The bell above the door jangled, catching Bel’s nerves.
She headed through the store, down the aisle of camping gear, past hockey, toward the break room door, ignoring the Employees Only sign, shoving it open.
Uncle Jeff was inside, making a cup of coffee, the machine sputtering. “Bel,” he said. “What are you doing? You’re not allowed back here.” “Came to talk to you.” She set her jaw.
“Uh-oh, am I in trouble?” he asked, adding milk to his coffee. “You tell me.”
“Is it about Carter?” He took a sip. “She stayed with you last night, right? She and Sherry have been…well, you know teenage girls.”
“Well, I am one,” Bel said. “But it’s not about Carter.”
“Your dad?” Jeff looked up, lines crinkling around his eyes. “I bet he’ll be back tomorrow. That makes sense. Full week away to clear his head. Cops don’t seem worried.”
“Not about Dad either,” Bel said. “It’s Rachel.”
Jeff took another sip, like it was on purpose, to give himself time. “What about her?” he said.
Bel wasn’t sure how to best approach this: all guns blazing or only half, keep some back for later.
“I think you know something about her that you’re not saying.”
His mouth opened and closed. “I know as much as you do,” he said, ending in a cough, catching it and the lie in his fist. Because Bel knew her uncle was lying to her, and she could prove it.
“Let me show you something.” Bel gestured toward the table, where Jeff’s phone was lying face up. She took a seat and pulled out her own phone, waited for him to take the chair opposite. “Last week, when we had the family dinner, you helped Grandpa into the car.”
“Yes,” Jeff said, eyes up, coffee down. “And what—”
“You were wearing a live microphone. It recorded everything you said.”
Bel watched Jeff as he swallowed hard, one of his hands curling into a fist, the bony mountain range of his knuckles pushing through skin, giving him away.
“Would you like to hear it?” She didn’t wait for the answer, scrolling to the audio file and pressing play, turning the volume all the way up.
“Are you in, Dad?” Jeff’s voice from last week, metallic and tinny through her phone speakers.
Bel watched the uncle in front of her, as the one from last week spoke.
He fidgeted, ran a hand around his neck. “Let me get the seat belt.”
“I—I,” Grandpa stuttered.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get that.” Rustling. A click.
“Dad.” A pause. “I have to ask you something, and I need you to remember.”
Jeff dropped his head into his hands, elbows propped on the table. The crackle of material rasping against the microphone.
“I don’t know who that is,” Grandpa croaked in reply.
“You do, Dad,” Jeff insisted, the one from now still hiding his face. “You do know. Where was she? Where did they find her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dad, I need you to try. It’s important.”
She stopped the clip, the room too quiet. Bel used the thickening silence against Jeff, staring him down until his face emerged from his hands.
“Bel, I can explain,” he said, eyes wide in the headlights of her hard stare.
“Can you?” She cleared her throat. “Why do you think Grandpa knows where Rachel was? That he knows who found her, and when?”
Jeff hesitated, a quick burst of blinks, muscles twitching around his mouth.
“Um…,” he said. “Yeah, I asked him about Rachel. I don’t know anything, I swear. But Dad had mentioned something strange about her, so I was pushing for details. Now I think he was just confused.”
Bel narrowed her eyes. “We don’t hear Grandpa say anything about Rachel before you bring it up. It’s all recorded.”
“No.” Jeff shook his head, too long and too fast, obscuring his eyes. “Not then. A couple of days before, when I was at his house.”
“What did he say?” Bel pushed.
“I can’t remember exactly.” Jeff coughed. “Something about Rachel. About f-finding her. Maybe he was recalling an older memory and it just sounded like it was about her reappearance. He’s confused. We can’t trust his memories. But I wanted to check when I had him alone, after he’d seen her, see if it sparked anything. Obviously, he couldn’t remember. I shouldn’t have done that, not fair.”
It felt like he was still lying to her, another cough to cover it, holding eye contact with his reflection in Bel’s phone screen, but not with her.
“So does Grandpa know something about Rachel or not?” She hardened her voice, trying to catch his gaze.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Bel dropped one hand to the table, a thud that finally drew his attention. “And you don’t know anything more about her disappearance or reappearance?”
“No, I don’t know anything,” he said, and maybe he was lying or maybe not. Jeff didn’t like confrontation and Bel lived for it; they couldn’t be more different. But she didn’t like the way he’d leaned on the word know, like
maybe he suspected something, or half believed another, and she’d only chosen the wrong word.
“You sure?” She gave him another chance. “Sure.”
“Did Rachel ever have any reason to be afraid of you?”
Jeff’s face clouded over, eyebrows eclipsing the whites of his eyes.
“Of me? No,” he said quietly. “Why would you ask that? I always liked Rachel. She always liked me, I think.”
“And now?”
Jeff shrugged. “She’s family, of course.”
“Family first,” Bel said, echoing Sherry’s words. But Rachel was less family than others, much less than Dad. And if Jeff knew anything that could help bring him home…
“Do you know where Dad is? Did he mention wanting to leave after Rachel came back?”
Jeff shook his head. “I don’t know where he is, but I know he’ll be back. He’s the heart of this family. He never said anything, but you could see how overwhelmed he—”
Jeff was cut off by his phone, vibrating against the table, rotating as it did, an angry bug on its back.
They both glanced at the screen. An incoming call from Bob.
Jeff’s friend, who he always dropped into conversations even when he
didn’t fit. Bob from Vermont.
Bel’s heart jumped to the base of her throat. Wait a fucking second.
Jeff moved to reject the call but Bel swatted his hand away.
“Bob from Vermont,” she said, voice urgent, grating in her throat. “Is his full name Robert Meyer?”
Jeff narrowed his eyes.
Bel clapped her hands to shock him out of it. “Yes.”
“Fuck!” Bel grabbed the phone before her uncle could.
“Hey, give—”
Bel swiped to accept the call, raised the phone to her ear. Jeff got to his feet and Bel jumped back from him.
“Hello?” a gruff voice said down the line. Bob from Vermont, not just a name, but a voice too. “Jeff, I gotta tell you something.”
“Hi, Bob,” Bel said, moving away from Jeff, a two-step dance, hand splayed to hold him back.
“This isn’t Jeff.”
Bob from Vermont was observant, she could give him that. “No, it’s not,” she said. “I’m Bel, his niece.”
“Charlie’s kid?”
“Charlie’s kid,” she repeated. “Now that you mention him, I need to ask you something.”
“I already know what you’re gonna say.” A sigh that tickled the speaker. “You’re the last person my dad called before he went missing,” Bel
continued anyway, pushing through. “At three in the morning last Saturday, the night he disappeared. What did he say, Bob? I really need to know,” she added, voice tight and desperate, clinging to the walls of her throat.
Another sigh. Observant and a mouth-breather, Bob from Vermont. But he might be the only person who knew where Dad was.
“I’ve been through this with the State Police. Just got back from an interview with them, thought Jeff should know.”
Bel didn’t care about any of that.
“What did my dad say on the phone? It’s important.” Jeff had backed off now, listening, eyes rotating.
“He didn’t say anything,” Bob said, sharpening the consonants. “The call only lasted a few seconds. I picked it up, said Hello, who’s there, and no one answered. I could only hear the wind, like someone was there, just not talking. That’s it. I don’t know anything else, like I said to the police.”
Bel held a breath, trapped it in her cheeks, thinking. If Dad didn’t talk, maybe he wasn’t the one making that call, it could have been Rachel using his phone. Or option three: Bob from Vermont was lying to her.
“What’s he saying?” Jeff asked in a stage whisper.
She ignored him.
“My dad made the call from Danville, Vermont. He must have been on the way to see you?” Not a question, but Bel made it one.
“Well, he never turned up, and I never heard from him. And I don’t know why you’ve got me messed up in your family stuff. Now I got cops asking me all kinds of shit.”
“What kinds of shit?” Bel looked at Jeff, trying to remember all the scraps he’d dropped in about Bob over the years. Hadn’t he said something about the dark web?
“Just because I choose to live off the grid,” Bob was rattling on.
“What about your online activities?” Bel asked, phrasing it as nicely as she could.
“Now you sound like one of them cops,” Bob scoffed. “And no, before you ask me too, I did not sell your dad a fake identity. I never saw him, you have my word.”
Bel paused. She might have Bob’s word, but she had something else too, something much more valuable.
“You sell fake identities?” she asked, grasping at the thread he’d left. A pause.
“No…I do not.”
“OK, but if you did know about that kind of thing, how much would it cost someone to buy themselves a whole new identity? Passport? Driver’s license?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know anything about that kind of thing,” Bob replied, way too strong in his denial.
“What if you had three thousand dollars?” Bel said, chancing it. “Would that be enough?”
Bob breathed out, the line crackled.
“I think that would be more than enough,” he said, carefully. Bel’s stomach flipped, the knot landing heavy with it.
Her dad hadn’t gone to Bob from Vermont, Bel had his word. But someone else might have.
She chanced again, nothing to lose, even though Uncle Jeff was right here. “Sixteen years ago, did Rachel Price come to you to buy a new identity? She would have had the cash to pay you.”
A shadow crossed Jeff’s eyes, waiting for the answer to play out on Bel’s face.
Bob coughed, and Bel couldn’t help thinking that a lie would follow, if he was anything like Jeff.
She waited.
“No, she did not,” Bob said, slowly, clearly. “I’ve never met Rachel Price. You don’t think I would have told Jeff if she had? Saved your family all that pain, all these years? She never came to me, you have my word on that too. Neither of your parents, so I don’t know why your dad called me and dragged me into all this. But I want to be kept out of it, you hear?”
Bel deflated. Could he be lying about one and not the other? She either trusted his answers or she didn’t.
“Loud and clear, Bob from Vermont,” she said. The line beeped, went dead.
“He’s cheerful.” Bel chucked the phone back to her uncle.
He fumbled, catching it against his chest. “What did he say?”
“A lot of nothing.” Bel sniffed. “Dad called him that night, but he didn’t say anything, apparently. Bob never saw him.”
Jeff nodded. “I trust everything Bob says. He wouldn’t lie.”
“Course not. Dark-web criminals are as honest as they come, Uncle Jeff.”
He hesitated, one slow blink. “Why do you think your mom is lying about her disappearance?”
“I don’t.” Bel shrugged, feigning surprise. “Do you?” Threw it back at him.
“No…” Jeff’s voice trailed away from him. “Good, glad we agree.”
Jeff coughed into his closed fist.
“Don’t tell Rachel about that call,” Bel said, grabbing her abandoned phone. “Or I’ll tell her you think you know where she really disappeared to.”
Jeff shifted uncomfortably, shoulders rising to his ears. “Deal,” he said, speaking to the floor.
“Good.” Bel pushed the door open with her heels, setting Jeff free. She gave him a pointed thumbs-up. “Family first.”
Each giving up a little more of Rachel, bit by bit. And even more of themselves.
Family first, and Grandpa was next.
