Bel swallowed her drink in one go, knocked the empty glass against her head.
“Annabel,” Grandma Susan gasped.
“Cheers!” Yordan smiled, because he must not have heard the first part. “That’s not funny, Bel, sit down,” Dad said.
“Don’t speak to her like that!” Rachel snapped, eyes ablaze, slamming one hand against the table.
Her wineglass tipped over, spilling a pool of blood over the white tablecloth, a red fork in the stain, reaching for Bel.
Grandpa burst out laughing and Sherry burst into tears. “Dinner’s over.” Charlie got to his feet, waving off the cameras.
“Dad?” Bel called after him. But he’d disappeared into the hallway, two more seconds and the front door slammed behind him. Bel was sorry, because maybe she’d been the one to push him out. No, it was Rachel. This whole thing was Rachel. Bel glared across at her.
“Come on, Carter, let’s go,” Sherry sniffled, taking Carter’s arm, pulling her up from the table.
“It was supposed to be a nice evening,” Rachel said, quietly, almost to herself. Almost, if there wasn’t a microphone attached to her.
Saba went after Sherry and Carter, catching them in the hallway.
Yordan stood up, reaching for the handles of Grandpa’s wheelchair. “Don’t worry, Yordan,” Jeff said, hurrying over. “I’ll get Dad settled in
the car. You stay, finish your dessert. No rush.”
Jeff wheeled Grandpa off, toward the side door with the ramp. “Here we go, Dad,” he said loudly, guiding him outside.
Grandma Susan left next, pausing just long enough to shake her head in Bel’s direction.
“Always a pleasure.” Bel raised her hand.
Rachel moved off into the kitchen, speaking in a low voice to Ramsey and the caterers.
“Good pie,” Yordan said to Bel, awkwardly, the final two at the table. “The best,” Bel replied, walking away, leaving Yordan the last man
standing, and he wasn’t even family.
Bel narrowed her eyes at Ash, gestured toward the hallway. He abandoned the camera, three steps behind her.
Sherry and Carter were gone now, the front door left open behind them. “Hey,” Ash said, sounding almost breathless. “That was—”
“Can you turn me off?” She spun around to show him her ass. “What? Oh.”
Ash fiddled with the radio pack attached to her jeans. He spooled it up and unclipped the microphone from her shirt, fingers brushing against her collarbone. Bel shivered; the breeze from the open door.
“That was—” he tried again.
“I know.” She chewed her lip. “Keep flirting with me and you’ll have to marry into that family.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ash swallowed.
“I need air,” Bel said, heading for the dark rectangle of outside. “Yes, I—I also breathe air.” Ash followed her out here too.
There were two news vans still parked in the street outside, no sign of any reporters.
Up the road, Uncle Jeff had gotten Grandpa inside his yellow car, the one Yordan now used, since Grandpa couldn’t drive. Jeff was folding up the wheelchair, leaning over to speak to Grandpa.
Across the street, Bel could see Ms. Nelson silhouetted against the yellow glow of her front door, standing there shamelessly, watching. Enjoying the show, as always.
“This way,” Bel said, down the steps, leading Ash past the garage and into the backyard.
“That was—” Ash said again.
“I know it was, you can stop saying that,” Bel replied. “Listen, I found something else a couple days ago.”
“What?”
“One of my baby socks, in Rachel’s nightstand. Which means that A: She hid that somewhere when she returned, so the police didn’t take it into evidence. And B: If she took a souvenir from her daughter sixteen years ago, kinda makes it look like she planned to disappear in the first place, doesn’t it?”
“Kinda…,” Ash said, parroting her. “Or it could mean that she had the sock on her when she was taken, in her pocket or something, kept it the entire time.”
Bel glared at him.
“Just playing devil’s advocate,” he said. “If you’re looking for evidence, that still isn’t it. You need something that can’t be explained away.”
Bel glanced at the glow of the kitchen windows, the shape of Rachel and Ramsey moving around inside.
“How did her interviews go this week?” Bel asked.
Ash cleared his throat. “No inconsistencies,” he said, knowing what she was really asking. “No details changed when Ramsey repeated questions. She got emotional in the right places. Explained when she couldn’t answer something because the police told her it would interfere with the investigation. Talked a lot about you, actually.” Ash paused to scratch his head, like he was almost sorry about it.
“About me?”
“That thinking about you and needing to get back to you is what kept her going. Her motivation for staying alive, for fighting. That she’s missed so much of your life, but she’s determined to make up for every day she lost.”
“Bullshit,” Bel hissed, turning back to the dark silhouette of Rachel in the window. “You can tell, can’t you, something’s not right since she returned?”
Ash stood beside her. “Everyone in the family does seem to be on edge, yes. But I guess it’s a tense situation.”
“I need to get her out of the house.” Much more urgent, now she could feel her dad pulling away. She chose him, she would always choose him, so Rachel had to go. “The only way to do that is to prove she’s lying. Expose her. If I can’t prove that she planned her reappearance yet, then I need to shift focus. Concentrate on her disappearance.”
“No offense,” Ash said, which was a shame because Bel liked trading offense, especially with him. “But didn’t hundreds of police officers and federal agents and journalists already try that? They couldn’t find anything; that’s why her disappearance was always such a big mystery.”
Bel ignored that, a flash in her eyes, like they might just glow in the dark. “What would you need to truly disappear for that amount of time? Money.” She checked off one finger.
“Quite a lot of it,” Ash said, “at least initially. But Rachel didn’t have any money when she vanished. Her wallet was left in the car with you, her bank cards at home, and she hadn’t taken any cash out of her accounts for several weeks.”
“Maybe she gradually took money out over a longer period of time,” Bel said, “so it wouldn’t raise any flags. Or maybe she got the money from somewhere else. Someone else. Next: A new identity?”
Ash nodded. “She would have needed a new identity with a new name. To live freely for sixteen years, to earn money. Change her appearance too. A driver’s license. Maybe a passport if she wasn’t in America. All that would have cost money to set up.”
“So we circle back to money,” Bel said. “What else? Someone who maybe helped her?”
“A reason,” Ash said, darkly. “Huh?”
“She would have needed a reason, Bel, to go through all that effort. People don’t just decide to disappear. She’d need a motive. A reason.” The word fizzed like a trapped bee. “Something she’d done, or someone else had done, or was about to do. Something she was running away from,” he added.
Bel thought of Grandma Susan, of the Gorham Police Department, and where that kind of thinking had taken them, wrongly pointing the finger at Dad.
“Maybe she wasn’t running away from something, but running to.” “What do you mean?” Ash ran a hand up his tattooed forearm, rubbing
it against the evening chill.
“Did you hear what Sherry said, when Rachel was grilling Dad about Ellen?”
Ash shook his head.
“She said: At least he waited until after you were gone.” Ash’s mouth dropped open. “Definitely missed that.”
“Hopefully the microphones didn’t. And that makes it sound like—” “Like Sherry thinks Rachel had a relationship with someone else before
she disappeared,” Ash completed it for her.
“Exactly,” Bel said. “A reason.” The word fizzing in her mouth now, another trade. “I need to know who she was talking about. Sherry knows something, something she’s kept secret all this time. She didn’t tell the police, but I bet I can get her to tell me. I know exactly what buttons to push.”
Bel had spent her whole life learning how to push people, and there was already something between Rachel and Sherry, buried beneath sixteen years. She just needed to find it.
Bel slotted her fingers together, cracked her knuckles like a snapped twig, watching the shadow in the shape of her mother. Another silent promise made in the dark.
