Opening
A vanished father, a smiling mother who might be lying, and a daughter willing to break every rule to bring the truth into focus. Across Chapters 26–30, the mystery fractures into two urgent hunts—where Dad goes and what really happens to Mom sixteen years ago—as new evidence points toward Vermont, hidden money, and a family secret no one wants to say out loud.
What Happens
Chapter 26: Where Was Dad?
Annabel 'Bel' Price wakes to an empty house and an instant wrongness: her dad, Charlie Price, is gone. His truck still sits outside. Calls go to voicemail. Texts don’t deliver. In the kitchen, Rachel Price and Carter Price claim they hear nothing in the night.
Bel starts checking stories. At Charlie’s auto shop, Gabe says Charlie hasn’t been working late like he told her; he’s been leaving early for “family stuff.” The lie points the theme of Truth, Lies, and Deception directly at Charlie. Back home, Bel searches his room: the weekend bag, wallet, and passport are gone, but the house and truck keys are here. The mixed signals—leaving signs without a way to drive—shred her certainty. By 9:59 p.m., with no sign of him, Bel calls Chief Dave Winter and reports her father missing.
Chapter 27: You Owe Him
At the station, Bel pushes Chief Winter to treat Charlie’s disappearance as urgent. He argues the packed bag and missing passport suggest an adult choosing space, not danger. Bel snaps: “It’s something to do with Rachel!” Fear drags her back into the long shadow of a missing parent, tying directly into Trauma and Its Lasting Impact.
When the chief hesitates, Bel aims for the bruise. Sixteen years ago, he arrests Charlie for Rachel’s murder—wrongly. “You owe him,” she tells him, and it lands. Winter agrees to file the report, subpoena phone records, and send an officer to the house. That night, Bel confronts Rachel. Rachel says she spends the day driving around searching, but Bel clocks a stray takeout cup as another crack in the story. She makes a promise—to herself and as a warning: she will find her father and bring him home.
Chapter 28: Five Six Seven Eight
Media swarms the “revolving-door family.” Chief Winter updates: Charlie’s bank card pings in Vermont. He calls it reassuring; Bel refuses to believe her dad would vanish without a word. If the police won’t look past easy answers, she will—by proving Rachel is lying.
She sets a trap that looks like a family afternoon. Bel invites Carter to bake cookies, sends Rachel to the store for peanut butter, and squeezes Carter for Rachel’s passcode: 5678. When Rachel returns, Bel creates small errands—Tupperware for Grandpa, a misdelivered letter—and, during the second diversion, palms Rachel’s phone from the kitchen table and slips out to the garage to meet Ash Maddox.
Chapter 29: I'm Rachel
In the garage, Ash records as Bel unlocks the phone. A thread with Julian Tripp, Rachel’s old teacher, reads like a riddle—he keeps asking for something back he once gave her. Ash proposes a risk: call Tripp and pretend to be Rachel. The theme of Identity and Self-Discovery becomes literal as Bel uses her mother’s voice.
On speaker, Tripp breaks. He gave Rachel $3,000 in cash two days before she disappeared. She says it’s an emergency; she sounds paranoid, afraid of someone—maybe Charlie, maybe his brother, Jeff Price. Bel almost says “Uncle Jeff,” Tripp catches on, and she kills the call, deletes the log, and slides the phone back onto the kitchen table. Rachel turns, glances down, moves the phone back to its exact spot, and looks up with a sweet, vanilla smile that says she knows.
Chapter 30: Where Did They Find Her?
Bel meets Ash at his hotel to go over evidence. Chief Winter calls with phone records: at 3:20 a.m. the night he disappears, Charlie makes one call to a Robert Meyer in Barton, Vermont. The call pings a tower near Danville. Neither Bel nor Rachel recognizes the name. Charlie isn’t wandering—he’s heading somewhere specific.
Ash then plays a new recording pulled from the dinner-party footage. A hot mic on Jeff captures him in the car with his father, Patrick 'Pat' Price, pushing an answer through dementia fog: “Where was she? Where did they find her?” Tripp names Jeff. Jeff presses Pat. Together, they point to a secret about Rachel’s missing years and her reappearance. Bel decides her next move: confront her uncle and make him talk.
Character Development
Bel sharpens from panicked daughter into a calculating investigator, willing to stage distractions, manipulate Carter, and impersonate her mother to get answers. The cost is clear: she starts to mirror the deception she hates.
- Pushes the police by invoking past injustices
- Engineers the phone theft with precision
- Crosses a moral line by becoming “Rachel” on the phone
Rachel’s calm brightens into menace. She projects warmth but notices everything—the adjusted phone, the angles of the kitchen—and her final smile marks a quiet power.
Charlie’s absence grows complicated. He lies about his hours, seems to plan a trip, and makes a targeted 3:20 a.m. call. The “victim” frame no longer fits.
Jeff steps forward from the margins. He pressures his ailing father, his name surfaces in Tripp’s confession, and his private questions hint he knows where Rachel has been—or where she turns up.
Themes & Symbols
Truth, Lies, and Deception threads through every choice. Bel lies to get the passcode, steals the phone, and impersonates Rachel. Charlie lies about work, and Tripp withholds the cash secret for sixteen years. Lies become both weapon and evidence, forcing the question: can truth be uncovered without becoming what you hunt?
Trauma and Its Lasting Impact shapes Bel’s urgency and suspicion. One vanished parent primes her to expect another; the “knot” in her stomach tightens with every discrepancy. The family reenacts old pain—Rachel returns, Charlie disappears—teaching Bel that survival requires action.
Identity and Self-Discovery surface when Bel literally becomes her mother’s voice. The performance unlocks facts, but it also fractures Bel’s sense of self: where does her identity end and Rachel’s begin?
Phones function as modern confessionals. Charlie’s call data traces a path to Vermont; Rachel’s texts reveal hidden money. Devices become the story’s diaries—the only honest witnesses.
“The revolving-door family” crystallizes the Prices’ instability: one parent in, one parent out. The label reduces them, but it also captures the cycle Bel is determined to break.
Key Quotes
“It’s something to do with Rachel!”
Bel names the suspicion the chapter has been circling. The line reframes Charlie’s disappearance as part of the longer, unresolved mystery of Rachel’s past, pulling both timelines into one case.
“You owe him.”
This is leverage and indictment. Bel turns the chief’s history—wrongfully arresting Charlie—into action, converting institutional guilt into a concrete search plan.
“I’ll find him, bring him home.”
A vow that doubles as mission statement. Bel claims agency, declaring she won’t accept easy answers or passive hope; she will act, even if it means crossing lines.
“Where was she? Where did they find her?”
Jeff’s question detonates the assumption that Rachel’s return is straightforward. The wording implies discovery, location, and secrecy—suggesting someone knows exactly where Rachel has been.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters pivot the book from reaction to pursuit. Bel stops waiting for the truth and starts extracting it, binding Charlie’s disappearance to Rachel’s past through money, phone records, and a hot-mic confession. The $3,000 proves Rachel prepares to leave; the Vermont trail and Robert Meyer signal Charlie’s purposeful movement; Jeff’s recording hints the family already holds the missing piece. Together, the leads widen the mystery from one parent to an entire network of Price histories—and put Bel on a collision course with the truth.