“Can you tell me that again?”
“Seriously? Am I just talking to myself here?” Bel pulled her eyes up, a reverse blink at Ash, swishing along the sidewalk in his flared tartan pants and a backward cap. “You are the shittiest sidekick.”
Ash shook his head, hiding a crooked smile from her. “It’s not for me, it’s for the camera. Ramsey said if we’re going to hang out like this, talk about Rachel, investigate her, is it OK if I keep recording it?” He raised his handheld camera, popping his lips twice. “If that’s not too exploitative.” He tripped awkwardly over the word and over his own tongue.
“The entire documentary is exploitative.” Bel shrugged, taking them down a side road. “But you can’t exploit me if I’m exploiting you back.”
“OK…,” he said, blinking, unsure. “Just trying to do a good job for Ramsey. He’s relying on me, since I’m the one you trust.”
“I don’t trust you,” Bel sneered. “I reckon you do a little bit.” “No.”
“A sliver?” “No.”
“A smidge?” “Nope.”
“Well, you’re the one that came to find me today,” he said, a flush in his cheeks, a curl of hair poking out over the strap of his baseball cap.
“Only because I want this recorded, could be evidence.” Bel matched his smile, sweeter, deadlier. “I don’t trust you, and I don’t like you, and I definitely don’t need you.” Ash flinched; right on target. “But I could use your help, and you and Ramsey want to make a great film, right?”
“Right…”
“Good, glad we settled that.” She sniffed. “You can press record.”
Ash’s lips stretched into a half smile. Seriously? Still smiling after that, what was wrong with him?
He pointed the camera at her and flipped out the viewfinder, a beep as he pressed record.
“What do you want me to say, then?” Bel asked, picking up her pace. “Catch us up on what’s happened, what you’re feeling. What your goals
are now?” Ash said, a poor imitation of Ramsey.
“We are looking into Rachel’s disappearance. She’s not telling the truth about what happened to her; I think she planned them both, her disappearance and her reappearance. At the family dinner last night—which went super well, not awkward at all—my aunt Sherry let slip that Rachel might have been in some kind of relationship before she went missing.”
The trees shivered above her on the house-lined street, whispering unknown things, giving up their secrets to the wind.
“No one ever knew about this,” Bel continued, close to breathless, walking and talking. “I went to see Sherry this morning and she told me she was talking about Julian Tripp, a teacher at my school, and also the man who found me in that car sixteen years ago. He and Rachel were colleagues, friends, but it might have been more: Sherry saw him and Rachel looking ‘cozy’ getting into Mr. Tripp’s car a couple of days before Rachel disappeared. So we are on our way to his house to ask him about it.”
Ash nodded, like she should keep going.
“And my goal?” Bel said. “My goal is to find the fucking truth and get that liar out of my house. Enough?”
Ash swallowed, looking up from the Bel on the camera screen to the one in real life, finding her eyes and latching on. “That was definitely enough, yeah.”
Bel raised her hands in victory, tapping the invisible trophy to each of her shoulders.
“But Mr. Tripp didn’t disappear too, obviously,” Ash said. “So it’s not like they ran away together or something.”
“Gee, thanks, Sherlock.” Bel’s trophy vanished and she clapped her hands. “But maybe he’s the reason she left, or he helped her. He’ll know something, he has to. It’s that house, on the end.” Bel gestured with her eyes.
Ash panned the camera there and back. “How do you know where your teacher lives, anyway?”
“He did a yard sale a few years ago. I was with my friend, Sam.” Bel had stolen something from the yard sale; she couldn’t remember what now. Just like she couldn’t remember how Sam used to make her laugh.
They approached the path up to Mr. Tripp’s house, the front yard overgrown and unkempt. Mailbox sad and rusted.
Ash lowered the camera, following her to the door.
“What are you doing?” Bel clicked at him. “Keep recording.”
“I can’t,” Ash said, torn between the two of them, Bel and the camera. “He has to agree to it first. Sign a release form—”
“He’s already done one interview. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to do another. Keep rolling.”
“Keep rolling,” Ash parroted her, raising the camera again, capturing her in it. “For the record, Ramsey,” he whispered into the fluffy microphone, “I’m being made to do this against my will, if this goes terribly and someone sues us. But this was your idea, so…”
Bel flashed her eyes at him, then knotted her fingers into a fist, knocked it against the door. Six knocks, hard and urgent.
Ash grabbed her hand before she made it seven. “Stop,” he hissed. “Why can’t you do anything nicely?”
A muffled cough behind the door, the scrape of a chain. It pulled open, just a crack, Mr. Tripp’s gray face. Eyes downcast, the sun reflecting against his glasses.
“I don’t have it ye—” he began, cutting off when he glanced up and saw the two of them standing there. “Oh.” His face cracked into a cautious smile, opening the door the whole way, shoulders reconnecting to his neck. He wore a grubby yellow T-shirt and gray sweats, hiding his hands in the pockets. “What are you doing here, Bel?” he said, the hard rock of his Adam’s apple flitting up and down. “Is there a problem? Is Rachel OK?”
“Just peachy.” Bel flashed her teeth as her eyes strayed from Mr. Tripp to the hallway behind him. A dark stain on the carpet, under his bare feet. A tower of cardboard boxes almost as tall as him, stuffed with empty cans of beer. Ghostly finger dents in the metal.
He saw Bel looking, gripped the door again, blocking their view.
“We were hoping to conduct another interview with you for the documentary,” she said. “Now that Rachel has returned, we’re revisiting everyone. Isn’t that right, Ash?”
“Y-yes,” Ash confirmed, his elbow fabric brushing against hers.
“I’m not sure I have time at the moment,” Mr. Tripp replied. A stale alcohol scent lingered around him. The dark circles under his eyes and his grayish complexion now made more sense. Bel had never paid attention to these signs before.
“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Bel insisted.
Mr. Tripp wiped his glasses with a finger. “I was about to leave.”
“You don’t look ready to go out,” Bel observed, tilting her head. “Besides, it might seem odd if you were willing to talk when everyone thought Rachel was dead, but not now that she’s alive. As if you preferred her dead, or something.” She chuckled.
Mr. Tripp blinked, his eyes magnified by his lenses. “That’s not—”
“So, how did you feel when you first heard Rachel Price had returned from the dead?” Bel asked, mimicking Ramsey’s finger-steepling gesture.
Mr. Tripp glanced at the camera, blinking repeatedly. He smoothed his hair. “Well, I was stunned, like everyone else. I thought there must be some mistake, that it had to be another woman. Then, when I saw Rachel at school a few days later, I felt… elated. Extremely happy that she’s alive. I never thought it possible. But it just shows that sometimes, even after tragedy, good things can happen to good people.”
Good people didn’t orchestrate their own disappearance, put their families through hell.
“How close were you with Rachel before she went missing?” Bel said, aware of Ash’s presence just behind her. “Did you spend time together outside of work?”
Mr. Tripp’s glasses slipped down his nose. “Not really. She was a coworker, and I’d like to think a friend, but we didn’t see each other outside of work.”
“Really? Not even right outside work?” “What do you mean?”
“Did you ever give Rachel rides home from work? Spend time in the car together?”
He chewed his back teeth. “No,” he said. “She’s never been in my car.” Liar.
“Weird.” Bel puffed out her cheeks. “My aunt Sherry saw Rachel get into your car just a couple of days before she went missing.”
“She must be mistaken.”
“Or you must be lying,” Bel said, a toothless smile. “Suspicious, isn’t it? When you were also the first person on the scene when Rachel disappeared, the one who found me. Your prints all over the car. Is that because you helped Rachel disappear? Do you know where she was all this time? Are you still in love with her?”
Ash tensed.
There was a shift in Mr. Tripp’s face: jaw jutting forward, brows furrowing, eclipsing his eyes.
Bel waited, ready for the fight. Didn’t he know, she’d spent her whole life fighting?
“I’ll see you Monday morning, Annabel,” he said, low, through gritted teeth. Said like a threat.
Mr. Tripp stepped back, one last look at the camera before he slammed the door in their faces, a thunderclap without a storm.
