The Reappearance of Rachel Price

Carter was on her knees.

Rachel on her back.

Bel, her feet.

Carter screamed into her hands, trapping it there, rebounding into her.

“Carter!” Bel closed the distance, crashing to her knees. She wrapped her arms around Carter, held her head until the scream gave way.

“They’re gone,” Carter cried, voice echoing back through Bel’s ribs.

Rachel stood up, shakily, resting her weight on her other ankle. She picked up the flashlight Charlie had dropped, the silver beam in her hands now, lighting the way. She limped toward the edge, where Charlie went over. Bel joined her mom, feet firm, as Rachel pointed the light down, crags of rock sticking out like teeth below. The light didn’t reach the bottom.

“They couldn’t survive that fall,” Rachel said, like she didn’t dare believe it herself, quiet, listening for any sound that would prove her wrong.

“I killed them?” Carter said.

“No, Carter.” Rachel turned back to her, bent low, pulling up her chin. “You saved my life.”

“I killed them.” Carter balled her fists, pressed them into her eyes. “I pushed them over. Dad’s gone. But he’s not my dad, is he? Charlie is. Was. Fuck.”

Bel sat beside Carter, nudging her elbow, letting her know she was right here.

Rachel’s eyes widened, glittering again. “Carter, you know?” she said. “That I’m your …”

“Yes,” Carter sniffed, stars in her eyes too, from the flashlight.

Rachel’s lips parted, dropped open. “How do you know, sweetie?”

“I guess I just sort of knew. Felt it. All the ways we were similar, even though we weren’t blood-related, just my aunt by marriage. How nice you were to me, how much you wanted to get to know me. I thought it that first time you picked me up from school, when I helped you with your phone. Or really, I thought, ‘Isn’t Bel lucky, to have a mom like you.’ And how I’m not at all like my mom, and how weird she is with me and needles, wouldn’t let me get a blood test, even when the doctor said. I wanted it to be true, somehow, even though it was impossible. I ordered two kits from AncestryDNA the next day, told my dad it was dancing stuff. Fuck. Not my dad. U-uncle, I guess.” Carter stared out, beyond Rachel, over the empty edge, where he had disappeared too. “I did one on me, one on Bel.”

Bel blinked. “What? When?”

“I didn’t want to tell you, in case I was wrong. And you were so wrapped up in Rachel, trying to prove she was lying, that she was bad. You wouldn’t have believed me. You were asleep. I did the cheek swab.”

Bel remembered now; the morning Carter woke her by poking her in the mouth. The same morning Bel woke up to find that her dad was missing. It seemed a lifetime ago now, that day, that version of her.

“Bel’s results came through two days ago, didn’t tell me anything,” Carter said, looking up at Rachel. “But mine came this evening, just before Grandpa’s dinner. It said that me and Bel were full genetic sisters, that we shared both the same parents.” She blinked, a tear sliding down the ridge of her nose. “Which means you’re my mom, and Uncle Charlie is … was …” She left it hanging there, his name disappearing with her breath.

Bel wiped the tear before it fell over the edge of Carter’s nose. Looked into the eyes of her little sister. Carter knew before she had. The thing she needed to talk to Bel about on the stairs. It was important, she’d said. Bel should have listened. Take care of your sister for me, her mom said, when she thought she was going to die. I know you always have. Bel took Carter’s hand, clammy and bony against her own. My baby. They’d always been sisters, Carter taking care of Bel just as much, even when she didn’t want to see it.

Carter saved Rachel, and she’d saved Bel too.

“How did you find us?” Bel glanced over the lookout, at the tiny ant-town beyond.

“I saw what the note said at Grandpa’s house, Rachel’s message, before Dad—J-Jeff took it. He told me to stay, clean up the books. But I waited for him to leave, waited longer, then I left too. Your bike was out front, Bel. I got to the yard, couldn’t remember where the gap in the fence was, went too far. But I saw you both, running to the car. Then I saw Dad and Charlie, coming after you, chasing you. What Charlie had in his hands. So I followed them, through the trees. I thought he was going to kill you. He was about to kill you. I’m sorry.” She dropped her head.

Rachel picked it back up, finger under her chin. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You saved me from him, Carter. It doesn’t matter that he was your father, he wasn’t your family. That man was not worth saving.”

“What about Da—J-Jeff?” she cried, more tears than Bel could catch.

“You didn’t push Jeff.” Rachel’s eyes were both hard and soft. “Charlie pulled him over. You did not kill Jeff.”

“But he wouldn’t be dead, if I—”

“Jeff made his choice,” Bel said. “He set Charlie free. He made his choice.”

And that was true, but he’d made another choice too, and maybe that undid the first. Protect my daughter, Jeff, Rachel had told him. You owe me. It was Bel she meant, but when it came down to it, it was her other daughter he’d saved. Gave his life for it.

Rachel looked over the edge and when she turned back, there was something new in her eyes.

“Carter, listen to me.” Voice hard, the mother and the survivor. “The DNA tests, could police access those results, if they went looking? See that you and Bel are sisters?”

“Don’t think so. I unchecked the box about sharing information with law enforcement, just in case I was right.”

“Good,” Rachel exhaled. “No one can ever know the truth.”

“What do you mean?” Bel straightened up. “The world should know what they did to you—”

“They are dead.” Rachel pointed where they’d disappeared. “That’s punishment enough. The world cannot know. You two are involved now and there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, keep you safe. My girls. Which means no one can know the truth, about what Pat did, what Charlie did, that Carter’s my daughter. That you two were here when Jeff and Charlie—”

“They’re only dead because he tried to kill you,” Bel said.

“Because I kidnapped him and chained him up.”

“He did that to you first! He asked Grandpa to kill you.”

“There’s no evidence he was involved, Bel. One of them gone, the other has no memory of what he ever did. Don’t you think I would have gone to the police, if that was ever an option? But there is evidence here. This.” She pointed harder. “A crime scene at the bottom of this drop that leads back to us. Carter saved us, but that’s not what it looks like.”

Rachel’s eyes flicked down to Carter, sitting there on the rough ground, head in her hands, and Bel understood. Carter had killed Charlie, pushed him to his death. Justice to some, murder to others. It was Bel’s job to protect her little sister, take care of her. Family first. Bel blinked and Rachel blinked back, a language of their own.

“What do we do?” Bel asked.

“We need to get rid of everything. Anything that could lead to the truth, that ties us to being here, right now.”

“Like the note?” Carter raised her head. “Help. My name is Rachel Price. It was in Dad’s pocket. It’s in Jeff’s pocket.” Her pale eyes widened with horror, rubbed red-raw.

Rachel looked down, into all that nothing.

She swallowed, a clicking sound, like her throat was too narrow, crushed by Charlie’s weight. “I have to go down there. I’ll get the note. Jeff’s car keys too. His phone: we can’t leave that, they’ll be able to trace him. I have to move the bodies.”

“What?” Carter gasped.

“Can’t leave them out in the open. They’ll be found. No one’s going to think they jumped, two brothers, together. A medical examiner will know Charlie fell backward, that he was pushed. Carter, didn’t you say the gate into the mine was broken open? They’re right by the entrance, down there. I’ll drag them inside, and dr-drop them down the old mine shaft.”

A second fall, to hide the first.

Bel chewed her tongue. “How far does it go down?”

“Far,” Rachel answered. “The mine is supposed to be sealed off, it’s dangerous, and you can’t get down there, not without special equipment. It could be months, years, decades, but we can’t guarantee they’ll never be found. Which is why none of us three can ever be suspects, you understand? A stranger took me. He kept me in his basement for sixteen years. And none of this ever happened.”

Carter nodded. Bel too. She reached into her pocket, pulled out Charlie’s wedding ring. It wasn’t warm anymore, or cold, stinging at her skin, just an old bit of metal that meant nothing to her.

“You should probably put this back on him.” Bel handed the metal band to her mom. “No evidence, right?”

Rachel nodded, sliding it into her own pocket.

“You sure you’re OK to go down there?” Bel asked. “Your ankle?”

“I’ve survived worse,” Rachel said, a small smile to show she had, that no one had taken that from her. “I can do this, have to do this, for my family. But … I can’t do it all on my own. I thought I could do everything on my own, my plan, my reappearance. I was wrong, I know that now, I’m sorry. I need your help.”

“Anything,” Bel said.

Carter stood up beside her. “What do you need?”

Rachel’s eyes glittered, staring at her daughters, the moonlight picking out the same silver in all of their skin.

She cleared her throat. “We have to do everything tonight, before anyone knows Jeff is missing. I’ll get down to the mine entrance. You two walk back to the yard. Take my car, Bel. Keys are inside, engine’s on.”

“But it’s trapped, Jeff’s car is—”

“Take this.” Rachel picked up the axe, the thing that almost killed her, would have, if Carter hadn’t appeared from nowhere. She passed it to Bel, their fingers crossing on the handle. “Break the chain on the gates. Once they’re open, you can pull forward, turn around. Wipe your prints when you’re done, the handle and the blade. Throw it back with the rest of the junk. Don’t worry about the red truck. I’ll get to that when I’m done here, get rid of everything.”

Unmaking her own prison cell, so no one would ever know about the fifteen years, five months and twenty-five days she’d spent locked inside. The man who put her there. The baby she’d given birth to. The other man she’d locked up as revenge for starting it all. All of it would be gone by morning.

“Take Bel’s bike with you,” Rachel continued. “Then head to your grandpa’s house. The key is under the—”

“—ceramic toad,” Bel said, just as Carter said “Barry.”

Rachel smiled. “My message in all of those books, you need to get rid of them. That’s what I was trying to do before you found them, Bel. It’s too dangerous to leave, says what happened, exactly where it all happened. You need to get rid of it, erase the pencil marks in all of those books. Always on the first fifty pages, never beyond. Can you do that? There must be an eraser in the house somewhere.”

“We’ll find one,” Carter said.

“Yordan will be asleep upstairs, you have to be quiet. If he catches you—”

“We’ll think of an excuse. My dad told me to tidy these, I’ll be in trouble if I don’t,” Carter offered.

Rachel’s smile pulled wider. “I think that’s it. No other loose ends that could lead police to the truth, to what happened here.”

Bel’s heart dropped into her stomach, more space, now the knot was gone forever.

“Ash,” she hissed. “Fuck.” She kicked out at a stone, sending it over the edge.

Rachel narrowed her eyes. “From the film crew? What about him?”

Bel ran her hands through her hair, pulling her face tight. “He’s been helping me. I was … investigating you. I was sure you were lying about your disappearance and how you came back. Thought if I could prove it, life would go back to normal. Ash helped me. He has footage of …”

Rachel limped toward her. “What does he have footage of?”

“A lot.” Bel shook her head, thinking back. “Mr. Tripp saying he gave you three thousand dollars before you disappeared. The sighting of you in January, we spoke to the store owner, saw a still from the camera. We have you looking for something in Grandpa’s house, before you found the hidden camera. Fuck.” She pulled her hair tighter. “We have tonight. The message in the book, in all of the books, me writing it down. Ash was recording.”

“Fuck.” Rachel covered her face.

“There’s more.” Bel dropped her arms, swinging useless at her sides. “He came with me, to the red truck. He stopped recording before we got there but …”

“Bel?”

“I’m sorry,” Bel whispered. “Ash saw Charlie chained up in the truck, before I sent him away. I’m sorry, Mom.”

Rachel bit down on her lip. She came even closer, face to face, Bel’s eyes reflected in her own. “Don’t you say sorry either. None of this is your fault. I’m not angry at you. You were right; I was lying to you from the start, I can’t be mad that you were smart enough to see through it. Proud, actually. I’m sorry, sorry I lied to you. Maybe I should have just told you the truth, both of you. I just … wasn’t sure you were ready to hear it.”

“I wasn’t.” Bel hadn’t been ready, not until there was no other choice. But she was ready now, and she knew how to fix this. “I can get to the footage, Mom. I know where Ash keeps it. He saw Charlie in the red truck. I don’t think he’d tell anyone, but it won’t matter, will it? Not if there’s no proof. I can destroy the footage tonight, Mom.”

Undo everything she’d worked for, all those moments with Ash, big and small, getting closer until it was far too late to pretend she didn’t care. She would still care, she knew that now, but she had to destroy every trace of it, to protect her sister and her mom.

“You sure?”

“I can do it,” Bel said.

Rachel glanced over at Carter.

“I can do the books at Grandpa’s on my own,” she said. “I can do that.”

Rachel pulled her in and hugged them both, three heads pressed together, under the same stars.

“We can do this.” Rachel wiped her eyes.

“Family first,” Bel said. Not a threat, but a promise.

Rachel stumbled away from them, to where her phone had dropped, a yellow halo around it from the flashlight, trapped against the rock. She picked it up, stared at the screen. “We need to turn our phones off, so we can’t be traced here. Turn yours off, girls. Now. Don’t turn them on again until you get out of here.”

Bel switched hers off.

Rachel was tapping her screen. “Not working. How do I turn this thing off?”

“Let me do it,” Carter said, taking the phone out of Rachel’s hand. “You hold this one, see.” She showed her. “And then you swipe. Like that.”

“Ah.”

Bel smiled, watching them together, this small mother-daughter moment in this dark and wild place that broke a family and saved another. And the moon had seen it all.

Bel handed Rachel the flashlight. “You take it. You need it more. We’ll stick to the trail. We’ll be fine.” She glanced at Carter, a small punch to her arm, because that was what sisters did. “I’ll take care of her.”

Rachel accepted it, the silver beam lighting up both her daughters. “It’s going to be OK, girls. I love you. I’ll see you later, when we all get home.”

Bel picked up the axe, started to turn, but Carter hesitated, a croak in the back of her throat.

“Which home?” she asked.

“Ours, Carter,” their mom said. “Our home.”