Page 13 of The Thinnest Air
He smirks. “Youarean 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 knewanything, 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 ofGone Girland 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.”
My eyes fall to the stack of cards, then back to him.
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.
