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“What?”

His mouth twists. “This isn’t one of your work projects.”

“No,” I say. “If it were, I’d have better cooperation.”

Mick makes a small sound that might be a laugh and turns into a cough.

Tom’s face hardens.

I don't care. “Did she take her phone?”

“Yes.”

“Has it been online since she left?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Did you try locating it?”

“Of course.”

I narrow my eyes. “Did the police?”

“They know.”

“Do you have the case number?”

He looks away.

My skin prickles. “Tom.”

“I’m meeting with them today.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

He steps closer. “I'm trying to find her. I'm trying to hold it together. You’ve been here five minutes and suddenly you’re running the investigation?”

There it is.

The thing everyone's too polite to say, until they aren’t. Years of barely showing up. My fault has been waiting for me in this house too.

“I’m not acting like anything,” I say. “I’m asking basic questions about my sister who’s disappeared.”

“You don’t know her life anymore.”

That lands because it’s true.

Maggie and I used to know everything about each other. Then Ben died, and grief did what grief does when nobody is brave enough to name it. It sorted us into separate rooms.

Maggie stayed messy and loud and angry.

I got organized.

We both called it survival.

Neither of us called enough.

“I know she wouldn’t leave Lucy without agood reason,” I say, deciding to ignore the barb.