Page 13 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
For as long as we’d been alive, no one in their right mind would dream of stepping foot in the Faraday House. For as long as we’d been alive, the gates to the Faraday House had been padlocked shut, its rooms empty, lifeless, a dark and hollow space in our imaginations. We’d packed up the mystery, and all its lingering, troublesome questions with it. We’d left it to molder in the dusty dark of our childhood terrors.
Nina, Nina, where did you go? Lydia, Lydia, what do you know?
Then the Vales moved to town and turned on the lights.
Ten
Rachel
The 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 didhedie?”
“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, atMichigan 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 wantLucy 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 asrigid. 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.
