Grandpa’s street. The road rough against her wheels, a grating that sounded like whispers, urging her on.
No streetlights, only the silver of the moon, looming over the dark mountains. But it was enough. Bel could see a figure outside the house. She recognized the curve of Ash’s shoulders, his awkward wave.
He’d driven here, in Ramsey’s rental car, that was how he beat her, riding as fast as the wind.
Bel gripped the brakes. She skidded and jumped off, ditching the bike on the grass outside.
“Hi,” Ash said, another awkward wave, like the first hadn’t counted.
Bel moved closer until he was more than an outline, the camera cradled in the crook of his arm.
“I’m sorry,” she said, chest tight, wrapped around her heart. She hadn’t lost it forever, then. “I didn’t mean what I said. I was just trying … I was wrong.”
Ash’s eyes hooked onto hers. He broke into a smile. “Wow. Bel Price apologizing. Should have had the camera on for that one. No one will ever believe me.”
Bel exhaled, a laugh in there somewhere. She closed the gap between them, tiny punch to his arm.
“Thought so.” Ash’s breath was warm on her face, leaving the heat there. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said that closer to home thing. I didn’t mean your dad, but—”
“No.” Bel cut him off. “You were right. The answer is closer to home. It’s not Phillip Alves. My mom just admitted that herself. Said she couldn’t tell me the truth, that she wouldn’t do that to me. But I know how to find it. And I think the answer …” She trailed off, trying to find the words, trying to find the strength to say them out loud.
“Bel?” Ash said, voice soft, helping her cross the line.
“I think the answer leads back to my dad, somehow.” She paused. “I’m not sure he is who I thought he was. Guess it took me a lot longer than everyone else to see it.”
Ash chewed his lip, glanced over at the house. “Why are we here, then?”
“This is where the answer is. What Rachel was looking for. Something that would lead us to the truth. That’s why she wanted to get to it. She doesn’t want anyone finding the truth.”
“But we don’t know what she—”
“I do know what she was looking for,” Bel spoke across him, looking at the dark house. One of the three houses she called home, part of her history, part of the Price family. But the houses had kept secrets from her too. “Rachel didn’t just happen to spot our camera as she walked past. It was too well hidden for that. She found it because we’d hidden it exactly where she was heading. She was going for the bookshelves, Ash.”
Ash’s eyes narrowed, like that made perfect sense, and none at all.
“It’s a book.” Bel tried to explain, all the pieces she’d now put together, the feeling in her gut holding them there. “The Memory Thief. My grandpa used to read it to me. Always told me it was a very special book. That’s what he said: very special. I caught Rachel in my room, a few days after she returned, looking through my copy of the book. Said it was one of her favorites, but it was published after she went missing. She asked me something too, I didn’t realize what it meant at the time. She asked if someone had given me that copy. She meant Grandpa, I’m sure of it. And today, for his birthday, Rachel gave him a new copy, like it was a message for him, even if he can’t remember. That’s why she wanted Grandpa and Yordan out of the house, why she went straight for the bookshelves. She wanted that book, that specific copy of this book.”
Ash was nodding, with her now, holding those pieces together too. “But why?”
“Let’s find out.”
Bel hurried past the steps, lifted the ceramic toad up by his cold head.
“You should turn the camera on. I think we’re about to solve the mystery.”
Bel had waited long enough. Only her whole life.
“Are Yordan and your grandpa out?” Ash hovered behind, a beep as he pressed record.
“They’re at my house.” Bel scrabbled for the key. “With Rachel.”
Up the steps, a finality to the sound, echoing in her chest. She unlocked the door and pushed it open.
The wall of heat tried to push her back, drying out her eyes and her ragged throat. Bel fought through, carving a path, the heat folding her in, pulling Ash in after her.
He closed the front door and Bel switched on a light, glancing back, eyeing the camera. No longer recording to catch Rachel. Recording to hold on to the truth, to have the answer be a physical thing that no one could take away from her, like memory had the day Rachel disappeared. An answer Bel must have seen but never held on to. A way back to that tiny girl who was too young to understand, too young to speak.
Bel walked into the living room, the air staler in here, drier. A room that had seen a lot of living, decades and generations of Prices. Ash was right behind her, flicking on the light.
“You ready?” he asked, both staring across the room, at the wooden bookshelf.
Bel finally was.
Her feet followed her eyes. Stopping, standing before the chaotic shelves, books piled sideways and up. So many books, no sense to their order.
Bel’s gaze ran backward and forward, up and down, looking for that green spine she knew so well.
Her heart kicked up, a sharp breath in.
There it was. The Memory Thief by Audrey Hart. Second shelf down, level with her eyes. Just a few inches from where they’d hidden the camera.
Bel reached for the book.
One finger hooked onto the cover, a shiver passing from the book’s spine up her own, creeping and cold. She pulled and the book tilted, breaking ranks. She dragged it out, books sliding and falling to fill the space it left behind.
Bel stared down at it, in her hands, opening the front cover.
She looked at the title page. Then chapter one, the first line of the first page about a man in a made-up world, cursed to never have his own memories, stealing other people’s by cutting open their heads.
“Dark shit.” Ash read over her shoulder.
Bel flicked through the first chapter, then the next, eyes darting across the double-page spread, so dried out she could almost hear them scratching as they stirred in her head.
She reached page one hundred and started skimming, then flicking, pages fanning a breeze up at her. A snatched look at every single one, right to the acknowledgments.
“Nothing,” she said, confusion giving way to despair, emptying her out. “I thought …”
“What?”
“I thought there’d be a message in here, or something … I don’t know.” It was too hot in here; her despair caught fire, rolling into rage. She slammed the book shut, slapping both halves together. “This was supposed to be it.” Her mouth hung open, breathing out her last hope.
Ash reached with his free hand, tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Let’s look again,” he said gently. “Slowly. You might have missed something.”
Bel inhaled, pulling her last hope back.
She opened the book again, to chapter one, paused there for a long moment. Ash shifted closer, looking with his eyes and then through the camera. Bel didn’t just look, she read, the voice in her head speaking the first sentence, dipping and pausing the way Grandpa once had.
“Wait,” Ash said, spotting something in the viewfinder as he zoomed in. But Bel couldn’t wait, because she’d noticed it too, reading on to the second sentence, something tripping up her eyes.
He had no past, only now and what was to come.
“That h.” She stroked the tip of her finger to it. “It’s thicker than the other letters. Like someone wrote over it.” A slightly gray shine as Bel moved it under the light, like it was overlined with pencil, thickening its edges, making them stand out, but only very slightly, not drawing attention to itself.
“Very faint,” Ash said. “Very subtle. But yeah, looks like someone went over that. Unless it’s a printing error.”
“No, see.” Bel pointed at the final line of the page.
I don’t remember you.
“The e in remember,” she said, voice tripping over itself as her mind raced ahead, flicking to the next page. She squinted. There were more highlighted letters here too, now she knew to look for them, hiding inside the words, so faint you might not have seen them, not if you didn’t know this was a special book.
“There is a message here!”
Bel moved, clutching the book to her chest, rushing over to the coffee table. She placed the book down, open to that next double page.
“I need a pen and paper.” She clicked her fingers, glancing around the room. Something white caught her eye. The sheet of paper on the TV stand, the one with the Wi-Fi password in Dad’s oversized handwriting. That would do. Bel grabbed it, turned it over to the clean side.
“Pen, pen, pen,” she said, darting around. “Yordan, where would you keep a motherfucking pen?!”
She found one in the kitchen, a pot beside the microwave. Sprinted back, crashing to her knees in front of the open book, Ash hovering over her with the camera, one hand on her shoulder to calm her, to let her know he was here. He was leaving, Ash was always leaving, but he was here now, and that meant something too.
h e
Bel wrote those two letters at the top of the sheet, then turned her eyes back to the book.
This might just be hell.
She added that l.
He gulped.
And that p.
h e l p
help
Bel looked up at Ash, eyes wide and circling, heart beating so hard she thought he might hear, might catch it too.
“Keep going,” he said, finding his voice again.
Bel did. Finding m y n a on the other page.
She flicked to the next double page, finger up and down, hunting for the highlighted letters.
m e i s r a c
Turned to the next, the pen trying to keep up with her eyes.
h e l p r i c e
“Help. My name is Rachel Price,” Ash read aloud, sorting the jumbled letters into words. Bel’s skin flashed cold against all sense, throat constricting, squeezing her out-of-place heart.
A message from Rachel.
And it wasn’t finished yet.
Bel turned to chapter two.
He couldn’t see over the hill.
i a m b
Turning the pages, mind emptying out, focusing only on the letters. A message from the past, from her mom, one she didn’t want Bel to find. Next page and the next, rows of letters building up, nonsensical, shifting under her gaze like they were slipping down the paper. More highlighted letters and more, her eyes attuned to them now.
All the way to page forty-two. There was nothing after that, Bel checked; the book was clean, no more pencil marks. She wrote down that final e hidden inside wept and then breathed again, blinking until her mind returned to her. Ash’s eyes were narrowed, scanning the lines of scattered letters, but Bel had to be the one to read it first.
She picked the pen up again, placing the tip against the page, below the last row, and she began sorting through the letters, splitting and grouping them until they made words, rewriting the full message below.
Help. My name is Rachel Price.
I am being kept by Patrick Price
in a red truck on Price logging yard.
Call police.
