Rachel switched off the engine, pulled out the key, holding it up like it might unlock something else.
“We can cancel your grandpa’s birthday dinner today, B-Bel. After last night…”
Bel shrugged. “No, I’m fine,” she said, because she didn’t quite know what she was. She thought of Phillip’s wild eyes, his hitching laugh. Phillip was the man, the one who kept Rachel in his basement for sixteen years and let her go.
“It’s over,” Rachel said, reaching out to her, squeezing her hand. Bel didn’t flinch, she was too tired, didn’t know what to believe anymore. If they’d found the man, did that mean Rachel wasn’t lying about any of it? Had she been wrong?
“Come on.” Rachel climbed out, Bel mirroring her on the other side.
Ms. Nelson was standing in her open doorway, watching, like she had last night when the cops showed up. Bel nodded at her. An apology, a truce.
“Bel?” A voice sailed down the street.
It was Ash, hurrying toward them, navy sweater with white birds. Bel glanced at Rachel.
“I’ll go inside,” Rachel said. “Start clearing up.” Bel waited for the front door to close behind her.
Ash cut in first.
“I was waiting for you. I got your text. Sorry, my phone was on silent.” Worry pulled at his eyebrows. “What happened? Did you follow Rachel? Where did she go, what was she doing? Someone said the cops were here. What did you find?”
Bel took a breath, knowing she’d have to explain everything, not sure how. She gestured for him to follow her, away from the house, toward the cemetery.
“The cops weren’t here for Rachel. They were here for Phillip Alves.” “Phillip Alves?” Ash hissed. “That crazy guy obsessed with the case? The
one who kidnapped you?”
“He broke into the house when he saw Rachel leave. Looking for clues.
But I was there. He thought I knew something about Rachel. He got mad.”
Ash shifted, steps falling in time with hers. He almost reached for her hand. “Did he hurt you?”
“He might have,” Bel said. “If Rachel didn’t come home in time. She threatened him, he ran off.”
“She saved you?” he asked.
Bel didn’t want to answer that. Rachel shouldn’t have been gone in the first place. And if she wasn’t lying, then why was she sneaking out of the house that late? Things were too unclear now, where were the battle lines? Who was on whose side?
“That’s not all,” Bel said instead. “We just got back from the police station, from giving our statements. Rachel says it’s him. Phillip Alves was the man who took her.”
Ash stopped, stared at her. “It’s Phillip?”
“That’s what Rachel says.”
His eyebrows drew together now, pulling across his nose. “But…” He trailed off. “Wasn’t Phillip in prison for three years after he kidnapped you?”
Bel’s heels dragged, grating on the sidewalk. “Rachel says there was a long period of time when the man didn’t come close enough for her to see,
kept the lights out and his face covered when he left her food. It could have been someone else and she didn’t realize at the time; a brother, a friend.”
“Phillip Alves.” Ash sounded it out on his lips, faltering, like it didn’t quite fit.
“The police showed her Phillip’s mug shot when she first returned, asked if he was the guy,” Bel said. “She said no at the time. She didn’t recognize him until she saw him in person, the way he moved, the way he breathed.”
“Unbelievable,” Ash said, but which way did he mean it? They walked the path through the cemetery, red leaves dotted on the grass. “So now they have to find him?”
“They already did. State Police picked him up a few hours later, walking down the highway, Route Two. He’s been arrested, being questioned by the feds now. I broke his nose, by the way,” she said, so he knew she hadn’t needed Rachel, she might have been fine on her own.
“Phillip Alves,” Ash said again, leaving the name there, floating in front of them, walking into it.
“Why do you keep saying it like that?” Bel snapped.
He stopped walking. “I guess, it’s just…do you believe her?”
The knot twisted in Bel’s gut. She went back to an answer that was safe, hiding behind it. “I don’t know.”
“But what about everything we’ve found? If the answer is just that Phillip Alves—a stranger—abducted her, why did she borrow that money from Julian Tripp right before she disappeared?”
“I don’t know.” Bel hid farther behind it. “Maybe the three thousand dollars was for something else? Not running away.”
“What about the sighting in January? The red top and black jeans?” “Maybe it wasn’t Rachel.”
“What was she so desperate to find in your grandpa’s house?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t even matter.” And maybe the cup she’d seen in the trash was just another coffee cup with a cow. They couldn’t be rare.
Ash stared at her, like he didn’t understand, and maybe Bel didn’t either. Why was she defending Rachel now, taking her side even when it felt wrong
to say it? Because the other option, if it wasn’t Phillip Alves, was to trust what he said instead, who he thought had taken Rachel after obsessing over it for sixteen years. Dad leaving with a packed bag in the middle of the night, Dad talking to some unknown man about his alibi in the months after Rachel disappeared. Bel could choose to believe Rachel or to believe Phillip Alves, and Rachel was the easier choice, didn’t hurt as much.
“Phillip Alves,” Ash said one more time. “Stop saying it like that.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked at her, under the shade of the red tree. “I guess I just thought the answer would be closer to home.”
Bel tilted her chin. “Closer to home? What do you mean by that?” “N-nothing,” he backed off. “It just seemed—”
“You mean my dad, don’t you?”
“I didn’t say that,” Ash said, hands up, tiptoeing around a land mine he’d already set off.
“But you meant it, didn’t you?” Bel locked her jaw, hardened her eyes. “Why does this always happen? He had a fucking alibi.” Her mind battened down, shutting out Phillip’s deranged rambling. “It has to be Phillip. My dad didn’t do anything. I know that, Ash.” Knew it, had to believe it. She was alone in the world without him. “And maybe I’m wrong, maybe he did leave me, run away to Canada. Maybe he thought—with Rachel back—that people would start suspecting he was involved in her disappearance, just like you’re doing now. Maybe he knew people would turn on him again, and he was scared. And now when the news breaks about Phillip’s arrest, when there’s finally an answer to the Rachel fucking Price mystery, he can come home. He’ll finally be free, from people like you.”
Charlie Price, a name forever marred after Dave Winter arrested him for something he didn’t do. That made sense, Dad leaving for that reason, Bel could shift things around in her head to accept that.
“That’s not what I meant, Bel, pl—”
“He told me to stay away from you, right before he disappeared, did you know?” Bel said, going for his weak spot. She knew Ash now, and he knew her. And that meant she knew exactly how to hurt him, how to lash out and
make it last. “He warned me. Said you were using me for the film. Manipulating me about Rachel. I’m surprised you don’t have a camera on you right now, wouldn’t this be great footage for your little film, huh? My name’s not in the title, but I’m the heart, remember, or maybe you just told me that to manipulate me. So you can impress Ramsey, make him think you aren’t a total waste of space.”
Her eyes stung. It wasn’t working, not the way it should, because it was too late; she’d let him in too close, and now it hurt her too.
“Where’s your camera, Ash, huh?” She pushed him in the shoulder, jabbed him with two fingers. “That’s all this is supposed to be, isn’t it, you and me? It’s pointless, it doesn’t matter. You’re leaving, you were always leaving. You don’t really care apart from making a great film for Ramsey. Plotty, twisty, one the big broadcasters will pay a bunch of money for. Come on, where’s your camera?”
“Bel, stop.” Ash’s voice cracked in two, eyes glazed with un-cried tears. “That’s not fair. I know what you’re doing—”
“Then it’s done, OK?” Bel’s breath hitched, hands shaking. “It’s done.” She left him there, standing by a row of graves, under the bleeding tree. Waited until Ash couldn’t see her anymore to wipe her eyes.
—
“I bought a birthday cake, you don’t think he’ll mind?” Rachel asked, stirring the mac and cheese on the stove. “Didn’t think we’d have time to make one.”
“It’s fine. He won’t remember.” Bel stared out the back door as the evening darkened, her reflection as Phillip snatched her hair back, baring her throat.
“You OK, Bel?” Rachel paused, adding salt to the pan. “Yeah.” She sniffed. “Are…are you OK?”
Rachel turned. She seemed surprised by the question. So was Bel, if she was being honest. A smile flickered onto Rachel’s face, unsure at first, until
she met Bel’s eyes. Across the room from each other, but it wasn’t such a great distance anymore.
“Yeah,” she said too. “I’m OK.”
Bel nodded. “I should probably get ready. We told everyone seven-thirty, right?”
Rachel checked the clock on the oven. “Twenty minutes to go. Perfect timing.”
Bel went upstairs, changed into jeans and a cardigan, brushed her hair. She’d washed it twice since Phillip had touched it, left his blood behind. It still didn’t feel clean.
She put the hairbrush down on the windowsill, beside the photo frame. Her and Dad beaming for the camera, the same one he had on his keys, Story Land for her twelfth birthday.
Bel’s thumb passed over the photo, her face reflected in the glass, young Bel in one eye, Dad in the other. He’d been missing thirteen days. But now, because of Phillip Alves, everything was going to be OK, Dad could finally come home. Bel was ready for it. Ready for peace, a truce, to put the house back together again, leave her armor outside.
Bel and Rachel could be on the same side, if it was Dad’s side too. A family.
Family first.
Her eyes trailed away to her nightstand. She followed them, opening the drawer to her collection of stolen things. She realized something, looking down at the pens and lip balms, that one unusable AirPod, the queen chess piece. Bel hadn’t taken anything in a couple of weeks. The knot had been there in her gut, but it hadn’t asked to be fed, hadn’t needed it. She must have been distracted, so consumed with Rachel.
She reached inside, fingers closing around something small and soft. She pulled it out, her tiny pink baby sock, cradled in the palm of her hand. Bel could return this to Rachel, put it back where she found it. It clearly meant something to her. An olive branch. A first step.
Bel took that first step, and a second, walking out of her room and down the hall.
She paused at the closed door into Rachel’s room. Tried the handle. It was unlocked. In fact, Bel hadn’t heard Rachel lock it at all, these past couple weeks.
She went inside, padding quietly, so Rachel wouldn’t hear from downstairs. Rachel hadn’t made her bed, hadn’t had time. Bel moved over to the nightstand and slid out the top drawer.
The iPhone box was still inside. A lip balm, rolling toward her. A packet of Kleenex.
Bel pinched the small sock and pushed it to the far corner, where she’d found it.
But there was something else there now. Hidden in the shadows, a cold touch of metal against the skin of her knuckles. Bel couldn’t help herself. She let the sock go and scrabbled for the small piece of metal, pulled it out.
It was a ring. A plain gold ring. A wedding band. Too big to be Rachel’s, it had to be a man’s.
Bel brought it closer, studied it, moving it so it caught the light. It was engraved on the inside.
July 23 2005
The date her parents got married. This was Dad’s wedding ring.
The one he still wore. The one he couldn’t take off. And it was here, in Rachel’s drawer.
Bel’s heart fell into her stomach, the knot took a bite. No, no, no. He couldn’t take this off. Which meant…
Everything wasn’t going to be OK. Dad didn’t run away, Rachel had done something to him, something final. Answers unraveled again, that last speck of hope swallowed whole. And a new feeling, that Dad was never coming home.
Bel broke apart, following her heart down, down, down. Finding her own land mines, setting them all off at once.
“Rachel!” she screamed, burning down the house.
Bel burst out of the room, the ring hot in her fist, catching fire too. “Rachel!”
Down the stairs, the thunderclap of her feet building into something worse.
“Mom!”
“Just fluffing the cushions,” Rachel called back. Bel followed her voice through the door, into war.
“Don’t know why, no one cares if the cushions are fluffed.” She smiled to herself.
“I can’t do this anymore!” Bel shouted, voice shaking the room. Rachel dropped the cushion.
“Bel, what’s—”
“I can’t do it! You’re lying to me! You’ve been lying since you returned!” Rachel blinked, mouth falling open. “Bel, I—”
Bel cut her off, storming forward. She slammed the ring down on the coffee table.
“That’s Dad’s wedding ring.” She pointed. “He couldn’t take it off!” Bel’s eyes hooked onto Rachel’s, steadied, took aim.
“What have you done to him, Rachel?”
