The Reappearance of Rachel Price

They stood around in the living room—Bel, Dad and Rachel—not knowing what to say to each other, what to do, how to be, the room fizzing with the absence of living.

Bel was very interested in her fingernails suddenly, picking at them.

Dad cracked first, saving them all.

“Um, do you want a shower?” he asked Rachel.

A question that didn’t really need an answer. She was dressed in oversized gray sweats and slippers the police had given her, after taking her clothes into evidence. But she was filthy still, a stuffy smell clinging to the air around her, stale and sharp. Blood, sweat, piss and everything in between.

Only her hands were close to normal; must have washed them after the police finished taking their photos and swabs. The medical team had cleaned up her feet too, disinfecting the wounds and blisters, and the raw, rubbed skin of her ankle. She didn’t need a hospital, they said, just needed rest—lots of it—and to rehydrate. Sent her off with a bottle of painkillers.

Rachel looked at him a long moment. “Yes,” she said, her voice dark and gravelly, like it belonged to the night. “I really would like a shower.”

“You know where it is,” Charlie said, awkwardly, his bones locked the same way Bel’s did, all angles and lines. “It’s a new shower, actually. Redone years ago. Fresh towels in the linen closet.”

Rachel nodded, but she didn’t move.

Why wouldn’t she go?

“There’s nice shampoo up there,” Bel said, pushing gently. “I make Dad buy the good stuff.”

Rachel smiled at her. Her teeth were still good; she must have been able to brush them, wherever she was. Dad must have been thinking the same thing.

“There’s new toothbrushes, under the sink,” he added. “Help yourself.”

“I will.” She still hadn’t moved. “Clothes? Or did you throw all of mine out? I guess you thought I was dead, so …”

Charlie scratched his head. “There might be a few things in the closet still. I’ll have a look for you.”

Rachel didn’t say anything.

“I’ll set up the spare bedroom for you while you shower,” he continued. “Put any of your stuff I find in the dresser in there. Give you triple pillows; I know you used to like it that way.”

Rachel shrugged. “Any pillows would be good.” A roundabout way of accepting the arrangement. You were supposed to be sad about that, huh? Finding out your parents slept in separate bedrooms. But Bel didn’t have space to feel anything about that, because there was that other thing, ticking over in her gut, like the engine that was either switched off or it wasn’t. She needed to talk to Dad, alone.

“OK,” Rachel said eventually, hands hidden up her too-long sleeves. “I’ll be down soon.”

“Take as much time as you need.” Charlie dipped his head as Rachel walked past him, like he was avoiding her eyes.

They heard her gentle feet, pattering up the stairs, fading to nothing. The click of the bathroom door, the turn of the lock.

“I’ll go fix up her room,” Dad said, bones unlocking now, squeezing Bel’s shoulder. “Sit down, kiddo. You’ve had a long day.”

But Bel couldn’t sit down, not for long, following her dad upstairs a few minutes later. Past the rainforest sounds of the bathroom, steam leaking out the gap under the door. The spatter of a body, moving under the water. And another sound beneath it: was Rachel humming in there? The tune, gentle and unhinged, made the hairs stand up along Bel’s arms. She hurried past the door like something might reach under and catch her.

“Dad?” Bel whispered, finding him in the spare room, next to hers. He was fitting fresh white pillowcases over two new pillows. A pile of clothes folded at the end of the bed: one pair of light blue jeans, a couple of T-shirts and sweaters, one pair of striped pajamas. Bel didn’t know he’d kept any of Rachel’s clothes.

“Dad?” she hissed again, louder, over the noise of the shower.

“Huh? You OK, kiddo?”

No, not at all, what a stupid question. But maybe it was one you were supposed to ask, pretending things were normal when they never would be again.

“Are you OK?” she asked him.

He stared down at the bed, running his hands across the patterned comforter, flattening out the lines.

“I’m OK,” he said, not confirming it with his eyes, keeping them to himself. “It’s just … still in shock, is all. Doesn’t feel real. Like I might wake up soon and this …”

Bel finished the thought for him: this will all go away. Rachel would go away.

“Will take some getting used to,” he said, carrying the folded clothes, placing them in the top drawer of the empty dresser. “Do you have any underwear, Bel, that you could lend your mom?”

Bel’s lip pulled up in a sneer, exposing her teeth.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Dad.” She hardened her voice, bringing his attention back to her. She didn’t know how much time they had. Rachel was out of sight, out of earshot, but even down the hall felt too close. Back to a whisper. “Dad. Do you … do you think she’s telling the truth?”

His eyes narrowed, flicking side to side, across Bel’s face and beyond. “What do you mean?”

“About what happened to her? How she disappeared, reappeared.”

His face rearranged, mouth moving around unspoken words. But then he did speak them: “Why would she lie about it?”

And that wasn’t a stupid question.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Look, Bel.” He took hold of her shoulders, gentle but firm. “I think she’s been through something horrible, something unbelievable, which makes it hard to believe.” A muscle twitched in his cheek, the sad ghost of a smile. “But she has no reason to lie, Bel, and you have no reason not to believe her.”

That one hurt. Bel stepped back to steady herself. She thought her dad might be with her on this. He was always with her. And if he said Rachel was telling the truth, then Bel had to believe it. So why was it so hard to make herself believe? That one discrepancy, tightening its hands around her throat, something to push against.

Dad moved to the nightstand, opening the drawer to check it was empty, swiping a layer of dust from the surface with his sleeve. He switched on the little yellow lamp, shaped like a metallic mushroom.

“You’re not happy she’s back, are you?” Bel could tell. She could tell instantly the moment he’d walked in the kitchen and saw Rachel there, recognized her.

“I am happy she’s back,” he said, no, he insisted. “I’m happy she’s alive, of course I am. She’s my wife, the woman I loved most in the world. It’s just, it doesn’t feel the way you think it will, after all that time. We’re in shock, all of us. Things will be strange for a while, kiddo, and I’m sorry about that. But that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy. OK?” He knocked his finger under her chin as he passed. “Got my two girls. My family.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s nine. I know it’s late, but I should make dinner, shouldn’t I? None of us have eaten properly.” He gestured with his head down the hall, toward the steaming bathroom. “What do you think she’d want to eat?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know her,” she said, still stinging. Was it possible Bel was the one who’d made a mistake, not Rachel? Maybe she hadn’t been listening properly. She could be forgetful like that. Dad said things would be strange for a while, and that meant Bel too. She definitely felt strange.

“Pizza,” Dad said, nodding, agreeing with himself. “I’ll order pizza. If there was ever an excuse for takeout …”

He left it there, and he left Bel there too, walking out into the hallway, just as the shower screeched off.

They sat in the living room. Dad took the armchair early—it was his spot—so Bel and Rachel were on the sofa, at opposite ends, Bel’s legs straight out in front. Hyperaware every time she felt movement in the cushions, a shift in the corner of her eye.

It was even stranger, now Rachel was clean, looking closer to her old self. To the Rachel Price of the family videos and missing posters and news bulletins. The face of the unsolvable mystery, now solved, the forty-three-year-old version of that twenty-seven-year-old missing woman. She was wearing her old navy-striped pajamas. Cheeks still flushed from her hot shower, skin white and clean, grooves of pink where she’d scrubbed too hard. Feet bare: cracked and blistered, tucked up on the sofa. Hair wet, brushed back from her face so her birthmark showed. Now she smelled like coconut and aloe vera, and that was stranger still, because those usually belonged to Bel.

Rachel leaned forward for another slice of pizza from the box, dropping it onto her plate. She didn’t eat it right away, the flickering images of the television playing across the glass of her eyes.

She caught Bel looking. A smile stretched across her face, new lines you couldn’t see before, the smile duplicating through the skin of her cheeks. Chin pointed just the way Bel’s did, stolen from her. She looked happy to be home. Bel tried to smile back.

“I borrowed your hairbrush, Anna,” Rachel said. “Sorry, Annabel, Bel. Hope you don’t mind.”

Bel did mind. More about the name, though.

“That’s OK,” she said, forcing herself to eat another slice so she didn’t have to talk.

“Wow.” Rachel stared at the TV. “Look at those graphics. Almost looks like a real dragon. Well, you know.”

But no one did know, and no one spoke until Charlie cleared his throat.

“Did you have a TV, in the basement?” he asked, watching the dragon, not her.

Rachel shook her head, making him look at her anyway. “No TV.” She took a bite, kept speaking with her mouth full. “No books. He gave me paper and pens. I would draw. Got pretty good at it. Something to keep me busy. And I used to write stories. Lots of them. About you, actually.” Rachel looked at Bel. “Both of you. What you were up to. Imagining new chapters in your lives. Imagining our lives if I’d never been taken. I’d write them out and save them to read back to myself, months or years later. I’m no Jane Austen.” She laughed a small, controlled laugh. Who could laugh about that, talking about their prison cell? “But it gave me something to do. Kept me sane.”

No one said anything for a while, and the silence was too much, itchy as it climbed up Bel’s back.

“There’s one more slice of pizza,” she said to the room, shaking the box.

“No thanks, Rachel,” Charlie said without looking. “You help yourself.”

Bel’s jaw locked. “Dad, that was me,” she said quietly.

“Oh, sorry, Bel.” He flushed. “No, you have it, I’m full.”

Rachel didn’t react, but she must have been thinking something, hiding it from her face.

On the television, the dragon was gone. Now there was a man who was supposed to be a prince, pushing a woman up against a dank dungeon wall. Lifting her dress. She begged him not to.

Charlie grabbed the remote, flicking to a different channel. “Something lighter,” he said under his breath, stopping on a cartoon where they swore more than Bel.

Rachel was watching him too, something new in her expression, only half readable.

“He didn’t touch me,” she said to the room as well. “Never like that. Police asked that too. Just used to sit on the stairs and watch me sometimes. Only came close to bring food, and paper. I think he liked keeping me, is all.”

“OK,” Charlie said, after a moment, because what were you supposed to say to something like that?

“So you can put your dragons back on, if you want,” she said. “I’m OK.”

“I think it’s time for bed, anyway.” Charlie switched the TV off, standing with an awkward stretch. “Would be good to get a nice, long sleep. We’ve all had … a day. Bel, can you take the plates to the kitchen?”

Rachel chewed her cheek.

Bel reached over to take the plate in front of her, stacking it with her own, and then Dad’s. She carried them into the kitchen, loaded them into the dishwasher, not focusing on what her hands were doing, ears pricked and listening.

By the time she got back to the living room, Charlie was explaining where they now kept the glasses in the kitchen. Bel didn’t know they’d ever lived anywhere else. “The cupboard above the microwave. Seemed a better place for them. If you want to take water up to bed or something.”

Rachel was standing now too.

“Do you have everything you need?” Charlie asked her. “For bed?”

“Yes, I have everything I need,” she said. But the way she’d said it sounded almost like a threat.

“Good.” Charlie smiled one small, desperate smile, fighting to keep it on his face. “Well, good night, I guess. S-see you in the morning.”

“Yes,” she said, rubbing her eyes with a navy-striped sleeve. “Good night. Good night, Annabel.”

“Night,” Bel said, almost cracking at the strangeness of it all, of playing families. Of how un-normal all these normal things felt.

Bel couldn’t sleep. A runner’s heart in her chest, beating in her ears. Wondering if the air coming in through the cracks in the door was the same air Rachel Price had already breathed.

It had been three a.m., last time she’d checked her phone. The light was off now, but that didn’t help, sleep dancing around in front of her, always one step out of reach. She had to sleep, had to. Because maybe she’d wake up and find out none of this was real after all. That she’d just fallen on the train tracks and cracked her head, inventing everything from that point on. Rachel Price would disappear again, like she was supposed to.

But wishing wouldn’t make it true. Rachel was really here, and she was real, but that didn’t mean her story was. Dave Winter said it was a mistake. And Dad believed Rachel, or he said he did. But maybe he was doing that for Bel’s sake. He always put her first. Maybe he thought she needed a mom.

She didn’t. She didn’t need anyone.

Bel was about to check the time again, but as she reached out, she heard a click in the dark. The shush of her door, pushing open against the thick carpet. Bel lowered her arm and held her breath. There was a dark figure in the doorway, silvery outline picked out by the moonlight.

Not Dad.

It was Rachel.

Bel forced her eyes shut, pretending to be asleep. Heart faster now, panicked couplets beating a word that sounded like dan-ger, dan-ger, dan-ger. Gut knotting up beneath the blankets.

Bel heard Rachel take one step inside the room. The gentle windstorm of her breath, in and out of her nose.

Rachel was watching her sleep.

Except she wasn’t asleep.

Go away, Bel thought, squeezing her eyes tighter. Please go away. Fighting the battle with her mind. Pushing Rachel away.

It must have worked. A few moments later, the door shushed again, clicked shut.

Bel opened one eye to check, searching for a specter in the dark.

But Rachel was gone.