Since We Fell

Rachel Childs grows up in western Massachusetts, raised solely by her mother, Elizabeth Childs, a psychology professor at Mount Holyoke College and author of a bestselling relationship guide called The Staircase. Rachel's father, known to her only by the first name James, left when she was nearly three. Elizabeth weaponizes his identity, promising to reveal his last name at various milestones but always withholding it. The secret fuels a rebellious adolescence marked by stolen cars, drug use, and self-harm.

During Rachel's junior year of college, Elizabeth runs a red light and is killed by a fuel truck. Rachel inherits enough money to live modestly for a decade, but the old question persists. She hires Brian Delacroix, a young private investigator in Chicopee, Massachusetts, who advises her the search is hopeless: There are 73 professors named James across the region's colleges. Brian leaves the PI business for his family's lumber company in Canada, and Rachel resolves to let the search go.

That fall, Rachel suffers her first panic attack on a Greenwich Village street. She defers a semester at NYU and begins therapy, exploring the possibility that Elizabeth withheld Rachel's paternity to keep her emotionally dependent. A therapist named Tess Porter helps Rachel examine her fear that her father would reject her. Rachel recalls her mother once telling her to "Look for yourself in his eyes" (29).

After grad school, Rachel builds a journalism career, moving from small papers to the Boston Globe. Dr. Felix Browner, her mother's former OB/GYN, now stripped of his medical license over sexual assault allegations, contacts her claiming to know her father's identity in exchange for a story discrediting his accusers. Rachel instead uses the threat of an exposé to force him to reveal that "James" was her father's surname, not his first name. His first name is Jeremy.

Rachel tracks down Jeremy James, a tenured art history professor at Connecticut College. His wife, Maureen Widerman, warmly receives Rachel's call, but when Rachel visits and calls Jeremy "Daddy," he gently pushes her away. A blood test proved years ago that he cannot be her biological father. Despite this, they become close friends. Jeremy reveals the scope of Elizabeth's manipulation: She demanded he accept the lie of his paternity even in private and threatened to accuse him of rape if he ever contacted Rachel. Together, they examine old photographs of Elizabeth at a bar in East Baltimore during her Johns Hopkins years, hoping to identify a man with green eyes like Rachel's, but the lead proves a dead end.

Rachel leaves the Globe for television at Channel 6 in Boston, where she rises quickly. She marries Sebastian, a producer at the station, and Jeremy walks her down the aisle. Then Jeremy suffers two strokes. His last coherent words to an orderly are cryptic: "Rachel is in the mirror" (81).

In January 2010, Rachel covers the Haiti earthquake for the national network. In the devastated coastal town of Léogâne, she and her camera operator spend a night hiding four young girls from armed men. Two are saved when a UN truck arrives, but two others, including an 11-year-old named Widdy, disappear and are presumed dead. Rachel develops dependencies on black-market Ativan and rum. Sent back to Haiti months later, she has a live on-air breakdown, repeating "We're all sick" (101) while shaking uncontrollably. The footage goes viral and she is fired.

At a bar after her firing, Rachel catches her reflection in a mirror and connects Jeremy's words to the old photograph. She realizes her mother was not looking at the whiskey bottles in that Baltimore bar photo but at the bartender's reflection: His green eyes match Rachel's own. She traces the bartender to Leeland David Grayson, who worked at the bar for about 25 years before dying of a heart attack at 53. Rachel visits his grave in Elkton, Maryland, coming to terms with the likelihood that Elizabeth never told Lee about Rachel because she was ashamed of having loved a man with small ambitions.

On the day her divorce from Sebastian is finalized in May 2011, Rachel ventures to a Boston bar. She has become a virtual shut-in, terrified of public spaces. Brian Delacroix materializes, defuses a confrontation with a belligerent drunk, and walks her to another bar. They share drinks and a slow dance to "Since I Fell for You" by Lenny Welch, a song that becomes their anniversary tradition. Brian proves endlessly patient about Rachel's panic attacks, and they marry. For 18 months, Rachel cannot leave the apartment. Brian climbs 15 flights of stairs with her daily when she cannot use the elevator. Approaching their second anniversary, he orchestrates a breakthrough, taking her on the subway and through a crowded mall, buying her a black onyx necklace as a talisman of her strength.

Then Rachel's trust unravels. The Monday after Brian supposedly leaves for London, she sees a man identical to him exit the Hancock Tower and climb into a black SUV. She checks his records and discovers a London shop receipt dated in American format, proving it was not generated by a British register. At their anniversary party, an uninvited friend named Andrew Gattis mentions Brian keeping "the place in Baker Lake" and tells Rachel to look up a movie called Since I Fell for You (234-235). After Brian leaves on another supposed trip, Rachel follows him to Providence, where she tails him to an office building housing Alden Minerals Ltd. and then to a row house where a pregnant blonde woman opens the door and Brian kneels to kiss her belly.

Shattered, Rachel discovers that "Brett Alden" was the stage name used in the movie Gattis mentioned, and the actor is unmistakably Brian. She confronts Caleb Perloff, Brian's business partner, who admits they are both actors from Trinity Rep, a repertory theater in Providence, and that their Cambridge office is a dressed set. That night, two men arrive with silenced pistols, demanding a safe deposit box key. When Caleb cannot produce it, one of them shoots him dead. Rachel escapes with the unwitting help of Detective Trayvon Kessler of the Providence Police, who arrives investigating the murder of Nicole Alden, Brian's pregnant companion, at her Providence home.

Rachel returns to Brian's boat and dives to the harbor floor, finding only an empty oxygen tank: Brian faked his death using squibs and theatrical training. She drives north to Baker Lake, Maine, following Gattis's clues to a cabin Brian owns, but finds it empty. Brian reveals himself from the backseat of a car, and Rachel beats him unconscious before firing a warning shot past his head.

Brian reveals his real name is Brian Alden, from Grafton, Vermont, and that he stole the real Brian Delacroix's identity years ago at Brown University. He explains the con: a "salting scam," a scheme in which a mine is falsely seeded with gold to inflate its assessed value. He bought a bankrupt mine in Papua New Guinea, had Caleb fabricate inflated assessments, and secured a $70 million loan from Cotter-McCann, a predatory venture capital firm. The plan collapsed when Cotter-McCann discovered the fraud and murdered Nicole, who was Brian's sister, not his second wife. Brian insists he engineered the entire sequence of revelations to cure Rachel's agoraphobia so she could flee the country with him. Rachel is furious but cannot deny she has not suffered a single panic attack since the ordeal began. He explains that their escape passports are in a safe deposit box under his sister's name, and he teaches Rachel to forge her signature.

Disguised with a blonde wig and colored contacts, Rachel enters a bank in Johnston, Rhode Island, and retrieves the safe deposit box containing cash and six passports, including one for herself. She mails Brian's passport to a hotel in Amsterdam, ensuring he must help her, Haya, Caleb's wife, and baby Annabelle escape before retrieving his own documents. They drive to a safe house in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, where Haya and the baby are supposed to be waiting, but Cotter-McCann's operatives have arrived first. In the firefight that follows, Brian and Rachel kill both men, but they discover the operatives have already executed Haya. Annabelle is unharmed in her crib.

Brian reveals he has a boat that can take them to Halifax. Rachel tells him she considers Annabelle theirs now and asks if he wants to have more children. He says yes. As she climbs the stairs to say goodbye to Haya, Rachel feels both their passports in her pocket. She acknowledges she does not know how the story ends but resolves that if all that remains is darkness, she will "make a friend of the night" (479).