Once upon a time, he’d called her Rach.
She was afraid to leave Lucy alone for too long. Only when Lucy slept—at intermittent hours, usually during the day—did Rachel venture into the gasping cold with the sense she was breaking free of prison. Those January days seemed always blanketed by darkness. The weak winter sun barely touched the house before it was already wheeling away to the west. In the soupy, elastic weeks since Lucy had first made her report, Rachel found herself pulled again and again toward the same behaviors: driving to the sheriff’s department in the four o’clock darkness, demanding answers that didn’t come, actions that she knew on some level would never materialize.
Every time, she greeted the pictures of Nina and Lydia Faraday—still hanging on the bullpen whiteboard as if to advertise new commitment to the case—with gathering dread and even resentment. Sheremembered what she’d read about Lydia after her daughter’s disappearance, how she’d made herself a nuisance on the one hand and turned reclusive on the other. How she’d been arrested for erratic driving. How she’d started drinking too much. Once she’d set up camp outside the sheriff’s office, with a tent and everything, until she was booked on charges of public nuisance.
Rachel hated that she could understand, even a little, what Lydia must have been thinking. Sometimes in the middle of the night—sleepless, tormented by guilt and anger and a desperate desire to claw her way back to the night of the party, to undo it—she even imagined that somehow the Faraday House was responsible, wascomplicit. Maybe the curse was real. Maybe by returning there, she and Lucy had somehow become infected.
By now Rachel thought she detected the same pity—or was it contempt?—from a rotation of new recruits who blockaded the front desk, all of them with blandly generic names and interchangeable faces. There was a Smith. There was a White.
“Let me see if they’re available.” This time it was Smith who greeted her. She didn’t wait for him to return with the news that Horne was out on patrol or Erickson was on a phone call. Instead she ducked around the desk and tailed him into the squad room.
Catching sight of her reflection in the big windows, she felt alarmed. Her hair was crazy, a mess of static beneath her beanie. She couldn’t remember if she’d showered. All morning she had scoured social media, screenshotting comments about her daughter.
Rachel thought she might be losing her mind.
Erickson was at his desk. When he spotted Rachel, he stood and ducked into Sheriff Horne’s office without saying a word. Seconds later, Sheriff Horne emerged.
“Ms. Vale.” Sheriff Horne’s tone was unreadable. “What can I do for you?”
“You can help my daughter,” Rachel said. She was aware of the room’s quiet, the muted whisper of papers turning at the few occupieddesks, the shush of feet against the carpet. But there was no point in keeping her voice down. Everybody knew. She imagined everyone in the county knew by now. “You can tell me what you’re doing about Noah Landry and his friends.”
She thought she saw Sheriff Horne grimace. “Why don’t you have a seat in my office?” Horne said, reaching out a hand as if to shepherd Rachel through the door.
Rachel pulled away. “I don’t want to have a seat,” she said. On some level she knew she was being childish. She understood that the sheriff’s department could do little if the county prosecutor had decided there was no case. She knew all this. And yet she also knew that her daughter’s world was upside down and she needed help righting it. “I want Noah arrested.”
Sheriff Horne managed to draw Rachel into an adjoining office that seemingly doubled as overflow for old files and evidence boxes. She closed the door. Rachel felt a little like a child about to be cautioned by the principal.
“Noah claims that what happened that night was consensual,” Sheriff Horne said in a low voice. “His friends are supporting his version of events.”
“His friends watched him sexually assault my daughter,” Rachel said. It was hot inside the police station. She had the oddest sense that she was in a theater, playing a role that had been scripted for her some time earlier. “They should be arrested too.”
“I understand how you feel,” she said, and Rachel almost said,Do you?“We’ve spoken to the Administration; everyone is taking these allegations seriously. But this is a process. Our investigation is ongoing.”
“Ongoing,” Rachel repeated. “Like your investigation into Nina Faraday’s disappearance? That’s beenongoingfor seventeen years.” She gestured to a box in the corner labeledFaraday.
Sheriff Horne didn’t like that. “I can’t speak to what happened before my time,” she said stiffly. “All I can do is try to move forward.”
“But we’re not moving forward, are we?” Rachel said. “Noah Landry won’t be punished. He’s too important to the swim team. Just like Tommy Swift.”
Sheriff Horne looked at her sharply. “Tommy Swift was cleared as a suspect,” was her only response. “There’s no indication that he saw Nina again after fourth period when they shared a classroom. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that hedidn’t.” Rachel thought back to the walks she’d taken with Tommy’s mother and the time they’d sat in Tommy’s living room looking at photographs from his childhood. Tommy would have done anything for Nina, she’d said. If she’d asked him, he would have stopped swimming. He would have gotten a job. They could have gotten married. It occurred to Rachel that it was a funny thing to say. Why, she wondered, would Nina have wanted Tommy to quit swimming?
Rachel stood up. She felt unsteady on her feet. It was too hot in the room; there must be some problem with the radiator.
“If you’re not going to help us, or you can’t, just say so,” she said.
Sheriff Horne leaned back. She looked at Rachel as if she were a stubborn child, as if she were the one being unreasonable.
“Things happen at parties,” she said. “Kids make bad decisions, especially when alcohol is involved.”
There it was: not the truth exactly but the new story. The party line. Lucy had been drunk; Noah’s friends had been drinking too. Something unfortunate happened. Mistakes had been made.
The best thing to do, the easiest thing, was to forget and move on.
A small tremor worked through Rachel’s body. She wondered if Sheriff Horne could see it.
“I see.” She was surprised to hear that her voice was steady, almost calm. Then she added, “I think your phone is ringing.”
Horne stood up, obviously relieved for the excuse to leave the room. Rachel hung back for just a second, slowly shunting on her big winter coat—Alan’s initially, discovered in a plastic bin only after she and Lucy made the move to Indiana.
