Page 50 of The Thinnest Air
Isabeau rolls her eyes. “Like you care.”
I lift a brow. “I’m just wondering what she thinks about all of this ... is she sad? Worried?”
Andrew’s daughter laughs, her braces covered in chocolate. “Seriously? My mom can’t stand Meredith. Nobody likes her. Not even my dad sometimes.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re always fighting,” she says. “They think I can’t hear them, but my room is right down the hall. I hear everything.”
“Fighting about what?” I move from around the island, taking a seat at the table next to her.
“Who knows?” She seems annoyed by my close proximity. Typical thirteen-year-old. “I don’t listen. I only hear them yelling and stuff.”
My chin juts forward. I can’t imagine Meredith yelling. She’s the chillest, calmest person in the world. Very seldom has she ever let anything rattle her to the point of throwing a tantrum.
The fridge door opens and slams behind me. I turn and see Calder grab a bottle of Evian and twist the cap.
“You know she’s fucking with you, right?” he asks, taking a drink, and I wonder how it is he swears so naturally at such a young age.
Isabeau shoots him a look. I take it they don’t get along.
“She’s a compulsive liar,” he says. “She made all that shit up. Don’t ever believe anything she says.”
With that, he’s gone, disappearing into the bowels of the Price manse, the shrill chime of his phone echoing through the halls when he gets a text message. Turning back to Isabeau, I fully intend to give her a piece of my mind, but she, too, is gone. Nothing but an empty cereal bowl and a milk-spilling spoon resting on the table.
Little shit.
Never has my decision to be child-free felt so reinforced as it does in this moment.
Returning to my room, I lie on the bed. It’s midafternoon now, but it feels like the end of the day already. A sleepless night will do that to a person. Exhaustion sinks into my bones, but I don’t want to take a nap on the off chance that I might actually have a shot at a decent night’s rest this evening.
Scrolling through my phone, I think about Erica and what Isabeau said. Despite the fact that Isabeau had me going for a moment and there’s no merit to what she said, I have half a mind to show up at Erica’s door and see if she wouldn’t mind talking to me for a minute, woman to woman.
My eyes are heavy and my mood is curt and impersonal, but I’m going.
I’ve got to keep going.
I can’t stop.
The exterior of Erica’s house is ornate and over the top. It’s a bit Gothic, a bit Victorian. I imagine she got a pretty settlement after her divorce from Andrew and purchased a house just as big as the last one simply because she could.
And because a woman like that doesn’t settle for anything less than exactly what she wants.
Pressing the doorbell, I hear the faint song of the chime from behind a pair of wooden double doors, and when the door lock clicks a second later, I’m expecting to see a maid or a butler or someone Erica pays to boss around, but it’s her.
In the flesh.
Curlers in her hair and a silk floral robe cinched at her tiny waist.
Her eyes narrow when she sees me. She hasn’t the slightest clue who I am, and while we’ve never formally met, I feel like I know her because of all the horror stories Mer used to share.
“Greer,” I say. “Meredith’s sister.”
Her lips form a straight line, and her forehead is smooth as glass. Everything about her is contradictory, from her baby-soft complexion to her pointed glower. I’ve never understood women who can stand in front of a mirror and obsess over the size of their chin or the width of their nose or their barely-there crow’s-feet.
Must be nice to have the time to care about those things and the money to “fix” them.
“Can I help you?” she asks, head tilted.
