glued to his phone. “Yeah, Mom.”
Isabeau wraps her arms around her mother’s whittled waist. If anyone’s getting skinnier and skinnier, it’s Erica.
Ever since the divorce, she’s been sticking to a strict diet of protein shakes and vodka tonics. Or so Andrew says. He finds it amusing, says she’s trying to compete with me. Her jealousy makes him laugh, and I’d feel badly about it if I didn’t know how awful she was to him for sixteen years—cheating, overspending, never-ending nagging and bickering.
Erica is the embodiment of a typical Glacier Park housewife: entitled, petty, and allergic to kindness.
“When was the last time you combed your hair, darling?” she says to her daughter. “All these tangles. Ugh.”
Isabeau tucks a disheveled, cocoa-hued strand behind one ear. “Meredith won’t do my hair, Mom. I’ve asked her, and she always says she’s too busy.”
My jaw unglues, and I have half a mind to storm down the stairs and call her out on her bold-faced lie, but I won’t. I know what she’s doing. She wants attention and sympathy from her mother, and if lying about me is the only way to get it, then I’ll let it go, and I’ll be the bigger person—for now.
The truth always has a way of coming out sooner or later.
Besides, there are far more damaging lies Isabeau could tell.
“Meredith, is that you up there?” Erica calls out. “Are you going to come down and say hello, or are you going to stand there in the shadows, listening to our conversation?”
Bitch.
“Didn’t want to intrude,” I say. “Was just giving you some space.”
“So sweet of you,” she says, her voice as fake as the D-cup implants protruding from her chest wall and the luxurious shade of glossed auburn covering her graying mane.
My hand slides down the polished wooden banister as I make my graceful entrance wearing a humble smile, but when I get to the bottom, my phone chimes with a text alert. My mood fades when I read that Andrew won’t be home for dinner tonight.
“Trouble in paradise?” Erica doesn’t try to fight the pleased smirk claiming her overfilled lips.
“Not at all.” I kee
p my head high, meeting her inquisitive gaze head-on. Shame on her for trying to make me doubt my marriage.
“Let me guess, he canceled on you?” she asks. “Has to work late for the millionth time?”
“I’m not discussing any of this with you.”
“Fair enough.” Erica’s stare is locked on mine as she slips two black leather gloves over her dainty fingers. “Kids. Car. Now.”
Calder and Isabeau file out the front door, their designer bags in tow, and Erica comes toward me with folded arms, her heels clicking with each step.
“You remind me so much of myself sixteen years ago,” she says. “That brightness in your eyes. The glow on your face. Enjoy it while you can, Meredith. You’ll only be the apple of his eye for so long.”
“What the hell are you doing?” My nose wrinkles.
“Watching out for you,” she says, thin brows arched. “Woman to woman. You know, that kind of thing.”
“Bitter and jealous isn’t doing you any favors.”
Erica laughs. “Sweetheart, you’re the last person I’d be jealous of. You think I’m crying myself to sleep every night over losing him? Quite frankly, the only thing I despise about this entire situation is that it’s humiliating. My husband of sixteen years dumps me and picks up a wife half his age . . . talk about cliché. You’re the equivalent of a middle-aged man’s shiny new Porsche. You’re nothing but a sex toy. And one of these days, when the newness and excitement wear off, he’ll trade you in for something else. That’s what Andrew does. Nothing is ever good enough. He’s always striving for the next hotter, better, more exhilarating thing.”
“How poignant, Erica. Thank you.” I stride toward the door, pulling it open for her before I allow her to burrow beneath my skin another inch.
She scoffs, lingering in my space for a moment too long before finally strutting outside, only the second she reaches the crisp Glacier Park air, she turns back to face me.
“One of these days, you’ll see I was right. And you probably won’t want to admit it, but you’ll know. Deep down you’ll know. And I won’t feel sorry for you because I warned you.” Her hazel eyes scan the length of me before crinkling at the corners. “You’re nothing but a novelty to him. I promise you that.”