Page 10 of Good Half Gone

“Why don’t you make it sound like it then?” Gran snapped back.

“I’m certainly trying, but you’re going to have to answer a few questions, Iris.” He turned to me.

I nodded as if I hadn’t been answering questions for the last few hours.

“Did she walk out of the theater, or were they carrying her?”

“She was walking but they were holding her arms.”

His face didn’t change, and he wrote something down on his yellow pad. “Does she have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“What about drugs…does she drink? What drugs…pills or—”

“Weed, she smokes weed sometimes…”

Poley and Audrain exchanged a look.

“I don’t see why any of this matters.” Gran looked between them. “My fifteen-year-old granddaughter is missing. She was put in a car by two men and driven away.” The five seconds of silence that followed felt loud. I could hear my own jagged breath and theirs.

“It matters very much, Mrs. Walsh,” Audrain said. “Our job is to determine if she was abducted or if she’s a runaway.” He was leaning back in his chair and casually bouncing the pen between his thumb and pointer finger as he looked at her. “We can’t use the department’s funds and time on runaways, you understand what I’m saying?”

“No.”

I was on the verge of crying again.

“Mrs. Walsh, your granddaughters willingly went to the movie theater, purchased tickets, purchased snacks, and sat down to watch a film with three boys.”

“None of that means she willingly left with them,” Gran snapped back. “This granddaughter said she didn’t.”

They all looked at me.

“What about my phone?” I blurted desperately. “Can I press charges for them stealing my phone?”

Audrain’s eyes lit up as he pointed a pen at me. “Now, that we can do.”

Hope began pulling my lips into a smile. If they were to go after them for my phone, we could get answers about Piper, as well.

“Give me the full names and contact information of the men who stole your phone.”

My smile melted away. “I—I don’t know.”

His eyebrows pulled together, pained.

We were getting nowhere. They didn’t believe me, either way.

“Pull the video then—the theater, the gas station across the street—someone has to have video of my granddaughter being pushed into that car.”

“These things take time.”

“She’s a missing minor!”

“She could be a runaway.”

Gran’s face was pink now. They weren’t listening to her, either. I could see the tremble in her hand as she gripped the table edge and used it to stand. She was tired, the skin sagging beneath her eyes.

I felt the guilt again. This was my fault. If Gran had another stroke, that would be my fault too. The room smelled of stale corn chips and bleach, and I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth to avoid the incoming panic attack. I thought of something then—the drinks RJ and Angel handed us. Giant, sweating cups of soda. Had I mentioned this already through this merry-go-round of questioning?

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