Page 44 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

One

Rachel

O n Thanksgiving, Lucy spoke with Alan for the first time in a year and a half. Well, maybe spoke was too strong a word. She was passing Rachel with a blow-dryer, headed for the bathroom, while Rachel was on the phone.

“Is that Alan?” Lucy asked. “Tell him I said happy Thanksgiving.”

“Did you hear that?” Rachel asked him after Lucy had slipped into the bathroom.

For a second Alan seemed too overcome to speak. “Yeah,” he said, half choking the word. “Yeah, I heard.”

“It’s a start,” Rachel said, and he drew a quick breath, as if the idea had knocked the wind out of him.

It was a good day.

At lunchtime they piled in the car and made the drive to Rachel’s aunt and uncle’s house in Willard County.

Rachel’s cousin Kelly—the so-called “trad wife,” according to Lucy—had made the drive from Columbus with her husband and three children.

Rachel’s grandfather, who had moved into an assisted living facility in Kentucky after his last stroke, was positioned in the living room like some kind of beneficent houseplant, smiling at everyone, occasionally slurring a remark that only his nurse could interpret.

Kelly’s children darted through the familiar rooms waving imaginary weapons at one another until Lucy wrangled them all to the floor to try a puzzle together.

“If you ever need a babysitter ...,” Rachel said to her cousin, indicating Lucy and the children soberly sorting through the pieces.

“Yes, please,” Kelly said. She dropped a hand on her belly; she was pregnant with her fourth. “Does she give discounts for volume?”

After Thanksgiving dinner—served buffet-style for the chaotic assortment of friends and neighbors who’d also been invited—Rachel lay with Kelly on Kelly’s old bed like they were teenagers again, sneaking away from the crowd to listen to music or gossip about boys.

The room still had trace evidence of its former life: a gigantic stuffed turtle; Kelly’s old vanity, once cluttered with makeup and perfume and photographs of her friends; a corkboard where she’d pinned all her concert tickets.

Rachel was happy and sleepy and full. Half a glass of wine, undrunk, sat warming on the nightstand.

One summer she and her cousin had kept a bottle of SoCo in the bottom drawer of that nightstand, concealed behind a jumble of bras and tampons under the theory that Kelly’s dad would never fish through it.

Now they were old. At least, Rachel felt old.

She inched down until her ear was level with her cousin’s warm belly, listening for the sound of the life stirring there, thinking of seeds sleeping underground for winter.

“So how has it been?” Kelly asked. Rachel realized, with a start, that she had been on the verge of falling asleep. “Does Indiana feel like home yet?”

“I think so,” Rachel said. “I love the house.”

Kelly moved her hand up and down the swell of her stomach. “Lucy seems like she’s doing well,” she said. “You must be so relieved.”

Rachel tutted her. “Don’t jinx it,” she said, only half joking.

Kelly turned on her side with a grunt. “What about your special project?” she asked, keeping her eyes fixed on Rachel. Rachel had always loved Kelly’s face: long and aquiline, almost noble, like some old Flemish portrait from the 1600s.

“Little Girl Lost?” Rachel said. She didn’t remember when the nickname for Nina Faraday had dawned on them.

More than a decade ago probably—back when Nina Faraday, the girl they’d briefly encountered at a party the autumn before she vanished, was only an incidental topic of interest, a shared point of connection.

It was only in the past few years that the moniker “Little Girl Lost” began to haunt Rachel in the way that writing sometimes did, peeking around corners of her attention, shadowing her thoughts as she drifted off to sleep.

It would make, she thought, a good title for a book.

“Slowly,” she admitted. “There’s so much bullshit to sort through.

And I’m getting stonewalled by the sheriff’s department.

” She shrugged. “I’m supposed to wait for the changing of the guard. ”

“But you’re still going through with it?” Kelly asked. “You still think there’s a story there?”

“There’s definitely a story. There are plenty. That’s part of the problem.” Then: “Why?”

“Nothing. I just thought you might change your mind after you and Lucy got settled, that’s all.”

It wasn’t lost on Rachel, or on her therapist, that her growing interest in Nina’s case had coincided with the worst year of Lucy’s life—the worst year for both of them—when it seemed that Lucy might simply slip away from her, lost to her agonies and her obsessive rituals, lost to the punishment of her peers.

But Lucy was better now. And Rachel still wanted to know what had happened to Nina Faraday.

Rachel poked her cousin in the navel. “You think it’s a bad idea.”

“I didn’t say that,” Kelly said. But she was making a face. “You’ve had a hard few years,” she said after a beat. “Maybe you can just relax for a bit. Let go. Nina’s been missing sixteen years. Another few years won’t hurt.”

“Tell that to my agent,” Rachel said, and they laughed.

Rachel propped herself up on one elbow. She realized she wanted Kelly to understand.

To bless her, in a way. “Look, I just want to know for sure whether Tommy Swift was involved. I want to know if Jay Steeler helped cover up for him. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the school’s trying to turn the guy into Gandhi.

They’re dedicating a whole building to him.

It’s not right. Not if he had information about Nina. I just want the truth.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason?” Kelly gave her a look.

She knew about Rachel’s brief, pathetic affair—if you could call it that—with the much older and very married Jay Steeler.

But even she didn’t know how Rachel had unraveled after the night they’d spent together, how often she’d called him, how she’d once driven all the way down from Chicago just to sit outside his house, trying to work up the courage to confront him.

“This isn’t about revenge, if that’s what you mean,” Rachel said.

“Good. Because you know what my mom would say.” Kelly sat up with a grunt, leading with her stomach. “It’s okay to glance in the rearview mirror. But start staring, and you’ll veer off the road.”

Rachel sat up too, stretching. Unbelievably, it was only four thirty in the afternoon. “I’ll remember that on the way home,” she said.

They had one more stop to make.

The Sandhus had invited Lucy and Rachel to join them for dessert when they returned from Willard County.

Rachel had agreed, partially out of guilt; in the paranoid days after she’d received a second anonymous letter in the mailbox, she had briefly suspected Akash.

He so clearly had a desperate crush on Lucy.

Heartache could do funny things to a person. Especially a teenaged boy.

Rachel and Lucy parked the car, and Lucy ran inside to get the cookies she’d insisted on baking.

She emerged moments later, her cheeks whiplashed from the wind, her hair standing up with static as if alarmed by the change in temperature.

They tromped across the service road and cut across the Sandhus’ backyard.

The grass cracked with ice. It was the kind of cold that shocked every breath into the pantomime of a ghost.

Inside, Aman and Sabrina Sandhu were in the kitchen, working diligently through a wreckage of dirty dishes.

“Thank goodness,” Sabrina said. “You’re right on time. I don’t think I could hold off the kids much longer. Leila has been asking for pumpkin pie since before we carved the turkey.”

“The kids” were Akash and his two older sisters, both home from college with several friends in tow.

Lucy kicked off her shoes and bounded into the living room to join them.

Rachel heard a vocal flurry of greeting—introductions, laughter—and felt an immense sense of gratitude, true thankfulness, flame to life inside her.

Kelly was right. This was where life happened: here in the present, with friendly neighbors and warm kitchens and stacks of dirty dishes.

Rachel should be content to stay here.

She peeked her head into the living room and saw Lucy comfortably settled next to Akash on the couch, one arm slung casually behind his head, leaning close to look at something on his laptop screen. Akash, meanwhile, sat rigid, as if afraid he might shatter their proximity by breathing.

Poor Akash. He was a good kid.

As she set out the small plates, Rachel latched on to snippets of conversation from the living room. The kids were discussing something called “Market Catch.” She kept hearing a single name, repeated like a bass line under some growing disagreement.

It was that swimmer, the one everyone was excited about. The one she’d met on Halloween. A tall, goofy-looking kid with sloped shoulders and hands too big for his body. Noah Landry.

They were arguing about Noah Landry.

Then Akash stormed into the dining room, speaking over his shoulder.

“He’s not that nice,” he said. “It’s a front. He’s putting on a good front.”

He blew past Rachel without a word and disappeared into the kitchen. He had a brief exchange with his mother, then returned, still looking sullen, carrying a coffeepot and a handful of dessert spoons.

“You okay?” Rachel asked. She could tell Akash was still seething.

He didn’t answer right away. He went around the table depositing a spoon at every plate, slightly harder than was necessary.

Then he said, “Noah Landry isn’t the guy everyone thinks he is. He’s a narcissist. He just hides it.”

“Okay,” Rachel said. She had no idea why Akash was telling her.

Akash straightened. “Tell Lucy,” he said. “Tell her that Noah Landry always wins.”

So. Rachel had been right about Lucy. She was anxious about a boy—about the boy, the great Noah Landry who everyone was talking about—and Akash, poor kid, was obviously heartsick about it.

Noah Landry always wins. It was a funny thing to say. Inconsequential, in a way. Still, as Akash turned out of the room again, Rachel wondered why it felt like a warning.