Page 11 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Ten

Rachel

T he town of Granger had grown in the decade and a half since Rachel had last visited with her cousin, then a student at the modest campus of the College of Southern-Indiana, located in Housataunick to the east. Since that time, the college had swelled to accommodate ten thousand students, burnished by a solid athletics department and a brand-new gym.

Housataunick, once a slurry of feed shops and used car lots, had transformed in the interim; Rachel and Lucy had passed a Panera Bread, a Chipotle, and two competing Subway shops driving in.

But Granger North still had the cozy feel that once charmed her.

A local Dairy Queen was advertising five-dollar Blizzards as a thank-you to the local fire department.

Most of the big chain stores were well concealed, located on the thick veins of county roads that ran to Granger South and the rural hamlet of Lincoln beyond it.

Still, Rachel picked out a Jamba Juice, a Jimmy John’s—even a McDonald’s housed tastefully inside a brick building that might once have been a bank.

But there were plenty of local businesses too.

Lucy recited names aloud as they walked: Second Time Around, a thrift store; the Hook-Up, an upscale bait and tackle shop; the Everything Store, which seemed to sell souvenirs, most of them related to swimming.

They crossed into Byron Park, where Rachel pointed out a memorial fountain dedicated to Tommy Swift.

“Tommy Swift.” Lucy slid her sunglasses down her nose, an affectation she had picked up somewhere. Rachel wasn’t sure where. “Isn’t he the one who killed Nina Faraday?”

“Maybe,” Rachel said. “Maybe not.”

“That’s what the internet thinks,” Lucy said pointedly. She stared hard at the fountain again, as if she disapproved of it. “How did he die?”

“Car crash. He was in pretty bad shape after Nina disappeared. Drugs. Alcohol.”

“Guilt,” Lucy said knowingly.

“Or grief,” Rachel said.

Lucy turned to her. Out of the blue, her face changed. “You know something,” she said. “You know something you’re not saying. You have a theory.”

Lucy could be like that: vague and noncommittal one second, then suddenly sharp, penetrating. Sometimes she was exhausting.

“Yeah, well. A theory and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee,” Rachel said.

It was an expression she’d picked up from her first real boss, Becky Adams, at Michigan Metro News .

What she knew about the Faraday case didn’t even amount to a theory anyway.

Not yet. All she had was a storm cloud of ideas gathering slowly in her head, as if condensed by the pressure of proximity and the memories it returned.

“Not even, depending on the coffee,” Lucy said, and tapped her sunglasses back into place.

For lunch they chose the diner. The back wall was covered with framed photographs.

From a distance, they looked nearly identical.

Stepping closer, Rachel identified every generation of the boys’ swim team, dating back to the late eighties.

Jay Steeler was in roughly half of them, aging in freeze-frame above a line of red vinyl booths.

Rachel had the sudden, frantic urge to tell Lucy not to look.

But she had moved on to scrutinize a display of signed swim caps pinned behind glass, floating like strange marine creatures toward the ceiling.

No secrets. That promise kept niggling around in the back of her mind like festering larvae newly exposed to the sun. She didn’t want Lucy to feel betrayed. She didn’t want her to question Rachel’s intentions. Their connection, their relationship, was still too fragile.

But soon, she thought. Soon. Once Lucy had settled in. Once she had found her way. Once she had finished high school.

A waitress with the alarmed look of an exclamation point showed them to a booth. Lucy slumped down in her seat, disappearing behind the oversize menu. “Everyone is staring,” she said.

Rachel felt it too—the ripple of attention sliding their way as soon as they walked in the door. Two girls who looked to be about Lucy’s age were huddled near the windows, phones out. Rachel could still hear the sibilant hiss of their whispering.

“It’s a small town,” Rachel said. “Especially with the college students gone.”

“Small towns,” Lucy corrected her. “Woodward takes students from across the county.”

“So you did read the website,” Rachel said teasingly. Lucy shrugged.

“They’re not going to like me,” she said.

Somewhere between the park and diner, her mood had soured.

It was Rachel’s fault. She’d made the mistake of mentioning that Alan had called—looking, as ever, to speak to Lucy.

Lucy had refused his calls, cards, and emails ever since he’d moved in with his new girlfriend.

Whenever Rachel encouraged her to talk to him, she only said, He made his choice.

Lucy’s therapist had described Lucy as rigid .

Once she made a decision about something, it was almost impossible to change her mind.

“The whole school is obsessed with sports,” Lucy said. “Sports, swimming, and some stupid thing called Shark Week. All the girls look like pageant princesses.”

“My cousin was a pageant princess,” Rachel said. “She was Miss Southern Indiana two years in a row.”

“And now she’s a trad wife,” Lucy said.

“Kelly is not a trad wife,” Rachel said. “She runs her own business.”

“Selling candles ,” Lucy said. She poked ferociously at the ice cubes in her water, dunking them toward the bottom of the glass. “I bet all the cheerleaders at Woodward are blond.”

“What’s wrong with blond cheerleaders?”

“A time warp,” Lucy said. “That’s what’s wrong with it. It’s a time warp, and a cliché.”

“Well, maybe you should try out for the team. That way they’d have a little diversity.”

Lucy rolled her eyes.

The waitress returned for their order: a tuna melt for Lucy, a salad and black coffee for Rachel. It was good to see Lucy eating again. She’d gotten so skinny last year, her breasts had all but vanished, snuffed back into her rib cage.

“What about Akash? Akash isn’t an athlete.

And he seems to like you.” Rachel had a good feeling about the Sandhus.

A quiet family, thoughtful. Respectful. They hadn’t asked a single question about what had brought Rachel and Lucy to the area, and to that house specifically.

And yet, Rachel had felt the topic resting carefully beneath their conversation, like a courteous absence.

Rachel was less enthused about their neighbors on Lily Lane. She’d caught one of them, a balding man with a liver-spotted complexion, snooping around their gates. She could have sworn he’d been into their mailbox too. And the postman had warned them about Mrs. Gorsuch at number 82.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Lucy said, brightening a little. “I could be friends with Akash.”

“Maybe you can join the coding club,” Rachel said. “You like computers.”

“I like video games,” Lucy corrected her. “There’s a difference.”

“Well, maybe you could start a video game club.”

“Or an anticlub club,” Lucy said. “We don’t know what we like, and we never have any meetings.”

“Just be yourself,” Rachel said, hating the words even as she said them. She sounded like one of those posters she’d seen hanging around the school’s Student Leadership Department when they had submitted Lucy’s paperwork. “You’ll be fine.”

“Oh, Mom.” Lucy sighed. “It’s high school. That’s, like, the one thing I’m not supposed to be.”