“Hi, Yordan.”
Bel bared her teeth in a smile, too fierce, judging by Yordan’s alarmed face.
“Hello, Annabel,” he said, pulling the door fully open. “We weren’t expecting visitors. I’m just doing your grandpa’s lunch.”
“Great, I’ll join you.” Bel gave him no choice, foot crossing the threshold, bumping the door out of Yordan’s hands. She stepped inside, a wave of dry heat enveloping her, stinging her eyes.
Yordan nodded as she winced, understanding. “Your grandpa feels the cold.”
Bel followed him down the hallway, stairs snaking up to the right. Grandpa couldn’t go upstairs anymore, the house cut in half for him.
The study was his bedroom now, and Yordan slept upstairs, in the room Dad had grown up in. A lot of history here, the building blocks of the Price family. The grandmother Bel never met died right there, after a fall down the stairs, hit her head just the wrong way. Bel and Carter used to try and summon her ghost, before the idea of ghosts became something to fear. Hey, Granny Price, watch me do a handstand. Hey, Granny Price, is the devil real?
Grandpa was in the living room, in his armchair, the one they used to sit
in to read together.
“Pat, someone’s here to see you.” Yordan overenunciated every word. “Your granddaughter Annabel. Isn’t that nice?”
Bel walked into Grandpa’s eyeline, dropping onto the sofa opposite. “Hi, Paw-Paw, nice to see you.” She followed suit, leaning hard on every consonant.
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Yordan told her. “You want anything? Coffee?” “I’m OK, thanks.”
Yordan slipped out, steps silent on the thick carpet, leaving them alone.
Bel hadn’t been alone with Grandpa, not since his first stroke last summer. Dad was always here to take the lead, to step in when Grandpa got confused, to be a familiar face through all the broken memories.
“Warm in here, isn’t it?” Bel said, starting to sweat. Grandpa made a sound in his throat.
“Did you enjoy the family meal last week, Grandpa?” she said loudly. “The paella?”
Grandpa raised a shaky finger, finally looked at her. “Charlie?”
“Dad’s not here.” It wounded her to have to say it. “He’s gone away for a while, remember? He’ll be back real soon, I promise.”
Grandpa nodded upward instead of down, straining the loose skin of his neck.
“Are you looking forward to your birthday dinner next week?”
Grandpa stared at her blankly. Maybe she’d spoken too fast. Or maybe it was as Dad said: Grandpa didn’t remember Bel, she belonged to that lost time. Maybe Rachel did too. Bel knew more than anyone what that was like. Ain’t memory a bitch, huh? Gone was gone, no matter how you asked. But Bel was going to ask anyway; she had to.
“Who are you?” Grandpa asked her, right on cue. “It’s Bel. Annabel. Charlie’s daughter.”
“Rachel?” Grandpa said, and the hairs picked up on the back of Bel’s neck.
“No. I’m Rachel’s daughter.” Strange to state it as simple as that when it was anything but.
Grandpa’s eyes sank down her face. “Rachel?”
“Rachel’s my mom.” Bel tried another way, and it felt just as wrong, that forbidden word. “Do you remember Rachel?”
His head moved; not quite a nod, but maybe on the way. Bel would take any sign she could get. It was stupid to pin your hopes on an old man who couldn’t remember, but here we were. The same hopes had been pinned on Bel once, as a baby who could hardly speak.
“Rachel disappeared, do you know that?” Bel asked, slowing down, trapping her hands between her knees.
A flicker in Grandpa’s eyes. One hand dropped to his lap. “Charlie?”
“Yes, Charlie’s wife, Rachel.”
Grandpa looked over his shoulder, into the hallway. Was he looking for Yordan?
“Paw-Paw?”
“…it was an accident?” he muttered. “No one meant to kill her.”
“No one did kill her, Grandpa,” Bel said, feeling the heat of frustration and knowing it wasn’t fair. “Rachel’s back, remember? You’ve seen her.”
Grandpa’s mouth twitched.
“Do you know where she was before she came back, Grandpa? Did someone find her? Do you remember?”
Bel needed him to remember.
Grandpa pressed his eyelids together. “I’m hungry.”
“Grandpa, please.” Bel shifted to the edge of the sofa. “Tell me what you know about Rachel. I can’t help Dad if you don’t help me.”
Grandpa stared at her, unfocused, unseeing, mouth moving but no sound.
“Rachel?” she tried one more time. No reaction.
This was pointless and she knew it, so did the knot in her gut, twitching on its strings. Grandpa didn’t know anything, and even if he ever did, it was lost now, along with the rest of his broken memory, along with his two forgotten granddaughters. Jeff must have read too much into Grandpa’s confused mutterings. Fucking Jeff, sending her down the wrong way.
“Never mind, Grandpa.” Bel gave up, wiping the frown off on the back of her hand. “I’m sorry.”
Yordan’s head appeared in the doorway.
“It’ll be a few minutes until lunch, Pat,” he called, glancing over at Bel, a wary look in his dark eyes, a reluctant twist to his pursed lips.
“What?” Bel snapped, scaring it out of him.
“S-sorry.” He tripped back, stumbled forward. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“Couldn’t you?” she said, disappointment turning stale and angry.
Yordan raised his hands in surrender. “Small house, you were talking loud, wasn’t trying to.” He moved farther into the room. “I’m sorry your grandpa isn’t able to answer your questions, I’m sure you were trying, weren’t you, Pat?”
Grandpa grunted.
“Can we talk out here?” Yordan asked her, thumb over his shoulder.
Bel stood up, followed him into the small kitchen where the microwave burred, Grandpa’s lunch parading under the yellow light.
“Sorry.” He raised his thick eyebrows, making ripples up his forehead. “I don’t like talking in front of him like he’s not there. I would say don’t take it to heart, he doesn’t remember me most days either, but he’s not my family. It must be hard.”
“It’s fine.” Bel sniffed. It wasn’t like Grandpa had chosen to forget her.
Choosing to go was much worse: ask Rachel.
“He gets confused, struggles most with the long-term stuff. But you wanted to ask him about Rachel, didn’t you? I thought maybe I could help instead.”
Bel tilted her head, wordlessly asking him to go on.
“He does remember Rachel,” Yordan said, checking the timer on the microwave. “Maybe a younger version of her, before she disappeared. He brings her up sometimes. Mostly it’s ‘Charlie’s girlfriend, Rachel,’ and that she likes books, that she’s an English teacher. She actually came around yesterday, for coffee. Also unannounced.” Yordan pressed his lips into a toothless smile. Bel wished he wouldn’t; group her and Rachel together like
that. “Pat did seem familiar with her, like he knew who she was. So that answers one of your questions.”
The knot stirred in Bel’s stomach. “Rachel was here?”
Yordan nodded. “She wanted to visit Pat to see how he was getting on without Charlie. Asked to come in for coffee.”
“What did they talk about?”
“Just small talk. How the house looked exactly the same the last time Rachel saw it. I made them coffee, then went to fold laundry, to give them some time alone.”
“And you didn’t hear what they talked about?” Bel asked. “Thought it was a small house.”
“I was upstairs,” Yordan countered. “I only left them for five minutes. But…” He paused, screwing his lips again, like he was trying to stop himself.
“Yordan?”
His mouth untwisted. “Not saying anything bad, it was just a little strange. I came downstairs and Rachel wasn’t here, where I left her.” He gestured at the small dining table. “Your grandpa was in here with the two coffees but Rachel wasn’t. I called her name and she didn’t respond.”
“Where did she go?”
An insistent beep filled the room, blaring three times. Yordan’s attention snapped to the microwave. Bel cleared her throat to bring it back.
“I found her in the living room,” he said. “I asked what she was doing, if she was looking for something, and she said she was just looking to see if anything had changed. Then she thanked me for the coffee—which she hadn’t finished—and she left.”
A clicking sound in Bel’s ear as her jaw locked, back teeth pushing against each other, biting on nothing, biting on something.
“Where in the living room was she?”
Yordan turned to the microwave. “Near the fireplace, but she left as soon as I entered.”
“Did she take something?”
“No, of course not,” Yordan hissed, pulling the hot plate of food out of the microwave. Carrots and a slice of chicken potpie.
Bel tried to re-create the scene: the fireplace at the back of the room, beyond the sofa and the bookshelves. She couldn’t think of anything around the fireplace that Rachel would be interested in. It was just a normal living room where a family once lived, now an old man who only remembered half of them.
What had Rachel been trying to do? Because it wasn’t just the sneaking off during the unannounced visit yesterday, was it? No, it was the number of times she’d asked Bel and Carter about Grandpa’s routine, whether Yordan ever took him out of the house. Both led to the same inevitable conclusion: there was something in this house Rachel wanted, or needed, something she wanted to keep secret. And if it was important to Rachel, then it was important to Bel.
“Yordan,” Bel said, trying to sound sweet, failing immediately. “Yes?” Yordan replied, because he didn’t know her well enough.
“I guess my dad didn’t have a chance to tell you this, with everything going on,” she said, thinking on her feet. “But for Grandpa’s birthday, he’d always take him to Moose Brook State Park. Hiking, fishing.” It was a lie; they’d only done that once their whole life. “Dad was planning to take him again this year. I know it’s different, since his stroke, and you couldn’t do the trails, but there’s the roads around the campground his chair could go on. It’s supposed to be a nice day tomorrow. I was thinking you could still take him, for an hour or two. A walk, grab some lunch. Grandpa would really like that, I think. Hopefully it’ll distract him, from Dad being gone.” That was the only part Bel didn’t have to fake, the way her eyes overstretched, overfilled, at the thought of Dad being gone.
Yordan pressed his lips together in a way Bel couldn’t read: she didn’t know him well enough either. “If that’s what your dad would want,” he said, or he asked, teetering between the two.
“Yes.” Bel jumped on it. “It is.” Dad holding everything together, even when he wasn’t here. “Jeff could come too. Grandpa should have one of his boys with him.”
“OK,” Yordan said, reluctantly, splitting the word in two, like maybe he knew he was being lied to, but was happy to go along with it because saying no was harder. And Bel would have made saying no very hard indeed. “What time?”
“Maybe if you leave at eleven?” Bel suggested, counting it through, working out the timings. “Yeah, eleven tomorrow. I’ll tell Jeff to meet you there.”
Fuck Uncle Jeff: he’d been wrong, so now he had plans tomorrow. So did she and Ash.
And Rachel.
Busy, busy day, tomorrow, for all of them. “OK, sounds good.”
“Good,” Bel said too. Better than good.
—
“Rachel!” Bel shut the front door behind her, the double click of the catch, like it was ticking down to something. “I’m home!”
Bel waited, listening throughout the house, for the creaks and sighs of a living person. Rachel moved quietly, steps delicate and deadly. Bel was learning more about her every day. The way she walked, the way she blinked when she was tired, the way she fiddled, pressing her fingers against her thumbs when she wasn’t thinking.
Rachel appeared around the corner, soundless, face split with a smile. “Having a good day?” she asked, stepping back to let Bel into the living
room.
Bel dropped her jacket on the sofa. She was having a great day. “It’s OK,” she said.
Rachel nodded. “Hey, was Carter OK this morning? Seemed a bit quiet at breakfast.”
“She’s fine.” Bel knew what Rachel was trying to do, trying to use Carter against her, but Bel refused to play her game. “Think everyone is just worried about Dad. I miss him,” she added, playing her own game.
Rachel dropped her eyes, fiddling with the fabric lines in her jeans, pushing denim mountains into valleys, popping down and up. “I know, sweetie,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Sorry for what, Bel wanted to say, but she knew it would be a mistake.
Rachel couldn’t know that Bel doubted her, not until it was far too late. “Grandpa misses him too,” Bel said, watching her closely. “I went to
visit him today and he just keeps saying Charlie, doesn’t understand.”
Rachel swallowed. “Must be hard,” which might as well have been nothing.
Bel cleared her throat. “Especially with his birthday coming up. Dad normally takes him to Moose Brook for a hike every year. Yordan says he’s going to take Grandpa anyway, as a birthday treat.” There was a twitch behind Rachel’s eyes, balls rolling under the thin skin of her lids. “Supposed to be a nice day tomorrow and there’s roads his wheelchair can go on. I’m not going, Grandpa doesn’t remember me, it confuses him, but Jeff’s going. Obviously, it doesn’t replace Dad, but…it’s something.”
Now was Bel’s turn to drop her eyes; she didn’t want Rachel to feel watched.
Come on, take the bait, fall into her trap.
This was exactly what Rachel wanted: Grandpa and Yordan out of that house for a couple hours, so she could get inside and do whatever it was she needed to do. Bel would know she’d fallen for it if she asked what time they were going. Come on, Rachel.
“That’s a nice idea,” she said, pressing her thumb to her bottom lip, creating a valley there too. “Maybe I should go too. What time are they going?”
Got her.
Bel tried not to smile. “Yordan said they were leaving at eleven-thirty.” Rachel nodded again, small movements like it was absent-minded, but
Bel knew better.
“I might have a doctor’s appointment at twelve,” she said, making her excuses already. “I’ll check my calendar.”
Rachel silently exited to the hallway, heading for the stairs.
After a brief pause, Bel retrieved her phone and messaged Ash:
Got an even tinier camera? One that’s unnoticeable?
The message was promptly delivered and read, with Bel’s anxiety rising as the typing indicator appeared.
Ash’s response came through:
What the hell are we up to now?
“Who’s making you smirk?” Rachel inquired, suddenly back in the room with her own smirk. Bel hadn’t heard her return.
“Nothing. Just Ash,” Bel replied, pocketing her phone, unable to conjure a better excuse.
“The film crew guy?” Rachel’s smirk widened to a grin. “He’s quite handsome.” She winked.
Bel’s cheeks flushed pink. “No, he’s not.” Rachel laughed.
“Shut up, Rachel,” Bel said, joining in the laughter, mirroring Rachel’s mirth.
Rachel’s laughter faded into a sigh, leaving traces of amusement around her eyes. “You know, B-Bel,” she began hesitantly, “I know I’ve only been back for two weeks, and everything must still feel odd for you. But you don’t have to call me Rachel. You can call me Mom.” She fidgeted, pressing her fingertips to her thumbs. “Only if you’re comfortable with it.”
An awkward silence filled the space between them. A boundary had been crossed, leaving Bel uncertain. She toyed with her hair ends. It wasn’t a terrible idea: Bel needed Rachel’s trust to not see the impending end. And it was coming. Tomorrow, Bel would expose her.
Bel cleared her throat, taking a step towards Rachel, crossing the invisible line. “Shall we make dinner together tonight, Ra-M-Mom?”
Rachel beamed.
