The world knew before midday on Monday.
Rachel Price, reappeared, a tabletop microphone pointed at her face, wearing Bel’s long black knitted dress. Sitting between Charlie and Bel, Police Chief Dave Winter on one side of the wide table, someone from the FBI on the other.
It was playing again on the news now, the third time this channel had run it already. Bel watching herself on TV, betrayed by her own face, by how much the camera made her look like Rachel, sitting side by side.
“The suspect remains at large,” Dave said again, with a vague description of him that Rachel had provided, a composite sketch on-screen. It could have been anyone. “Please call the following number if you have any information that could assist in our inquiries.”
Charlie and Bel never spoke, even though they’d been given microphones. They were just props, the picture of a reunited family. Happy, but not too much, Dave had told them. It wasn’t a true happy ending until the man was caught.
They passed to Rachel for one small comment at the end.
“I’m so grateful to be safe and back home with my daughter and husband. I would appreciate if everyone respected our privacy at this time as we readjust to normal life.”
Normal was a strange choice of word; life had been normal, before she came back. She was the one who’d taken that away.
They weren’t taking questions at this time, thank you and goodbye. Sidling out of the room while the journalists murmured hungrily and the cameras flashed, throwing lightning in their eyes.
“Here.” Rachel loomed over her now, surprising her, handing over a plate with a sandwich. Bel was careful as she took it, making sure not to touch Rachel’s hand. “Cheese, ham and pickle, cut into triangles.” Rachel sat on the sofa beside her, dressed in the old jeans and T-shirt Dad had found for her, both too big. “You said that was your favorite, didn’t you, Anna?”
She had, yesterday. But she hadn’t realized it would be used against her like this. Did Rachel think this was how she became Bel’s mom again? Trying to be too normal too soon—it didn’t feel right. More than that; it felt wrong.
“Thanks.” Bel looked down at the sandwich, still not very hungry. Taking a bite felt like defeat somehow, but she had to; Rachel was right here, watching her, waiting.
Bel bit off a corner, chewed. “Good, thank you,” she said. Rachel gave her a winning smile.
Charlie walked into the living room then, eyes catching on Bel’s plate. Rachel hadn’t made him a sandwich. He had his work jacket on, keys to his truck dangling from a finger. Oh no.
“Are you leaving?” Bel asked him. She always said that, whenever he picked up his keys, it was one of their routines, their rituals. But it mattered more now.
“Gotta get back to work, kiddo. Told Gabe I would.”
He couldn’t take the rest of the day off? Bel wasn’t going into school; there was no point now. And she knew it would be awful; everyone staring at her now the news was out.
“Do you have to?” Bel asked, panic seizing the knot in her gut, giving him a chance to change his mind, to stay with her.
“I’ll be back for dinner.”
Bel looked at her phone. It was two o’clock, at least five hours between now and dinner. Was he really going to leave her here, alone with Rachel?
“Dad?”
Maybe Bel could insist she had to walk into school for the last hour of the day. What would be worse: the stares, or staying here?
A car door slammed outside the house, close enough to prick at Bel’s attention. Charlie’s too, wandering over to the front window, moving the lace curtain to peer through.
“Great,” he muttered, dropping the curtain, looming behind it. “What?” Rachel asked him, before Bel could.
“A Fox news van just pulled up,” he said. “CNN is already here. And so it begins.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Keep the curtains shut. Don’t let them get anything.”
Bel nodded. Rachel didn’t.
“Shouldn’t I take them something?” she said. “Coffee? They have to stand out there all day.”
“Best not to engage,” Charlie said, not meeting her eyes. “We’ve been through all this before, Rachel.”
“I didn’t say you hadn’t,” she countered.
Bel swallowed. Toeing the edge of another land mine, all of them. Dad couldn’t really leave her here, could he?
“Oh, Charlie,” Rachel said, stopping him in his tracks. Her voice wasn’t as raspy and rough anymore, closer to normal. Which was worse somehow, because she’d stolen that from Bel too. “Could you leave your credit card?”
He stared at her, hands hidden in his pockets.
“I’ve been back for two days now,” she said in explanation, rearing up from the sofa, a hard step forward on shaky ground. “There’s things I need. A phone. Clothes, so I can stop stealing Annabel’s. Until I can access my own money again, if it’s still there.”
“Right.” Charlie swallowed. “OK, sure.” He dug around in his jeans pocket for his wallet.
“Here.” He came over, placed the credit card down on the coffee table with a snap. Retreated again, backtracking through the minefield.
He glanced at the two of them, zipping up his jacket.
“We’ll be fine, won’t we?” Rachel said, a smile for Bel that was too sweet, too forced, making the knot pull tighter. “It’ll be nice to spend some time, just the two of us. We could watch a movie. Make dinner together. Play a board game. Anything you want to do, Annabel. It’s your choice.”
What Bel wanted to do was keep Dad here, stop him from leaving. Or barricade herself in her room, away from Rachel. That was what she chose.
“Dad?”
She followed him into the hall, watched him approach the front door, reach for the handle.
“Dad, wait.”
Bel wanted to cry. She never cried, but she would now, just to stop him from going.
“Do we still have Monopoly?” Rachel asked, behind her.
Dad pulled the door open. “See you later,” he said, not looking back, even with Bel’s eyes burning in the back of his head. Trying to hold him there.
“What about chess?” Rachel said, oblivious to the storm inside Bel.
The front door clicked shut, taking Dad away, resealing the house behind him.
Bel still standing here, left alone with Rachel.
An eruption of voices outside, muffled through the glass. “Charlie! How does it feel to have your wife back home?”
“How’s Rachel doing? How’s the family coping with her sudden return?” “How does it feel to finally be free of suspicion in your wife’s murder?
That’s a pretty good feeling, right?” “Can you comment on the—”
A slam. The rumble of his truck engine, drowning the voices out. “Charlie! Charlie Price!” His own name chased after him as he backed
out and drove away.
A strange silence in his wake, foaming at the edges as Bel went back to the living room, avoiding Rachel’s gaze, watching the TV as the newscasters
introduced another replay of the press conference, a Breaking News banner declaring: Rachel Price found alive after 16 years presumed dead.
Bel swallowed: she’d been one of those presumers.
Rachel turned the TV off without asking, reaching for the coffee table.
She slid Dad’s credit card off the edge and held it up.
“Hey,” she said, turning a smile toward Bel. “If you don’t feel like a board game, how about a shopping trip?”
Bel stared across at her. “Huh?”
“Me, you. Go to the mall together.” Rachel waved the card, almost fanning herself with it. “That’s what moms do with their daughters, right? Shopping? Fashion shows in the living room when you get home. It’s one of the big things we missed out on, I think. I’d really like it if we could try. We can get you some things too, of course. Do you need a new jacket?” She pocketed the card, waiting for Bel’s response.
Bel hesitated, backing up into the arm of the sofa, trying to think of reasons not to.
“Are you allowed?” she said. “The news only just broke, the police investigation ongoing, the man still out there. Are you allowed to go outside?”
Rachel didn’t like the question; Bel could tell by the shift in her eyes.
Maybe she wasn’t that unreadable.
“I was locked inside for fifteen years, Anna,” she said, voice gentle, a sad crackle to it. “I don’t have to stay inside ever again for any reason. Come on, we’ll have fun, I promise.”
A sinking in Bel’s gut. It took Bel a second to catch up with it, to see past the wrong name, picking up on the other wrong thing.
“Sixteen years,” she said, pointing it out for both of them.
Rachel paused, her expression drawn. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?” “You said fifteen.”
Rachel narrowed her eyes for one more second, then shook her head, her face blank and well guarded. “Did I? Sorry. I meant to say sixteen. Obviously.”
Obviously she meant to say that, but she hadn’t. Another innocent mistake, like the engine thing. But didn’t two mistakes make some kind of pattern? A slip of the tongue or a slipup of the truth? There must be an explanation: like Rachel had lost count of the years in the basement, just as she said. Because the only other explanation was that Rachel was lying for some reason, that she’d never been locked inside for any number of years, and it couldn’t be that, right? Just another error; the second time Bel had caught her in as many days. Why was no one else ever around to hear them too?
“What do you say?” Rachel said, studying Bel as hard as Bel was studying her.
“I don’t know,” she said, speaking carefully. “It’s Dad’s money. Things are a bit tight at the moment, not sure we should go out and spend it.”
A smile pressed into Rachel’s cheeks, blank somehow, reinforcing the look in her eyes. “Annabel, sweetie, you don’t need to worry about that. Essentials only,” she said with a wink. “Besides, he must be getting paid for this documentary about me that he signed up for.”
Rachel wasn’t wrong there, but that money was for Grandpa.
Bel was running out of excuses, Rachel batting them away one by one. “We don’t have a car.” She tried again.
“That’s OK. We can get the bus to Berlin. Or a taxi.”
That was her last one. Checkmate, Rachel wins. Guess she and Rachel were going shopping then, unless Bel could break her leg in the next few minutes, or Rachel’s. They’d be in public, surrounded by other people, but she would still be alone with Rachel.
Wait, that gave Bel another idea.
“I know,” she said, backed into a corner, coming out swinging. “We should ask the documentary crew to come along.”
Rachel took a step back.
“R-really?” she said. “Is that what you want?”
“Sure.” Bel brushed off her knees. “They’d love to get footage of you at the White Mountains Mall, the first place you disappeared, well, we disappeared. That’s the kind of thing they get excited about. Artsy, you
know.” Now it was her turn to wink, just as forced as Rachel’s. “Maybe it’ll be nice to have a record of our first shopping trip together, mark the occasion. You can’t always rely on memory to keep things like that.” She smiled, showing teeth.
“Oh, r-right,” Rachel stuttered. “If that’s what you want. I just thought we could have the day to ours—”
“Cool, I’ll call Ramsey.” Bel dug out her phone. “He’ll be thrilled about this, might even squeal.”
She pressed his name to dial, walking away from Rachel, into the kitchen.
Ramsey picked up on the third ring. “Bel?” “Hi, Ramsey,” she said, brightly.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing, just wanted to chat.”
“Bel?” he said, seeing through her, saying her name sideways.
“I have an idea,” she said, loudly, making her voice carry. “Me and Rachel are going shopping to the White Mountains Mall, for some essentials. We wondered if you wanted to come with us, do some filming? Artsy shit.”
Ramsey breathed down the phone. “Really?” “Yeah.”
“It’s a nice idea, Bel, and I appreciate it, I do. But don’t you want to spend time alone with your mum? She’s only been home forty-eight hours.”
“No, that’s OK,” Bel said, brighter.
Ramsey paused, his breath and a stronger breeze prickling against the microphone.
“You sure?” he said, not sounding sure himself.
“I’m sure. Tell Ash to wear something normal, we don’t want to attract attention.”
Ramsey sniffed in her sarcasm.
“We’re actually just down the street, filming the media outside your house.”
“Good,” Bel said. “So you can be here in thirty seconds.”
She hung up, cutting Ramsey off. Then she leaned into the living room, shooting Rachel a thumbs-up.
“They’ll be here soon,” she said.
“Great.” Rachel attempted a smile, clapping her hands together. “This will be fun. Thank you, Annabel.”
“No problem.”
“You should eat the rest of your sandwich before we go,” Rachel said, pointing to it.
“That’s OK, I’m not too hungry. Thanks, though.”
Not just words: moves and countermoves, an unspoken battle, sandwiches and shopping.
One mistake was forgivable, it made sense. But two? Two felt like something else entirely. She smiled at Rachel and Rachel smiled back. It looked real, but what if it wasn’t? Bel couldn’t be sure, she could only trust the knot in her gut. And it told her what she wanted to hear.
Rachel Price might just be lying.
