Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody

Author:Kate Brody
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soho Press

“I don’t get it,” I say.

She takes her phone and scrolls to another photo. This one is from a couple months ago—around Christmas time. The older girl and a woman, standing in the snow.

“Do you see it now?”

“The same woman,” I say.

Mickey nods.

“Go back.”

She flips back to the previous picture.

“Who is she?”

“Took me a while,” Mickey says. “But she appears in one other photo, from four years ago. In the comments there, Helene called her Olive, the ‘au pair.’”

“Let me see.”

Mickey shakes her head. “You can’t really see anything in that one. Hoodie up, kid on her shoulders, shot from behind. Same build though. Pretty sure it’s the same girl.”

“You’re thinking it’s Angie?”

Mickey shrugs. “You tell me.”

“Like Marlee.”

Mickey lets me keep her phone. I toggle back and forth between the two most recent posts a dozen times. In both pictures, the au pair’s head is down and she is playing with the children. Both shots seem to intentionally obscure her face. In the winter picture, the au pair is bundled up in a coat, a hat, and winter boots. She looks down at the girl, so you can only see the top of her head. No identifying features. In the summer one, she is in the pool with the kids, visible in profile. Her hair is damp, but it sheens red where the sun hits. Her skin is pale. She looks to be about my height, my build. She wears large sunglasses that cover most of the top half of her face and obscure the shape of her nose. She has a lower back tattoo that looks like a blur through the water. She dons silver bangles, the kind Angie used to love.

“Angie hated kids,” I say. I don’t know if that’s true per se, but she definitely didn’t like hanging out with me and my friends.

“In plain sight,” Mickey says, looking at the pool picture again.

“I’m not sure,” I say. I’m worried I’m going to shit my pants, that’s how much my stomach hurts.

“It’s probably not her,” Mickey says.

“It could be anyone.”

“I can’t believe they call her the ‘au pair,’” Mickey says. “So pretentious.”

“Why? What should they say?”

“Nanny,” Mickey says.

“Two different things,” I say. “Au pairs usually just stay for a short time. It’s almost like a study abroad.”

“Hm,” Mickey says. “This girl’s been working for them for—well, I don’t know.”

“Years, though,” I say.

“Yeah, years.”

“Could Angie have gone to him? Could he be—” Mickey reaches for the right word. “Hiding her?”

“Hiding,” I repeat. “Why?”

Mickey shrugs. “No one knew why for Marlee Fry, until they did.”

“If it’s like that—” I don’t finish my sentence. I push away the thoughts about what my dad would have had to do for Angie to take such drastic steps. I push away the voices of the internet commentariat who insist that the fact that she was not his daughter would make him more likely to do terrible things to her. Unspeakable things. “What about Jake or whatever?” I say.

“I’m not saying we should abandon the Jake angle.

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