The Reappearance of Rachel Price

Bel stopped outside number 39, Ash’s hotel room. Patted down her hair, pushed up her eyebrows.

The door opened before she had a chance to knock.

It was Ramsey, ducking his head as he left the room.

His eyes latched onto hers as the door latched shut. “Hi, Bel.”

“Hi yourself,” she snapped, suddenly awkward that he’d caught her standing here. “Ash told me to come over, that he’s found something,” she explained.

Ramsey nodded, a knowing half smile. “I know,” he said, to hammer the smile home. “We found something we wanted to show you.”

He moved past her, down the corridor.

“You aren’t coming?” she asked.

Ramsey turned, smile on the other side now. “Nah. A good filmmaker knows when he’s getting in the way of his own film.” He clicked his fingers at her, tiny guns made of skin as he walked away, disappearing around the corner.

Bel hammered her fist against the door.

It opened, barely, Ash’s pale face appearing in the crack.

“Why do you knock like a serial killer?” his floating head grumbled.

“Are you naked?”

“No.” His eyes tracked back and forth, confused.

“Open the door, then,” Bel said, pushing it.

She walked in, the hotel room dingy, curtains framing the evening sky. A laptop open on the desk, glowing ghostly white, small camera hooked up to it. A spiderweb of cables beside. The desk chair and the room’s armchair pulled in front.

“You’ve left boxers on the bed.” Bel pointed, trying to embarrass him.

Ash nodded, trying not to be embarrassed. “Those ones live there, actually.”

He wandered back to the desk, muttering to himself. “Need a fresh card for the camera.” He sorted through a stack of clear plastic cases, some labeled with a red X. “That’s why it’s important to label them, says Ramsey. Aha.” He pulled one open and popped out the SD card, slotting it inside the handheld camera.

“Is this all the documentary footage?”

“All the stuff I’ve shot,” he said. “Ramsey’s editing the early footage for the broadcasters, but he wants to keep this stuff with you under wraps, until we know what we have. I’m supposed to rotate the memory cards, remember which ones are full, which ones I’ve already uploaded and wiped.” He pointed, fingers taking her on a tour of the untidy desk. “All gets saved onto this bad boy here.” He tapped two fingers against a black external hard drive, plugged into the laptop.

“Memory storage, exciting stuff.” Bel clicked her tongue.

“Well, I can’t spend all day running around with you.”

“Not that you’d want to,” Bel said.

“No, you’re awful company.”

Bel’s phone vibrated in her jacket pocket, saving them from the awkward-on-purpose moment. She pulled it out and gasped.

“It’s the chief of police. About Dad.”

“Answer it,” Ash said, turning away and averting his eyes, as though that meant he couldn’t listen in.

Bel pressed the phone to her ear, spoke before Dave Winter could. “Do you have any news? Have you found him?”

The line crackled with Dave’s breath. “Hi, Annabel. No, we haven’t found him, but we have an update. His phone records finally came through.”

Bel backed away, boots skidding against the rough carpet. “And?”

“Your dad made one phone call the night he went missing. In the middle of the night, actually, three-twenty a.m. The call lasted only a few seconds, but it pinged off a cell tower near Danville, Vermont. So that’s where he was when he made the call.”

“Who did he call?” Bel said, trying not to rush him, taking everything in.

“He called a number belonging to a Robert Meyer, who lives just outside Barton, Vermont. I wanted to ask if you know who he is? Heard that name before? Is he a friend of your dad’s?”

Bel searched her memories, lining them up against that name. “Robert Meyer. No, I don’t think I recognize it,” she said, annoyed that she didn’t, for Dad’s sake.

“That’s OK,” Dave said, “Rachel didn’t recognize it either.”

“You’ve spoken to Rachel?”

“I called her first,” Dave said, unaware of his betrayal, calling Rachel, letting her know that her plan was working perfectly. “State Police are going to talk to this Robert Meyer, see what he knows, I’ll let you know if he tells us anything useful. Danville would have been on the drive to Barton, so it seems like that’s where your dad was heading.”

But how was he heading there, when his truck was at home?

“Anything else?” she said, voice slipping, clawing back up her throat.

“Huh?”

“The phone records. Did he make any other calls?” There was only one name she cared about: her own. For her to have been the last person Dad tried to reach, even though she’d had no missed calls.

“No,” Dave said, not realizing how big that no was. “Looks like he turned the phone off after making that one call. Been off since, no activity.”

Bel’s heart sank, curdling in her gut, buddying up to the knot that always lived there now.

“He’s been gone six days,” she said, not a question, but a reminder of Dave’s promise, what he owed Charlie Price, here on the other side of all their history.

“We’re working on it. There’s been a couple more hits on his bank card, one on Thursday, one today, so we’re tracing him that way too. Won’t be long, Annabel.”

“OK.” She hesitated to let him go. Should she tell Dave about Julian Tripp? About the three thousand dollars? “Officer Winter—”

“You can call me Dave, sweetie. Known each other long enough.”

And that was long enough to change her mind. No, she shouldn’t tell him. She wanted Dave to focus on finding Dad; he had the tools to do that and she didn’t. She shouldn’t distract him with Rachel. It was Bel’s job to take down Rachel, her responsibility.

“Will you call me first with updates, not Rachel? She wants me to deal with this; she’s still feeling overwhelmed.”

The line crackled again. “Sure,” he said. “Hope you two are holding up OK?”

Oh, they were holding up just fine.

“I gotta go,” she said, Dave’s goodbyes growing faint as she pulled the phone away from her ear, pressed the red button.

“Who’s Robert Meyer?” Ash asked, facing her again.

“I don’t know. Lives in Vermont. He was the last person Dad called, the night he went missing.”

“So your dad’s in Vermont?”

“Or that’s where Rachel wants us to think he is.”

A text pinged up on Bel’s screen. God, she was Miss Fucking Popular today: Ash, then Dave Winter, now Carter:

Can I come over for a sleepover? Mom is being a nightmare again.

Bel typed out a reply:

Can’t sorry, I’m out!

She slid her phone back into her jacket pocket, stared at Ash expectantly. “So … I didn’t come here just to insult your hideous sweater. You said you’d found something?”

“Yes, we did, when we were editing the dinner party scene. Hold on, I should have the camera on.”

He flipped out the viewfinder and pressed record, snapping his fingers in front of the lens like a makeshift clapper board. There were books on the desk, The Woman who Disappeared Twice on top, an old true-crime book about Rachel. Ash placed the camera on the pile, pointing it back at them.

“You sit here.” He patted the cushioned chair closest to the camera, a spew of dust as he did, floating around her.

Bel sat.

Ash did too, pulling his chair in too close, leaning across her to reach the laptop.

He froze, her breath on his exposed neck.

Bel looked at the shape of his mouth and he looked at hers. A second dragged by, Bel’s heart out of its place, beating too many times, finding his green eyes again.

Oh fuck.

She blinked and pulled back, leaning into her chair. Ash coughed into his fist, fiddling with the camera’s position. Just in time too, like they’d been about to cross some unseen line. Lucky the camera was there between them, to hold the line. Because that would have been really fucking stupid. Pointless too. Ash would leave forever when this film was done. That was all they were to each other. Subject and Camera Assistant.

Bel shifted her chair a few inches away. His Side and Her Side.

He better stay out of hers.

“Is it about my dad?” she asked instead, Ash turning back to the laptop. He clicked into a folder labeled Dinner Party. “About Rachel?”

“You’ll see.” He double-clicked on an audio file. “Or, rather, you’ll hear.”

The on-screen arrow hovered over the play button, twitching in tandem with Ash’s finger on the trackpad.

“I was going through the audio from the dinner party, to see if your dad said anything when he stormed off, if he gave any clues as to where he’s gone now.”

Bel leaned forward, forgetting about Her Side. “Did he?”

Ash shook his head. “He said for fuck’s sake, nothing else, then turned his mike pack off. But there was someone else who didn’t. Someone who forgot they were wearing a hot mike, that they were being recorded.”

Bel blinked the question at him.

“Your uncle Jeff,” he answered. “Jeff went to help your grandpa into the car, after everyone left the table.”

“I remember,” Bel said.

“This is the conversation they had, what the microphone picked up.”

Ash pressed play.

Rustling.

Heavy breathing.

“Are you in, Dad?” Jeff’s gruff voice, breathless with effort. “Let me get the seat belt.”

“I—I,” Grandpa stuttered.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get that.”

More rustling.

A click.

“Dad,” Jeff’s voice dropped lower, into whispers. Bel closed her eyes to focus her ears. “I have to ask you something, and I need you to remember.”

The swish of movement, a cacophony of clothes crackling against each other.

Ash paused quickly. “There’s audio here, but it’s too quiet to hear over the rustling, I’ve tried.”

He un-paused.

A grating click from the back of a throat; the sound her grandpa made when he was searching for words.

“I don’t know who that is,” he rasped.

Jeff’s voice came back clearer. “You do, Dad. You do know. Where was she? Where did they find her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dad, I need you to try. It’s important.”

“I don’t … I want to go home,” Grandpa said, voice frail, every syllable an effort. “Where’s … Y-Y—”

“Yordan?” Jeff sighed, the scratch of fingernails against stubble. “I’ll go get him. You stay here, Dad.”

“That’s it.” Ash stopped the file, the abrupt silence buzzing in Bel’s ears. “Saba took the microphone off him when he came back inside.”

Bel’s mouth opened and closed, chewing the air while she searched for words, no more luck than Grandpa. “What?” was all she came up with.

“I know,” Ash spoke low and light. “I messaged you as soon as we heard it.”

“Where was she?” Bel quoted her uncle. “Where did they find her? He’s talking about Rachel, isn’t he?” She looked for confirmation in Ash’s eyes.

“That’s what we thought too.”

Bel thought that through, forking paths of ifs and buts, her head racing down each way and backtracking.

“Wait a second,” she said, telling herself too. “So Jeff thinks Grandpa knows something about Rachel. About where she was those sixteen years, and her reappearance. Where did they find her? It sounds like she had to come back because someone found her—who’s they?”

Ash looked at her; too much eye contact, then not enough. “Seems Jeff didn’t get the answers he wanted either.”

“But why does Jeff think Grandpa knows something about Rachel? He has dementia, he doesn’t know anything.”

Ash shrugged. “Your uncle seems convinced he has the answers, you can hear the desperation in his voice.”

Bel chewed on that too. “Well, fuck.” She sat back in her chair, burying her fingers in her hair.

“Made me wonder,” Ash said, “if it had anything to do with what Julian Tripp said. Rachel’s comment about you’re a lifesaver and that she was scared of someone, him bringing up Jeff’s name.”

Bel tried to sort through it all, drawing lines in her head. Rachel scared of Jeff? Rachel planning her disappearance, taking money from Mr. Tripp so no one would suspect she left willingly? Grandpa knowing something about Rachel? Jeff knowing Grandpa knew something but not what it was? How did all of this fit together?

“Whatever Jeff thinks Grandpa knows about Rachel, he’s kept it to himself, and now Dad’s gone.” Bel set her jaw. “But he won’t be keeping it much longer. He’s going to tell me, tomorrow.”

Bel could do it; get Uncle Jeff to crack, just like Sherry. Because there was something else hiding between the members of the Price family, something Rachel’s return had disturbed.

Beneath the land mines, there were secrets too.