Page 54 of The Thinnest Air
My blood runs cold. I can’t so much as picture Ronan touching a woman like that.
“How the hell was this guy able to become an officer of the law?” Jeannie asks, her mouth pulled down in the corners. “Someone explain that to me. Vince?”
Vince Barbetti chimes in, claiming that he’d have to examine the case, but sometimes these charges get dropped and records get scrubbed. It’d be a rare exception, but it was possible. “Alana, did you report this to the police?”
“I didn’t. I was too scared at the time,” Alana continues. “He had a temper, and I knew if he let it get the best of him one time, it could happen again. I just wanted to be done with him. We broke up after that. I haven’t seen him since.”
“So what?” Barbetti scoffs. “You can’t tell me we’re all the same person we were at eighteen. People change. I’m sure that was a wake-up call for him. Clearly he had a respect for the justice system if he cleaned up his act and took an oath.”
“Maybe,” the host says. “Corruption exists in nearly every department at nearly every level.”
“That’s a blanket statement,” Vince says. “Be careful with that, Jeannie.”
“Let’s stay on track here,” Lindsey says. “We need to find Meredith. Someone out there knows what happened. Someone out there has seen her. We’re going to show her photo on the screen again. Johnny, can you pull that up? There we go.”
A photo of my sister, which was clearly stolen from her Facebook page, shows her smiling ear to ear on her wedding day, Andrew by her side.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I say.
No one looks like themselves on their wedding day. If she’s out there, held captive by some lunatic, I highly doubt she’s sporting an updo and a full face of Chanel makeup.
Idiots.
“We need to consider the fact that it might not be either of them,” a fourth man with curly gray hair and thick glasses chimes in.
“Thank you,” I mutter under my breath, throwing my hands in the air.
“Of course,” Yellow Tie says. “But right now we’re running out of time. This case is about to run out of gas, and we’re barely coasting on fumes here. We need to work with what we have if we’re going to get anywhere with this.”
“But if what you have is useless ...,” the curly-haired man says.
“This is depressing.” I reach for the remote again.
“I want to hear it,” Mom says, her lips pursed as she shoots me a look that dares me to touch the remote. “It’s interesting to see what they think. You never know, they might actually say something that makes sense one of these times.”
Exhaling, I take a seat at the kitchen table. We all seem to gather here most days, like we’re all sitting around waiting for a call to drop into our laps, a knock on the door from someone saying they found her safe and sound, or some twist in the case we never saw coming.
When my mother’s back is turned, I text Ronan from my phone and tell him to watch Channel 222. I’m testing him. I want to see if he’s nervous or worked up now that all his dirty laundry is being aired.
Little busy now, he writes back, sending a picture of the current state of his driveway. The street is lined with news vans, local and national, and anchors with microphones speak into cameras pointed at their faces, framing the shot with Ronan’s house.
Jesus Christ.
“Hi, Andrew.” My mother’s voice pulls me back to reality.
Standing frozen, arms crossed, he listens to the pundits theorize and speculate, arguing why it’s Ronan and then countering as to why all signs point to Andrew.
“You shouldn’t watch this,” Mom says, reaching to shut the TV off, but before she gets the chance, he leaves, misty-eyed and visibly shaken.
I wish I knew if those were tears of a bruised ego.
Or tears of regret.
Or maybe, something else entirely.
CHAPTER 25
MEREDITH
