The Reappearance of Rachel Price

With amazement, Bel realizes just how close Rachel had been for the last 16 years. Grandpa had always warned Bel and Carter to stay away from the old trucks whenever they played at the abandoned logging yard, and Bel now realizes that his warnings were a way to prevent them from finding the imprisoned Rachel. Bel checks other books on the shelf and finds that they are also inscribed with the same message, although one states that “we” are being imprisoned (not “I”), and Bel and Ash wonder who else was there. Bel tells Ash that she has to go to the red truck. She reflects that her father must have been involved in Rachel’s disappearance. Ash drives Bel to the logging yard and films her as they navigate the dark landscape, ducking under a stretch of broken fencing. As they approach the red truck, they hear someone calling from inside. Bel enters the truck and finds Charlie.

Charlie, who is chained up in the truck’s container, is relieved to see Bel but reluctant to talk in front of Ash. Charlie tells Ash not to call the police. Bel convinces Ash to leave her alone with her father because she believes that this is the only way she will learn the truth. Ash hugs Bel and leaves reluctantly. Charlie tells Bel that Rachel has a mental health condition and that she locked him up there. He implores her to find bolt cutters or a key, but Bel refuses. She insists that Charlie tell her the truth of why Rachel locked him up. Bel also asks Charlie why he is reluctant for her to call the police if Rachel alone is at fault. She tells Charlie that she knows that Grandpa imprisoned Rachel. Suddenly, Rachel arrives and tells Bel that Charlie didn’t know that she was being held in the truck.

Rachel explains to Bel that Grandpa was supposed to kill her that afternoon—that those had been Charlie’s instructions to him. However, rather than killing her, Grandpa imprisoned her instead and pretended to Charlie that he had killed her. Charlie extorted Grandpa because he had seen Grandpa pushing his own wife (Charlie’s mother) down the stairs decades earlier, and the fall killed her.

Charlie imploringly tells Bel that Rachel is lying, but Bel believes Rachel even though she knows that Rachel has lies of her own. Bel confronts Rachel about the money borrowed from Julian Tripp, and Rachel says that it was money to help her and Bel run away together. Rachel said that she had planned for her and Bel to disappear at the mall by exploiting the CCTV cameras’ blind spots and hiding in the recycling bins, but Grandpa found her anyway. She had been organizing fake passports with Robert Meyer for herself and Bel before she was forcibly imprisoned, and this is how she knew to fake the details of Charlie’s disappearance.

Rachel explains that Grandpa, having dementia, recently came across Rachel but didn’t recognize her, so he let her out of the truck where she had been imprisoned for 15 years. Rachel wants Charlie to be locked up for 15 years, just like she was, but she gives Bel the choice of whether to release her father or not, offering her the key. Charlie begs Bel to release him. Rachel pulls her protectively away from Charlie, and Bel decides to side with Rachel and leave Charlie imprisoned. They start to leave, but a voice in the darkness asks them what is going on.

Jeff enters the container and demands to know what is going on. Charlie explains that Rachel has imprisoned him there for two weeks and begs him to get the key from her. Rachel admits that Carter is her daughter, to whom she gave birth in the container. Grandpa gave Carter to Jeff and Sherry to raise. Jeff explains that Grandpa produced the baby and told them that the child needed a good home; he hadn’t known that Carter was Rachel’s daughter until he saw the similarities when Rachel reappeared. Bel realizes that Jeff was talking about Carter when he asked Grandpa, “Where did you find her?” (333). Rachel throws the key into the dark junkyard, so Jeff goes to look for a hand saw. Rachel urges Bel to run with her into the night.

Bel and Rachel run through the dark junkyard. They reach Rachel’s car, but it’s blocked in by Jeff’s truck. They see that Charlie has been freed and is now running toward them, and Rachel urges Bel to keep running. Behind Charlie, Jeff yells, asking what Charlie is going to do. Bel feels confident that Charlie plans to kill both her and Rachel. They all reach Point Lookout, which overlooks the old mine and Gorham town. Charlie is gaining on Bel and Rachel. Rachel urges Bel to run in the other direction, confident that Charlie will follow her. Reluctantly, Bel obeys. Charlie grabs Rachel and forces her to the ground, raising an ax above her head. Suddenly, Carter appears and shoves Charlie off Rachel. Charlie teeters on the edge of the cliff above the mine. At the last moment, he grabs Jeff’s shirt, and they both fall to their deaths.

Carter tells Rachel that she has realized that Rachel is her mother; she did a DNA test on Bel and herself weeks earlier to confirm it. Carter is shocked and devastated that she has caused Jeff’s death, but Rachel insists that Charlie killed Jeff by grabbing onto him at the last moment. To ensure that none of them will ever be suspected, Rachel insists that they keep the details of Charlie and Jeff’s deaths a secret. Rachel says that she will climb down into the mine to hide their bodies. Bel realizes that Ash knows too much; she assures Rachel that she will destroy the evidence that he recorded.

At Ash’s hotel, Bel convinces the front desk assistant, Kosa, to give her the key to Ash’s room. She destroys all the memory cards and external storage drives associated with the filming, and she also destroys Ash’s laptop. She leaves a message to him, saying “sorry.” She goes home to find Carter there. Carter has just returned from erasing Rachel’s message in Grandpa’s books—all but one, The Green Mile. Carter kept this book because it contains the only hidden message in the first person plural, referring to Carter as a baby. Ash comes to the house and tells Bel that he would have destroyed all the footage if she had asked him. He asks what happened, but Bel insists that there was no red truck; she tells Ash that she needs to protect her family. They kiss, and Ash leaves. Bel feels peaceful when he departs, realizing that when someone leaves, this isn’t the same thing as being left behind.

Bel and Carter get into bed together. Bel doesn’t sleep until she hears Rachel get home, and then she feels safe. Rachel wakes them up in the morning and reminds them that they need to decide what to do about Sherry. Carter agrees to the plan that Rachel suggests. Sherry arrives a few hours later, looking for Jeff and Carter. Rachel tells her that Carter is her daughter and suggests that Sherry leave and start a new life. She says that Sherry must get fake identification from Robert Meyer and leave, or else Rachel will report her to the police for stealing her daughter. Sherry tries to convince Carter to stay with her, but Carter insists that Rachel is her mother and that Bel raised her, not Sherry. Sherry leaves.

Ramsay conducts a final interview with Bel, Rachel, and Carter, asking where they think Charlie, Jeff, and Sherry went. Rachel suggests that it is a mystery and that perhaps her reappearance created a strain on the three missing family members. She also surmises the existence of financial trouble or illegal dealings that they were worried might be exposed. Rachel claims that she mistook Phillip Alves as the man who imprisoned her, but asserts that it wasn’t him. She continues to suggest that her captor is an unknown man who is still at large. Meanwhile, Bel secretly returns a chess piece that she had taken from a chess board at the hotel.

Ramsay presents Bel with a memory stick and explains that he backed up the footage that she tried to destroy. However, he promises not to use it in the documentary and gives her the only copy of the footage. She is grateful that he is sacrificing a more exciting and truthful version of the documentary to protect her, Rachel, and Carter. Bel presents Ash with the yellow t-shirt that he saw at the thrift store and the two say goodbye. Bel gets in the back seat of the car with Rachel and Carter.

Bel realizes that Rachel instigated the documentary by suggesting the case to Ramsay in a Twitter comment from a fake user. Rachel admits that this is true; she wanted to make money off her case in order to reestablish her life. Rachel tells Carter and Bel that Charlie did not die from the fall into the mine; she had to kill him. Bel privately wonders whether Rachel is lying to alleviate Carter of the guilt of having murdered someone. Carter leaves with her friends, and Bel and Rachel go shopping together.