Page 14 of The Thinnest Air
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.
