The Reappearance of Rachel Price
by Holly Jackson
Contents
Chapter One
Overview
Bel Price is interviewed for a documentary about the unsolved disappearance of her mother, Rachel Price, a case made famous because Bel vanished with Rachel as a toddler and later reappeared alone. The chapter establishes the impossible timeline, Bel’s lack of memory, and her resentment at being defined by Rachel’s mystery.
As Ramsey Lee’s crew reconstructs the known facts, Bel insists she has accepted that no answers will come and credits her father with giving her stability. The interview is disrupted by the early arrival of an unidentified woman, suggesting the documentary may be about to unsettle Bel’s carefully controlled version of normal life.
Summary
Eighteen-year-old Bel Price sits for an interview in a hotel conference room in Gorham, New Hampshire, for Ramsey Lee’s documentary, The Disappearance of Rachel Price. Bel is uncomfortable with the camera, the lights, and even the word “mother,” because Rachel Price’s disappearance has defined Bel’s entire life. Ramsey asks what Bel thinks happened to Rachel, and Bel first says she does not know.
The interview is interrupted when Ash, Ramsey’s young camera assistant and brother-in-law, trips over a cable and knocks out a light. Ramsey resets the shot with help from his small crew: Ash, sound person Saba, and camera operator James. After the interruption, Bel gives a more usable answer, saying she thinks Rachel may have tried to leave and then died, either killed by an opportunistic attacker or lost in the White Mountains.
Ramsey presses Bel on the contradictions in the runaway theory: Rachel took no money, wallet, ID, phone, clothes, or coat. He then turns to the most unsettling fact of the case: Bel was with Rachel when Rachel disappeared, but Bel was only twenty-two months old and remembers nothing. Ramsey emphasizes that if someone abducted Rachel from the abandoned car, toddler Bel may have seen the person responsible, making Bel a lost witness to the central mystery.
Ramsey asks Bel to recount the known timeline. Rachel took Bel to the White Mountains Mall, where security footage showed Rachel carrying Bel to the Moose Mouse Coffeehouse. After they left the coffeehouse at 2:49 p.m., they entered a blind spot between cameras and vanished from the mall footage, even though police later determined that everyone else who entered also left, except Rachel and Bel.
Bel explains that she later reappeared alone in Rachel’s car near Moose Brook State Park. The car was found on the shoulder in the snow with headlights on and the engine running by Julian Tripp, who is now Bel’s homeroom teacher. When Ramsey asks what it has been like to grow up in the shadow of the mystery, Bel says she has accepted that there will never be answers and stresses that her father, Charlie, gave her as normal a childhood as possible.
Before Bel can finish, Ash interrupts again, saying someone has arrived early and is watching through the door. Ramsey reacts with alarm, and Bel notices his changed expression. Bel demands to know who the woman is, ending the chapter on an unexpected arrival.
Who Appears
- Bel PriceRachel Price’s daughter; uncomfortable documentary subject with no memory of her mother’s disappearance.
- Ramsey LeeDocumentary filmmaker interviewing Bel and pressing her on the contradictions in Rachel’s case.
- Rachel PriceBel’s missing mother; vanished sixteen years earlier after a mall visit with toddler Bel.
- AshRamsey’s brother-in-law and camera assistant; causes interruptions and notices an early arrival.
- Charlie PriceBel’s father, praised by Bel for giving her a stable childhood after Rachel vanished.
- SabaDocumentary sound person working on Bel’s interview.
- JamesCamera operator filming the documentary interview and crew interruptions.
- Julian TrippMan who found toddler Bel in Rachel’s abandoned car; now Bel’s homeroom teacher.