The Thinnest Air

by Minka Kent

  She always had to stay one step ahead of everything, making sure nothing bad ever happened to either of us. I can’t imagine it was easy, always anticipating the worst, living your life waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  In fifth grade, my teacher sent me to the school nurse’s office because I wouldn’t stop scratching my head. The nurse who examined me gasped in horror, freaking out and darting around the room and scrambling for her phone. I overheard her telling the school receptionist that I had the worst case of head lice she’d seen in twenty-eight years on the job. I also heard her say she had half a mind to call Child and Family Services because I was clearly neglected.

  But instead they called my mother, who promptly shaved my head that night, tied my hair clippings in a bag, and tossed them down the garbage chute.

  I drag my hand along my loose, blonde waves, soft and blown out, the result of Brazilian keratin treatments at salons with months-long wait lists.

  “Fine,” Greer says. “You can have the nice shoes. Just don’t become her.”

  “I won’t,” I promise her, drawing an X across my heart before lifting my pinky to her. She smirks, resisting my pinky promise, but I persist until she gives in. “Come on. Our reservation is in five minutes.”

  As soon as we’re settled at our table, sipping Italian teas among the clink of flatware on china and the dull lull of conversation in the background, I’m overcome with a wave of contentment, the same warm, gushy feeling I tend to soak up like a dry sponge anytime I’m with her.

  “How’s Andrew?” she asks.

  “Amazing.” I can’t help but smile when I hear his name. It’s a reflex.

  I never thought I’d be settled so young, but when I look at some of the girls I went to college with and how they’re struggling through their “quarter-life crises” and jumping from jerk boyfriend to jerk boyfriend, it makes me even more appreciative of the way things panned out for me.

  Andrew is a real man.

  He doesn’t play games. He doesn’t manipulate or have a wandering eye. He treats me like gold and loves me more than anyone has ever loved me.

  Anyway, things could always be worse, and the only problems I have are those of the first-world variety.

  My sincerest wish is that my sister could know this feeling, too, one of these days—of being loved, cared for, cherished, whether by Harris . . . or someone new.

  “So how are things with you and Mr. Collier?” I ask in an English accent, taking a sip of tea and lifting my pinky finger. When we were little, we’d always pretend to be fancy, thinking it was the funniest thing in the world.

  Greer’s posture shifts, her back growing straight as she peers out the window to her right. She’s not going to play along.

  “I’ve decided to move out,” she says, lifting her cup to her mouth.

  “That’s okay, right? I mean, you guys are broken up now. It’s weird that you’re living together.”

  “I guess.”

  “How do you feel about it?” I don’t expect my sister to give me a straight answer. She’s still in love with Harris, and I have a feeling she always will be.

  Greer shrugs, avoiding eye contact. “It’s fine. It was time. No point in treading the same old waters with the intention of going nowhere.”

  “I’ve never understood what you see in him anyway. I’ve never met anyone so pretentious who tries so hard to act like they’re not pretentious. He talks down to everyone, and he acts like he knows everything.”

  “Intelligent, opinionated men are like that.” She takes another sip. “He can’t help it. He’s very passionate about his causes. And he’s not pretentious. That’s absurd. He’s the least pretentious person I know.”

  Years ago, I used to make fun of Harris for wearing $120 T-shirts declaring his feminist and climate change stances, and he’d make fun of my Tory Burch sandals and overlined Kylie Jenner lips. We never saw eye to eye, but we both loved Greer enough to tolerate each other and keep our razzing to a minimum.

  Of course, Greer always opted to believe we were bantering like a couple of squabbling schoolchildren.

  I suppose we’re always deciding what we want to see in life and choosing how we’re going to see it. She never wanted to believe Harris was anything other than perfect, and I blame love. She loved him. Still does.

  Sometimes love is wonderful.

  Other times it’s poison.

  “Does he want to see other people?” I ask. Their breakup came out of left field, and from the outside, it seemed amicable and drama-free, but the more I dug into the nitty-gritty of it all, the more I realized how screwed up their situation was. My sister claimed the relationship had grown stale and evolved into a close friendship, but looking back, I can’t help but wonder if those were his words.

  Greer wastes no time shaking her head. “It’s not like that.”

  “Then what’s it like?”

  “We’re not together anymore. It doesn’t make sense to live together. He wants space. So do I. End of story.”

  “But you’ll still be working together every day,” I say. “How is that giving each other space?”

  “We’ll be in different stores.”

  “You weren’t today,” I say, tracing the rim of my teacup and watching her squirm. She’s trying to act like she was on board with this whole breakup thing, but I know her better than that. This was all Harris’s idea. She’s just going along with it because she thinks it’ll bring him back to her in the end.

  That’s the curse of us Ambrose women. We’re powerless when it comes to our men. I’m just lucky I found a good one. The wrong one could easily be my undoing.

  I asked Greer once, “Why Harris?” I wanted to know what she saw in him, why she was willing to place her entire love life on pause in hopes that he’d eventually come around. She was quiet at first, contemplating her response. And then she told me he was her first love. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t unlove him. It was only ever going to be him for her.

  Then she changed the subject.

  Typical.

  “You’re right, Mer. We were in the same store today,” she says. “It’s end of month, and I was running numbers. My office is there.”

  “Your office is a computer you carry with you everywhere you go,” I say.

  “Are we ready to order?” Our server interrupts our conversation with impeccable timing, tossing water on the flames that were starting to shoot a little too high for a midmorning brunch.

  Greer orders the eggs Benedict.

  I order the French toast.

  We talk about the weather.

  CHAPTER 10

  GREER

  Day Three

  When I return, Meredith’s driveway is crowded with vehicles. I’ve been gone all afternoon, knocking on doors and visiting local businesses my sister frequented. So far everyone says the same thing.

  “She seemed happy, always smiling.”

  “She had the perfect marriage.”

  “There were no red flags.”

  Or the unexpectedly common, “I never really knew her. Sorry.”

  It truly is as though she disappeared into thin air.

  I pass through the kitchen and stop when I see a camera crew gathered around the table eating submarine sandwiches and little yellow bags of potato chips. Voices trail from the study down the hall, one of them all too familiar.

  “Andrew?” I call.

  No answer.

  Heading to the study, I stop in the doorway when I see my mother sitting in a makeup chair. Her hair is bleached blonde, just like the photo Meredith sent me, and pressed into beach waves, her skin an unrecognizable shade of bronzed orange. From the looks of it, she’s settling into life with her SoCal boyfriend just fine.

  “Can you contour this?” She points to her neckline. “And can you fix my eyebrows a little? Make the arch stronger? I just know they’re going to disappear under those bright lights. They’re so blonde.”

  Leave it to Brenda Ambrose
to be more concerned with her eyebrows than her missing daughter.

  A producer with a clipboard and headset takes a seat on Andrew’s desk, going over a few things with my mother.

  “What’s this about?” I make my presence known, eliciting a startled jerk from my mother.

  “Oh, goodness. Greer.” She fans the makeup artist away, rising to her feet and coming at me. Wrapping her arms around my shoulders when she knows damn well I hate hugs, she buries her face in my neck. “It’s so wonderful to see you, sweetheart.”

  In over three decades on this planet, my mother has yet to refer to me as “sweetheart.” “Ungrateful brat?” Yes. “Little bitch.” Yes. “Biggest mistake of my life.” Yes.

  “Sweetheart?” Never.

  I almost remind her the cameras aren’t rolling yet.

  “We just got here a little bit ago,” she says. “Wade’s in the other room with Andrew.”

  “I had no idea there was a TV crew coming today.”

  “Neither did I.” She smiles, as if the idea of being on TV makes her feel beautiful and glamorous and special. I wish I were surprised by this behavior. “Connie Mayweather from Twenty-Four-Seven on CNN is going to be interviewing Andrew. They asked if we’d make an appearance.”

  “We?”

  “Well, Wade and I. And you.”

  “Wade met Meredith once.”

  Her smile fades, as if I’ve burst her bubble with the sharp tip of a little pin made from pure reality. “It’s a show of support, Greer.”

  Showing my face on national television holds zero appeal, but this isn’t about me. If Mer is out there somewhere, I want her to know I’m looking for her, too. I refuse to give my spotlight-loving mother all the glory.

  “Fine,” I say.

  My mother flags down the hair-and-makeup crew, telling them they’ve “got another one to work on” before returning to her chair.

  An hour later, my face is contoured and highlighted, my hair has been yanked from its messy bun and curled into something more appropriate for a Sunday-morning church service, and I’m asked if I have another shirt to wear, something less black and faded because it would “depress the viewers at home and appear as though we’re prematurely mourning her.”

  They situate us on the sofa in the formal living room, placing Andrew next to my mother and Wade behind her. The lights are hot, raising the crisp temperature of this room in a matter of minutes, and the caked-on makeup on my face is beginning to melt into my skin.

  Connie Mayweather acts like she’s a big deal, her blonde bob cut to her sharp jawline, her cheekbones sculpted, her lips painted in a neutral, camera-ready pink. She wears a Chanel suit and sits cross-legged opposite the four of us, her face shaped in sympathy that appears to be genuine, though I imagine years of practice could fool just about anybody.

  “Andrew, please walk us through this,” she says. “Tell us where you were when you first discovered your wife, Meredith Price, was missing.”

  He takes his time, and I have to wonder if his pauses are well placed or if he’s truly gathering his composure.

  “I was at work,” he says, exhaling. “In a meeting actually. My receptionist knocked on the door, told me there was a police officer there to talk to me.”

  Connie’s eyes squint as she pays close attention, giving slow, reaffirming nods when he pauses.

  “An officer from Glacier Park Police Department met me in my office and asked me when I’d last spoken to my wife.” He stops, lifting his hand to his mouth and dragging his fingers down the corners. I try to imagine his lips trembling, but I can’t. I’ve never seen any real emotion coming from this man other than his flagrant, sticky-sweet infatuation with my sister. “I told him we’d spoken that morning, and she mentioned she was going to the grocery store later in the day. That’s when he informed me that a store clerk was running some trash out to the dumpster behind the building. He saw a car sitting there, the driver’s door wide open. Then he saw her things inside, took down the plate number, and tried to have her paged. No one claimed it, so he called the police to report an abandoned vehicle, and that’s when they tracked me down. About the same time, I received a call from the kids’ school saying no one had come to pick them up.”

  His voice breaks. My mother reaches for him, placing her hand over his. Wade, who hadn’t taken the time to change out of his Hawaiian button-down and cargo shorts ensemble, rests his hand on my mother’s shoulder.

  “So they were suspicious,” Connie clarifies.

  Andrew nods. “It wasn’t a normal scene. Nobody leaves their car open like that, their purse and phone and keys inside.”

  I sit, unmoving, watching this freak show and deducing that these people—my family—have become caricatures of themselves.

  Is that what people do when a loved one goes missing? You act the way you think you’re supposed to act? And how are you supposed to act? And why would you give two shits when there are bigger fish to fry?

  “Tell us what was going through your mind the moment you realized something was wrong,” Connie says.

  He sits up a little straighter. “Just . . . that I needed to find her. Nothing else mattered. I needed to find my wife. Honestly, everything from that day is kind of a blur at this point.”

  “He hasn’t had much sleep,” my mother chimes in, rubbing his knee like he’s a small child.

  Sick.

  “Understandable,” Connie says, wincing. “How are you dealing with everything?”

  “One day at a time,” he replies without pause. “That’s all I can do. I stay in contact with the police. My phone is on me at all times in case she calls. We’re doing everything we can to find her.”

  “Do the police have any leads?” she asks.

  He hesitates again—a dramatic pause? “No, Connie. They don’t. And that’s why we agreed to do this interview. Someone out there knows something.”

  Connie turns to the camera. “I understand there’s a dedicated tip line, is that correct? And you’re offering a reward? One hundred thousand dollars for the safe return of Meredith?”

  Andrew begins to speak, but Mom cuts him off.

  “Yes to both,” she answers. God forbid she doesn’t get equal screen time. “And the tip line is manned day and night. Someone will always answer. And they can call the Glacier Park Police Department as well. They’ll put them through to someone immediately.”

  Andrew squeezes Mom’s hand, whispering a quiet, “Thank you.”

  “Greer,” Connie says, somehow knowing my name, “as Meredith’s older sister, how are you handling all this?”

  I hate her stupid, trite question. What does she expect? How am I supposed to answer this?

  “Greer.” My mother whips around, visually nudging me to answer.

  “How the hell do you think I’m holding up?” I want to reply to Connie’s question with one of my own.

  “How about instead of asking us how we’re doing, ask us what we’re doing to find Meredith?” I ask.

  Connie’s eyes flit from mine to Andrew’s, then to my mother’s.

  “Greer, you may excuse yourself from this interview,” Mom says.

  Apparently I’m fourteen, and she’s Mother of the Year.

  Without saying a word, I leave the living room with the intention of locking myself up in the guest room—not because she told me to, but because I can’t stand being a part of this circus.

  And I need to think.

  I don’t need to be sitting on a sofa with millions of eyes on me. I’ll leave that to them.

  My sister will know I’m trying my hardest to find her. I shouldn’t have to shed a forced tear on national television and subject myself to public scrutiny to prove that.

  Our heartbreak is not entertainment, and I won’t be distraught on national television so Connie Mayweather’s show can get ratings.

  I utter a silent apology to my sister as I head for the stairs. TV interview or not, I’m still going to find her.

  “Greer.”
Ronan stands in the entryway of the Price manse.

  I’d act surprised, but I suspect I’m going to be seeing a lot of him from now on.

  “Hey.” His lips pull back for a second, revealing his straight pearly teeth. “Been trying to get hold of Andrew for the past hour. He isn’t answering.”

  I huff. So much for Andrew keeping his phone on him at all times in case Meredith calls.

  “He’s making his national television debut with Connie Mayweather.” I nod toward the living room. “Camera makeup, Armani suit, the works.”

  Ronan doesn’t find any of this humorous. His hands on his hips, he watches from the foyer, observing Andrew with quiet tenacity.

  “If he wasn’t so obsessed with my sister and she wasn’t so damn in love with him, I’d be making damn sure your fingers were pointed in his direction right now.” I keep my voice low.

  Ronan looks to me. “What makes you think they aren’t?”

  “Do you know something?”

  “In any missing persons case, we always look at spouses or partners first,” he says, also keeping his voice hushed.

  “So you haven’t ruled him out?” I ask.

  “I haven’t. No.” Ronan tucks his bottom lip beneath his teeth for a second before giving a quick shake of his head. “Not yet.”

  I turn back to Andrew, watching as my mother hands him a tissue. Those are real tears, at least in the physical, tangible sense. The influence behind them? Only Andrew knows.

  “Why’d you come here?” I ask.

  “We got another tip,” he says. “Another caller claims to have spotted Meredith in Nebraska with a rough-looking man in a conversion van. They tried following them but lost them after a handful of stoplights during rush hour. We got a description on the driver.”

  “And?”

  “Gray hair, midfifties, goatee,” he says. “Van is blue with a rusted bumper. We got a plate, so they’re going to ID him. We can question him once they track him down, but for now I wanted to run it past Andrew to see if any of that sounded familiar.”

  “Right, because Maserati-driving Andrew Price hangs out with conversion-van kidnappers.” I tilt my head, rolling my eyes.