Chương 9
Elena looked at Rachel for a long time.
“My daughter died trying to help you?”
Rachel shook her head.
“I think we were trying to help each other.”
Elena nodded.
Then she opened her purse.
She removed a photograph.
Marisol stood beside a birthday cake, rolling her eyes at whoever held the camera.
“She hated chocolate cake,” Elena said.
Rachel looked at the picture.
“Why was it chocolate?”
“My son bought it.”
Despite herself, Rachel smiled.
Elena did too.
Then both women cried.
Not dramatically.
There was no embrace.
No instant bond.
Elena eventually asked, “Do you remember her?”
“A little.”
“Will you tell me?”
Rachel did.
She told her about Marisol crying at the marina.
About her fear.
About the boat.
About the moment Marisol had refused to hand Victoria the documents.
“She was brave,” Rachel said.
Elena looked at the photograph.
“She could also be a pain in the ass.”
Rachel laughed through tears.
“I believe that.”
“Don’t turn her into a saint because she died.”
“I won’t.”
That promise mattered.
Rachel returned to work eventually.
Not yacht service.
She could not stand the sound of champagne glasses for a while.
She took a management job at a small hotel.
The pay was worse than Alexander thought acceptable.
Rachel told him this was one of several topics on which his opinion had not been requested.
He learned.
Slowly.
Ethan became the bridge between their lives.
At first Rachel saw him twice a week.
Then three times.
He slept at Denise’s once because he wanted to know where Rachel lived.
Kevin slept on his chest.
Ethan declared him “dangerously fat.”
Denise took offense on Kevin’s behalf.
Rachel attended a school play.
She sat three rows behind Alexander.
Ethan forgot one of his lines, stared into the audience, found Rachel, and recovered.
She cried in the parking lot afterward where he could not see.
Alexander found her.
He did not touch her.
He simply stood beside her.
“I missed everything,” she said.
“No.”
“Nine years.”
“You missed a lot.”
She looked at him.
“Thank you for not saying I can make it up.”
“You can’t.”
The answer hurt.
It also helped.
“You can be here now,” he said.
Rachel nodded.
“That I can do.”
Her relationship with Alexander moved more slowly.
There was no magical reunion.
He sold the yacht.
Rachel learned this from Ethan.
“Why?”
Alexander shrugged when she asked.
“I hated it.”
“You loved that yacht.”
“I loved owning it. Apparently those are different.”
She smiled.
They went to counseling separately before ever considering going together.
Rachel recovered more memories.
Some were beautiful.
Some made her angry.
She remembered Alexander missing Ethan’s first birthday party because of a business emergency.
She remembered throwing his suitcase into the swimming pool.
“You did what?” Denise asked.
“It was expensive luggage.”
“Good.”
She remembered apologizing afterward.
“Less good.”
She remembered Victoria as a teenager painting Rachel’s nails.
She remembered their mother making pancakes.
She remembered resenting Victoria for being prettier.
She remembered Victoria resenting Claire for being favored by their father.
Nothing came back clean.
That was perhaps the hardest truth.
Memory did not restore the dead.
It complicated them.
One evening, almost a year after the yacht gala, Rachel stood in Alexander’s kitchen making grilled cheese because Ethan had decided expensive food was suspicious.
Alexander entered carrying mail.
“You got something.”
He handed Rachel an envelope.
The name on it read:
CLAIRE BENNETT MERCER / RACHEL HALE.
Rachel stared at it.
“I hate that.”
“We can fix it.”
“I know.”
“What do you want it to say?”
She looked toward the table where Ethan was doing homework.
Mr. Bite sat beside his math book.
Rachel had legally changed her name three months earlier.
Not back to Claire.
Not entirely.
Rachel Claire Hale.
She had kept Rachel because those nine years belonged to her.
She had kept Claire because the first thirty belonged to her too.
She had not taken Mercer.
Not yet.
Maybe never.
Alexander had not asked.
That was one of the reasons she had begun trusting him again.
“Rachel Hale,” she said.
Alexander nodded.
“I’ll tell them.”
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“I’ll tell them.”
He smiled.
“Right.”
Ethan looked up from his homework.
“Are you guys fighting?”
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“No,” Alexander said.
Ethan sighed.
“This is why I need headphones.”
Rachel laughed.
She turned the grilled cheese.
One sandwich burned.
She served it to Alexander.
He looked at the blackened side.
“This feels targeted.”
“It is.”
“Good to know.”
Later, after Ethan went upstairs, Rachel stepped onto the back porch.
Alexander followed.
They stood without speaking.
There were no ocean waves.
No orchestra.
No wealthy guests watching.
Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barked.
A car door slammed.
Rachel held the silver locket in her palm.
Alexander noticed.
“You still wear it every day.”
“Most days.”
“Do you know what you wrote on the picture?”
Rachel smiled.
“Our ridiculous little family.”
“You wrote it after Ethan threw up on me at the beach.”
“That improves it.”
“He had eaten sand.”
“Why?”
“He was one.”
“Fair.”
Alexander leaned against the railing.
Rachel opened the locket.
The photograph was still damaged.
She had been offered restoration services.
She had refused those too.
Not from fear this time.
She liked that the picture carried what had happened to it.
Alexander looked at her.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You usually do.”
“Do you think you’ll ever come home?”
Rachel looked through the kitchen window.
Ethan had come downstairs again.
He was standing at the refrigerator drinking orange juice directly from the carton.
Rachel opened the door.
“Glass.”
Ethan froze.
Alexander laughed.
Ethan poured the juice into a glass with exaggerated innocence.
Rachel closed the door again.
Then she looked at Alexander.
“That depends what you mean by home.”
He nodded.
He did not push.
Rachel appreciated that too.
She slipped the locket beneath her shirt.
Nine years earlier, a woman named Claire had left a house believing she might never return to it.
A frightened sister had made sure everyone believed she never would.
A woman without a name had later awakened near a Georgia marsh and spent years constructing a life from whatever pieces remained.
None of those lives could be undone.
Rachel no longer wanted them undone.
“I’m not moving back into this house,” she said.
Alexander nodded.
“I figured.”
“The closet alone is offensive.”
“You designed it.”
“Claire designed it.”
He looked at her.
Rachel smiled slightly.
“And Claire apparently had terrible taste in closets.”
Alexander laughed.
She stepped closer.
Not all the way.
Enough.
“I also don’t want to spend the next nine years pretending I don’t love you because I’m afraid that loving you means becoming her again.”
His smile disappeared.
Rachel could see him trying to decide what response would not frighten her.
For once, she rescued him.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“That seems dangerous.”
“It is.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he held out his hand.
Not reaching for her.
Offering.
Rachel looked down at it.
She remembered that hand younger, holding a baby.
She remembered it slamming a door.
She remembered it signing hospital forms.
She remembered it catching Victoria’s wrist before she struck her.
She remembered none of those things perfectly.
She placed her hand in his.
His fingers closed gently.
From inside the kitchen, Ethan shouted, “Are you kissing?”
Rachel closed her eyes.
Alexander called back, “No.”
“Gross!”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Alexander said.
Rachel laughed.
Ethan appeared at the door.
“Can Rachel stay tonight?”
Alexander looked at her.
Rachel looked at Ethan.
There had been a time when the question would have terrified her because every invitation seemed to demand a permanent answer.
Now it was only Tuesday night.
She had work in the morning.
Her toothbrush was already upstairs from the last time.
Denise had texted to say Kevin had stolen a chicken breast.
Ordinary life waited in several places at once.
Rachel squeezed Alexander’s hand once and let go.
“I can stay tonight.”
Ethan smiled.
“Cool.”
He disappeared inside as if the answer had not rearranged anything important.
Maybe it had not.
Maybe that was why Rachel followed him.
At the kitchen table, Ethan pushed his math homework toward her.
“I need help.”
Rachel looked at the fractions.
“I’m terrible at fractions.”
“You’re my mom.”
“That does not confer mathematical powers.”
“You used to help me.”
“You were two.”
“Exactly.”
Alexander opened the refrigerator.
Rachel pointed at him.
“Don’t you dare leave.”
“I’m getting water.”
“You’re better at math.”
“I run a company. That doesn’t mean—”
“Sit.”
He sat.
Ethan grinned.
For the next twenty minutes, the three of them argued about fractions.
Nobody cried.
Nobody spoke about graves.
Nobody asked Rachel which name belonged to her.
When Ethan finally solved the last problem, he pushed back from the table and raised both arms as if he had won something enormous.
Rachel looked at him and felt a memory approach.
She waited.
Nothing came.
For once, she was relieved.
She did not need the past to tell her what the moment meant.
Ethan gathered his books and started upstairs.
Halfway there, he turned.
“Night, Mom.”
Rachel’s breath caught.
He seemed not to notice.
Or perhaps he did and was kind enough to keep walking.
Alexander looked at her.
Rachel shook her head before he could speak.
He obeyed.
A minute later, she stood alone at the kitchen sink rinsing three glasses.
The silver locket rested beneath her shirt.
She could feel its small weight against her skin.
For years it had been the only evidence that another life existed.
Then it became proof of who she had been.
Now it was simply something she owned.
Rachel dried her hands.
She turned off the kitchen light.
Upstairs, Ethan was calling for someone to find Mr. Bite.
Alexander shouted that the dinosaur was probably under the couch.
Rachel knew he was wrong.
May you like
She had seen Mr. Bite beside Ethan’s backpack.
She picked up the battered green dinosaur, tucked it beneath her arm, and climbed the stairs.
