Chapter 2 Nicola #2
The same as being raised by anyone else.
They’ll be looking for some revelation about how he abused me, but he never so much as raised his voice.
Well, almost never. Back in high school, before I learned how to drive, I used to walk an hour to and from the nearest bus stop.
One night, it started raining, and without a poncho or umbrella, I was soaked straight through to my bra.
When an elderly couple pulled over and asked if I wanted a lift, I didn’t hesitate to crawl into the back seat.
My father, waiting on the porch, thanked them for getting me home safe.
But the moment they drove away, he rounded on me: “How could you be so fucking stupid?” I was stunned; my father wasn’t a religious man, but he never swore.
It just wasn’t in his nature. “Don’t you know not to get into cars with strangers?
Do you want to end up like that girl on the news? ”
Heather Dickerson. She’d left her friend’s house late one night and somewhere between there and her front door, she disappeared.
Almost a week later, they found her floating facedown in Ellicott Creek.
That must’ve been hard for him, I thought, as I peeled off my clothes and left them in the bathroom to dry.
Seeing her photo on TV, only a few years older than his own daughter, and wondering if the same thing could happen to me.
His anger was understandable; he was trying to keep me safe from dangerous men.
I let the curtains fall closed now. I can’t agree to an interview—even if it would solve all my financial problems. I haul the box of wine into the living room, pour myself a fresh glass, and load up one of those reality shows about families with umpteen kids.
My mind slowly goes numb as the TV mother bulk-prepares fourteen school lunches.
This was the kind of family my parents wanted; it’s what killed my mother in the end—a risky pregnancy that she refused to terminate, despite my father’s reservations.
I blamed myself as much as he did, unable to understand why I hadn’t been enough for them, but now, as an adult, I find myself longing for a TLC household of my own.
I imagine a younger brother sitting next to me on the couch, one with my dad’s overcast-blue eyes.
“It’s okay,” he’d tell me. “We’ll find a way out together.
” I imagine a younger sister stirring up mac and cheese on the stove.
“He’s not how they make him out to be on the news,” she’d say.
“He’s gentle, selfless, and he loves you so very much. We know. We were there, too.”
No one else was there. It was just me and him. Which means anyone can come along and rewrite his story. How long before I stop trusting my own memories, before I start accepting NBC 4’s or ABC 7’s versions of the truth?
When the box is empty, I push myself upright and stagger out the back door, into the night.
In the corner of the yard is the playhouse my dad built for me in first grade.
When it turned out I wasn’t interested in cooking plastic food on my Fisher-Price stove, he dug a ditch around it, deep enough to double as a swimming hole in the sweltering summer months, poured some concrete, and repurposed it into a fortress.
He brought me to the hardware store, mixed up little sample cans of paint, and together, we traced a fearsome dragon onto the front.
Now, paint peels from the dragon’s spine, curling inward like knobby vertebrae.
The water in the moat’s furred in a thin layer of algae, dead crane flies skimming across the surface, their long legs cricked upward.
I slide myself into the murk. It’s cold, but the alcohol serves as a layer of insulation.
I let my feet drift from the bottom and float onto my back.
The stars swirl above me, like glitter trapped in a mason jar.
I pick out the five brightest and use my fingertip to draw lines between them.
Five stars. Five dead women. In college, I became obsessed with the Ellicott Creek Ripper case.
Learned everything I could about the victims: the clubs they belonged to, the classes they were enrolled in, their after-school jobs.
Grilled their friends for any information that might’ve been left out of the newspapers.
Worked out timelines for what occurred the nights of the murders.
I point to the first star. Heather Dickerson.
In his confession, my dad said it’d been raining, and he offered her a ride home.
He drove down a deserted road, and when she tried to break free, he pushed her down and strangled her.
He left her in Ellicott Creek, hoping the water would destroy any evidence left behind.
That weekend, I was in Corpus Christi visiting my grandparents.
When my flight landed, he was waiting in arrivals, wearing his Carhartt jacket that was fraying around the cuffs.
He hugged me tight, smelling like engine grease and foamy Barbasol shaving cream.
My finger sweeps to the next star. Jody Hill.
She used to buy ice cream at Double Dips, the walk-up stand across from the hardware store.
My dad claimed he was delivering some lumber to her neighbors and asked if she wanted a lift.
He switched to a knife that time—punctured one of her lungs with the first stab.
By then, I’d left for college. That night, I was in one of the shared studio spaces on campus.
While she was suffocating, I was gluing strips of balsa wood together for sculpture class.
The third star. Rebecca Stoeffel. She left field hockey practice to find her tires slashed.
My dad was parked nearby, volunteered to help.
She bled out in his back seat; I think he mentioned scrubbing down the upholstery during one of our phone calls, claiming he’d nicked himself with a table saw or something, but I can’t be sure.
It’s hard to tell if my memories—memories of moments that seemed so inconsequential at the time—are accurate, or if I’m filling in the blanks with what I imagine happened.
The fourth star. Lauren Kaminski. She was the only one who didn’t choose to get into my dad’s truck.
He followed her to a local trailhead, waited until she was alone, then tackled her from behind and dragged her into the woods.
Claire and I bought king-sized pizza slices that night—ones that were so big and greasy, they drooped flaccidly in our hands—and scarfed them down on a bench in Riverside Park.
We talked until the early hours of the morning, until joggers started pounding the pavement before work, headphone cords flapping in time with their steps.
My hand drops into the water, but my gaze still lands on the fifth star. Claire Tenenbaum. My best friend.
My father’s confession was televised. Even though each word felt like a knife raking between my ribs, I forced myself to watch—but when he reached Claire, I wrenched the cord clean out of the wall.
I didn’t need to know the details, still don’t.
Suffice to say, Claire went for a ride with him and never came back.
He stabbed her forty-one times that night.
The water laps at my skin, and I picture what those women must’ve looked like when they went into the creek. I make my face go slack; my eyes, dull. I float until I can’t feel my fingers anymore—and even then, I refuse to pull myself out of the water.
I stare at the sky and wonder if this is the only way out.