Chapter 5 Nicola
“EXCUSE ME.”
The FASTEN SEAT BELT light’s just gone off, and already a stranger’s standing in the aisle next to our row.
He has shaggy, biscotti-blond hair and a smattering of moles across his stubbled jaw.
A beat-up backpack droops from one shoulder.
He leans down to address the woman next to me.
“Would you mind switching seats, so my friend and I can sit together?”
These rows are built for two, which means when he says “my friend,” he’s referring to me. A cold sweat breaks out across my skin. I’ve never seen this man in my life.
“Oh, no—” the woman starts, but he cuts her off.
“I’m in 18A. Extra legroom and the seat next to mine’s empty. It’s like the jackpot of aircraft seating, and—” He spreads his hands like a daytime game show model. “It’s all yours.”
I want to grab ahold of her jacket, beg her not to leave, but she’s already collecting her purse from under the seat in front of her.
Besides, what can I say? That this man isn’t my friend—he’s a reporter cornering me on a long-distance flight?
Or a predatory fan? I’ve been lucky so far: No one’s posted my flight number or snapped candids of me from across the terminal.
But if I tell her why she can’t swap seats, it’ll leave me exposed.
The man helps with her overhead luggage, replacing it with his own, then drops into the seat next to mine.
“There we go,” he says, removing the sling bag strapped across his chest and fastening his seat belt.
I watch with trepidation as he unzips the bag, dreading whatever he’s about to pull out.
I can imagine him hauling me close for a photo, as the entire flight starts asking themselves, “Hey, isn’t she that girl from TV?
” All it takes is one person to recognize me, one wobbly domino, and the entire weekend will come toppling down.
If I’m the one who breaks the silence, though, who sets the boundaries up front, then maybe I can maintain my anonymity.
I shuffle closer to him, even as my body’s screaming at me to stay away.
“Hey.” He swivels to face me. “I’m happy to sign something for you, or whatever, but I’m trying not to attract too much attention.
And I’m not ready to talk about anything having to do with the show. ”
His forehead creases. “Show? What show?”
Horror slowly overtakes me. Oh no, oh no, oh god, no.
What have I done? He might not recognize me now, but thanks to my own stupidity (Nicola, you fucking moron), it’s only a matter of time before he does, which means I need an escape route.
Where can you hide on an airplane? The lavatory, but how long would I have until another passenger comes knocking on the door?
Maybe I could barge into the galley and plead with the flight attendants to let me camp back there?
I unfasten my seat belt, but before I can disappear down the aisle, he holds up his hand. “Wait. Sorry. I’m just fucking with you. You’re Nicola Fischer. I knew that when I came over here.”
My name explodes like a gunshot. I swing around, peering through the gaps in the seats, at the passengers behind and in front of us, but they’re all wearing headphones, enjoying their in-flight entertainment systems. No one’s paying attention to our conversation. “Okay… so, what do you want?”
He reaches into his open bag and pulls out a phone. “I don’t care about the show.” He drags his finger across the screen. “I wanted to introduce myself because we’re traveling to the same place.”
Onscreen are exact replicas of the messages that were sent to me: the flight confirmation from the Death Row Club, the reminder that all our electronics will be confiscated. All that fight-or-flight energy dissipates, and I slump back into my seat. “You’re a member of the club?”
He nods. “I remember what it was like my first time. You get that letter, and you’re like, okay, this could be real, or it could all be an elaborate scheme to ambush me in an airport parking lot.” He sets the phone facedown on his tray table. “It’s hard to know who to trust.”
Believe me, I want to tell him, I know. The whole town turning against me had been bad, but the people who pretended they hadn’t, at least in the beginning, were so much worse.
Take, for instance, the leader of the women’s ministry, who’d invited me over in the days following the arrest. “We’re here to support you,” she assured me.
“Whatever you need, all you have to do is ask.” I started to reach for my coffee mug, but halfway across the table, she captured my hand in hers.
“Pray with me?” I nodded, even though I hadn’t prayed since fourth grade, when my family stopped using Sunday school as free childcare.
No one had touched me since news of my father’s crimes broke, and I found myself focusing less on her words and more on the topographical map of her hands: the fleshy mounds that dipped and peaked like the rolling hills of the countryside, the lifeline creeks that channeled me toward the peninsular outcropping of her thumb.
By the time her prayer ended, my entire world had shrunk to fit inside that hand; so thankful was I for this simple kindness, for the chance to feel connected to another human, that I was ready to tell her anything about my father.
The following week, an article appeared in TIME: “Portrait of a Monster: An Exclusive Look Inside the Fischer Family,” every secret I’d shared with her printed in stark black and white for the world to read.
She’d included an appeal at the end, for compassion toward the family during this difficult time, but that didn’t change what she’d done.
It was the first time I really started to grasp my new normal.
That no one wanted to be my friend anymore, and the few who said they did couldn’t be trusted.
The members of this club might be different, though. They’re like me; they understand what it’s like to be the daughter of, well, of a monster.
“Sorry,” I say, embarrassed by the fact that I offered him my autograph. “I thought you were a fan, or maybe a reporter. They’ve been following me nonstop.”
“Been there. Here’s the trick: Buy your own portable mic and loop it around your neck.
The feedback will drive the camera guys nuts and make all the audio unusable.
Or—here’s another one—get one of those little high-lumen flashlights, the really powerful ones, and whenever they come too close, shoot it straight at the lens. They’ll get the hint.”
“Now you tell me. Where were you three months ago?”
“Fending off reporters, obviously.”
That gets a smile out of me. He notices and sticks out his hand. “Zach.”
His hands are slender, fingers long. For the first time in a long time, I find myself yearning for a pencil to draw them. When he pulls back, his warmth remains embossed on my skin. “Don’t feel too bad,” he says. “They came close to running me out of town before I learned how to handle them.”
“Yeah, they can be awful.” I don’t want to acknowledge what they’ve been saying about me, but at the same time, I’m worried about him believing any of it’s true.
“For the record, I had no idea what my father was. All the terms experts use to describe… serial killers.” Even now, the word burns the inside of my mouth like bleach.
“Antisocial, manipulative, controlling, whatever. None of those match my dad.”
“Mine neither. But you know what? I’ve had years to conduct research, and I’ve discovered that all serial killers have one thing in common.”
“What’s that?”
He leans forward, stares straight into my eyes. “They always choose drinks with those little plastic swords stuck through the cherry.”
“What?”
“Little plastic swords. I grew up in a bar, and my dad kept all these containers of garnish picks behind the counter. There were the little plastic swords and the ones with the frill tops and, of course, the umbrellas. I’m betting you’re an umbrella girl, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, even though I’ve never really stopped to consider garnish picks.
“Right, me too. Well, I would always pick the umbrella and use it as a shield, and he would skewer the shit out of that thing with his little plastic sword, and I’m like, oh my god, I should’ve known then that he would murder seven people in cold blood.”
He’s clearly joking, but I can’t help thinking back to the last time my dad and I drank together. Had he used a little plastic sword?
“Oh, and—” he says, as if just remembering another one, “serial killers all give their pets human names.”
“Human names?”
“Yeah, like Kevin or Linda. Who names their pet Linda?” He jabs a finger against his tray table. “My dad, that’s who. Made our crested gecko sound like a chain-smoking secretary from Toledo whose husband took everything in the divorce. Just what a third grader needs at show-and-tell.”
Holy shit, he’s right. “We had a dog named Robert when I was little.”
“See? And, let me guess, your dad didn’t want you to call him Bobby or Bobo or anything like that.”
He didn’t. Whenever I tried, he’d take Robert by the paws, and hold them up so he balanced on his hind legs.
“Look at this face,” he’d say, and I would stare into Robert’s bewildered eyes.
“Is this the face of a Bobby, or is this the face of a Robert?” He’d say the name with profound gravitas, even though Robert was a toy poodle with fluffy leg warmers and a pom-pom tail.
Robert would yip, tongue lolling out of his mouth, and I could only assume that meant he did indeed want to be called Robert.
Grief rushes over me—not for Robert, but for my father.
Most days, it’s like he’s dead. I’ll walk down the hallway, past his bedroom, and peer in at the rumpled sheets on his mattress.
I don’t have the heart to change them because they’ll never be that way again: tangled up at the end, where his toes caught in the fabric, smelling like stale night sweat.
It’s not just coming home to an empty house, though.
All the little peculiarities that made him him were stripped away when he was rechristened the Ellicott Creek Ripper.
In that moment, he was transformed from my father into something else, something inhuman.
But when Zach talks about our parents like this, it’s almost like he’s not gone at all.
I swallow the tightness in my throat. “Okay, favorite band. We’ll go together. Count of three. One… Two…”
“America,” we both say at the same time, and then we can’t help it; we burst out laughing.
One of the passengers in the next row scowls at us, and my levity fizzles out like a sparkler dunked into a plastic water bucket.
I reach for the strings of my hoodie and yank them a little tighter. Zach, however, doesn’t seem to notice.
“What was his favorite song? Mine liked ‘Lonely People.’ ”
“ ‘Ventura Highway.’ ”
“We’ll need to ask the others.” He checks the map on the back of the seat; our plane’s suspended over Montana. “I’ll bet Connor’s mom was a ‘Muskrat Love’ person.”
“His mom?”
His eyebrow lifts. “Wow, you just assumed everyone’s incarcerated parent was male? How’s that for internalized misogyny. I expected better from you, Nic. Can I call you Nic?”
“Sure.” My stomach flutters. Not because of any physical attraction but because he sees me as worthy of a nickname. Nicknames imply friendship, don’t they? Is that what’s happening here?
The refreshment cart rattles down the aisle, stopping next to our row.
“Cranberry juice,” he orders, “for both of us.” As soon as the flight attendant disappears, he unzips his bag and removes two miniature bottles of vodka, dumping one into his cup and the other into mine.
“I don’t have any plastic swords, but I don’t think we’re the kind of people who need them.
” Instead, he produces two slightly smooshed umbrellas, opening the pink one and sticking it into my drink.
There was a time, right after Claire’s death, when I read and watched everything I could about serial killers.
I mentally sort through their mug shots and, one by one, attempt to superimpose Zach’s features over theirs.
Who’s his father? I’ve picked up on some clues already: owned a bar, high-profile enough to attract significant media attention, and if Zach’s on this connecting flight, maybe from the Midwest. But that’s not enough for me to determine his parentage.
I consider asking him outright, but then realize that might be considered rude.
When I can’t match him to a mug shot, I start looking for something else in his face: a similarity to mine.
It’s not that I think being related to a serial killer leaves you with a physical mark, a black dot or something; it’s more that I’m wondering if there’s a glint in the eyes, a hardness in the smile, a ghostlike battle scar that proves we’re the same.
The way siblings, even ones who look nothing alike, sometimes catch sight of each other and feel like they’re gazing into a mirror.
“To new friends,” he says. He’s plopped a blue umbrella into his own drink, and the two crinkle together as the rims of our cups touch.
To new friends. The flutter quickens as those words sink in.
I haven’t even arrived at the retreat yet, and already the Death Row Club is giving me everything I’ve ached for over the past few months.
As we cut our way through the clouds, all I can think is, no one is going to take this away from me.