Chapter 8 Nicola
IT’S LATE AFTERNOON when we reach the bridge.
“You might want to look away if you’re afraid of heights,” Zach warns.
As we pass the first balusters, I understand why.
Below, far below, water crashes through the gorge like a rabid hound straining on its chain—white-capped teeth foaming and snapping at the rocks.
The metal rails are close enough to scrape deep gouges in the bus’s side if the driver tilts the steering wheel even a fraction of an inch.
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until we reach the other side, when my lungs release.
Zach chuckles. “I know. Every year, I find myself imagining these Final Destination scenarios: bus plows through railing, cement cracks under the weight, whatever. And we all end up plummeting to our deaths.” The bus pulls back into the woods, pine trees swallowing the sun overhead. “Not the way anyone wants to go.”
We veer onto a pockmarked dirt road, rattling toward a massive lodge in the distance.
“Here we are,” Connor says, rising from his seat and gripping the headrest. “Your home for the next three days.” The driver shifts into park, and the doors fold open.
The air feels cooler here, the heavy scent of pine making my sinuses tingle.
Kemy steps off first, then Ros and Hannah.
As I yank my luggage from the overhead compartment, the sound of excited shrieking snaps my attention to the windows.
I expect to find Greer, but instead, a middle-aged woman wearing a loose-fitting macramé sweater is wrapping her arms around Kemy.
She catches sight of me through the window and smiles, her teeth slightly too big for her mouth.
Tamping down my disappointment, I shuffle along the aisle, passing Connor on the way.
“Pickup is on Monday at seven o’clock,” he says to the driver. “In the morning.”
I linger in the doorway, taking in the lodge.
The siding, railings, and window frames have all been carved from the same dark, hand-hewn timber.
A sharply arched portico frames the front door; a steep staircase leads to a raised porch.
Off to the side is a stump with an axe lodged in it, its handle curving down to a red blade.
I wonder how they found this place—so far off the beaten path. Airbnb maybe. Vrbo.
“You must be Nicola,” the woman calls, sweeping across the yard, the hem of her skirt dragging on the ground.
She opens her arms as if to embrace me, then seems to reconsider, clumsily offering a handshake instead.
“Imogen. I’ll be running some of the workshops this weekend.
I’m also a licensed social worker, so if there’s anything you want to talk about, anything at all, my door’s always open.
I know how hard this can be.” Her gaze shifts over my shoulder to Zach, who’s looking distinctly unimpressed. “That goes for you, too.”
“Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need a spiritual cleansing.”
Her smile tightens, but she simply says, “We’re so happy you’re here, Nicola,” before moving toward the luggage compartment under the bus.
Connor strides up to the front door and turns a key in the lock, nudging it open. “Your names are on the doors: Imogen on the main floor; Hannah, Ros, and Kemy on the lower level.”
“You mean the basement,” Ros says.
“We needed to put someone down there, Ros.” She clicks her tongue, but Connor moves on. “Zach and Nicola on the second floor. Find your rooms and get settled in.”
“Bonfire ceremony starts in an hour!” Imogen calls from where she’s unloading rolled-up yoga mats.
We trample onto the porch, where pine-carved benches with shabby throw pillows look out onto the front yard, then into the lodge itself.
From the exterior, I was expecting something spacious, upmarket, but instead, the leather couches and armchairs are faded from years of use.
Black-and-white photographs of pinecones (none of them any good) ladder the walls, while boxy windows let in dim bands of sunlight.
The overall effect is unexpectedly claustrophobic.
Zach and I scale the stairs to the second floor. My room is the first off the landing. A sign has been taped to my door, my name inked on top of a smear of sorbet watercolors. I assume Zach will be in the next room, but instead, he walks to the end of the hallway, opens the door, and disappears.
I wander to the door next to mine and stare at the sign:
GREER
Oh god, she really is coming this weekend.
It’s only a matter of time before the two of us are alone together, and then what will I say?
What will I do? A loud clank, followed by a watery hiss, makes me jump.
Is she in there already? I shift closer, press my cheek against the door, and listen for any sounds coming from inside—the sliding of drawers, the tapping of footsteps.
“She’s not here.”
I jerk backward. Connor stands at the top of the staircase.
“Oh. Do you know when she will be?”
He crosses the landing and opens my door. “Let’s talk inside.”
The room is small and spartan. A bed occupies the entirety of one wall. Against the opposite, a desk stands under a narrow window. Connor takes the chair, leaving me to settle awkwardly on the edge of the mattress. The starched linens crinkle; the scent of fresh bleach blooms in the air.
“We don’t know if she’s coming this weekend,” he says. “We set aside a room just in case.”
“But she gave you her phone. Why would she do that if she didn’t plan on coming?”
“She gave that to me months ago, right after filming wrapped on To Catch a Killer. The show’s producers and the attorneys at her firm agreed she shouldn’t have any contact with you.”
An ache rises in my chest. “Why not?”
“Everyone assumed your father’s case would go to trial, and the two of you would be called as witnesses. Witnesses aren’t supposed to interact with each other.”
“So what, she decided she’d rather cut all ties with me than get a slap on the wrist from a judge?”
“Tom Woods’s clemency hearing has been scheduled for next week. In Montana, a death sentence can only be overturned by the governor, after he’s received a recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Parole. This will be Greer’s last chance at getting his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.”
She never mentioned that while we were working on the show.
After her father’s arrest, Greer committed herself to rescuing him from the execution chamber.
She graduated from law school, joined a top-tier firm, and took him on as her first client, defending him, unsuccessfully, at each of his appeals.
Why would she have taken those months off to film To Catch a Killer, when she could’ve been gathering letters of support and helping to prepare his statement?
“I don’t know how you feel about your father,” he continues, “but Tom Woods means everything to her, regardless of what he’s done.”
“No one in their right mind would let Tom Woods out of prison.”
“She doesn’t want that; she just wants to keep him alive. Lock him up and throw away the key for all she cares—as long as she can visit him every week.”
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
“She can’t afford to get caught up in a legal scandal right now. The Board will be looking for any excuse to reject her petition. She can’t give them one.”
When he says it like that, it sounds convincing—except for one small problem. “My dad pled guilty, though. He’s been sentenced; the case is closed. She could’ve called anytime after that.”
“She’s been under a lot of pressure recently.”
She’s been under a lot of pressure? Is he serious?
The New Yorker published a profile about her right before the show premiered.
In between paragraphs celebrating her legal career were full-color portraits, captured in her two-million-dollar Sherman Oaks bungalow.
I’ll bet she doesn’t have creditors banging down her doors; I’ll bet she isn’t worrying about the bank repossessing that “surprisingly modest” (their words, not mine) home.
“I don’t know if you’ve tuned in to the news recently,” I say, “but I have also been under a lot of pressure.”
He at least has the decency to look embarrassed. “I never said you hadn’t. I know you probably can’t see it right now, but Greer does have good intentions. She insisted on inviting you this weekend—”
“Yeah, and then decided not to show up herself.” I force myself to calm down. The last thing I want is to enmesh a stranger in my interpersonal drama. It’s not his fault that Greer’s chosen to abandon me yet again. “How do you know each other?”
“I freelance for her law firm sometimes—surveillance mostly, data collection.”
“You’re a private investigator.”
He nods.
“Is that how you met?”
“No, we go back almost a decade—incredible, since she almost put me in the hospital the first time we met.”
“Wait, what?”
He smiles, and for the first time, it seems genuine.
“When her father was arrested, she was all over the news. I decided to introduce myself since we came from such similar circumstances. I located her law school, waited in the parking garage for her. Next thing I know, a stick of rebar’s swinging at my kneecaps, and then I’m rolling around on the ground, in pain so intense I can barely remember my name, with a very small, very angry woman standing over me, screaming, ‘Who sent you, fuckface?’ at the top of her lungs. ”
That sounds like Greer all right.
“We’ve been together ever since.”
Together? “So, you two are—”
“The club’s cofounders. I provide the list of member names each year; she provides the location.”
Not what I meant, but the news still takes me aback. “So, this lodge—”
“Is hers.”
Apparently, that two-million-dollar bungalow wasn’t enough. And here I’ve been trying to avoid foreclosure. I suddenly want very badly to put my fist through the plate-glass window behind him.
“Well,” I say, desperate to change the subject, “since you have her phone, at least no one listened to all those voicemail messages I left.”
His eyes shift to the corner, just for a moment, before returning to mine. Great.
“You listened to them, didn’t you?”
“No, of course not.”
That’s a bullshit lie if ever I heard one.
So now not only do I have to worry about the club members believing I conspired with my father, I also have to worry about their cofounder recounting every drunken, rambling, pathetic voicemail I’ve left over the past few months. I should’ve just stayed home.
A knock. Zach leans against the doorframe, hands buried in his pockets. “Hey, they need you downstairs.”
Connor doesn’t need to be asked twice. “We’re glad you’re here, Nicola,” he mutters before fleeing the room.
Zach surveys my accommodations, probably comparing them to his own, before wandering over to a ceramic statue positioned on a pedestal in the corner.
“There’s another one of these in my room.
Wonder if they got a bulk discount.” He picks it up and turns it over in his hands, taking in the figure’s rotund buttocks.
“Looks like my ex.” He’s started to place it back on the pedestal when the head half comes off, bobbing on a hinge at the back of its neck.
He peers inside the hollow body before snapping it shut again.
“What did they need Connor for?”
“Fuck all. I just got the feeling you wanted him gone.”
He smiles conspiratorially, and I can’t help but smile back.
“What were you two talking about?” he asks.
“Greer.”
“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but if you’d like someone to listen…
” He crosses the room and sinks down next to me.
“I’m not a licensed social worker or anything, but I’ve been told I’m pretty good at saying things like, ‘Oh, that bitch!’ and ‘No, she fucking didn’t! ’ at the appropriate times.”
I shouldn’t trust anyone, not after what happened with the minister’s wife, but I want so desperately to share my problems. Zach watches me with powder-blue eyes not all that dissimilar from my dad’s, not all that dissimilar from mine.
If I can’t trust him, someone who’s been through almost the exact same ordeal, then who can I trust?
I collapse back against the mattress, staring at the exposed rafters, and out come all the grievances that’ve been building up since the arrest, ending with how Greer abandoned me after cashing in on my familial trauma.
“The thing is, if she’d just texted me afterward, explained that we couldn’t talk because of her father’s hearing, I would’ve been frustrated, but I would’ve understood. Instead, she disappeared when I needed her the most.”
The mattress dips as he repositions himself. “Oh, that bitch.”
The corner of my mouth quirks up, but that’s all I can manage. “I assumed she’d be coming this weekend.”
“You really want to see her again?”
I grab the nearest pillow, clutch it against my chest. “I thought she was my friend.” The words come out pitifully small.
Zach stares out the window, deep in thought, before finally saying, “Look, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but if she shows up this weekend, I think you need to hold her accountable for what she’s done.
Tell her how the show’s impacted your life, how being abandoned made you feel.
Again, it’s up to you, and I’m more than happy to act as a human wall between the two of you if you want—” He extends his arms and shifts from side to side, demonstrating his wall potential.
“But I really think you owe it to yourself. I haven’t known you for long, but I know you deserve better than all this. ”
Do I? I recall the first interview I filmed for To Catch a Killer, sitting at my kitchen table.
“I keep coming back to the same conclusion,” I’d said.
“If I hadn’t invited her to spend summer vacation with me, Claire never would’ve come here.
She never would’ve left the house that night, never would’ve been snatched by the Ellicott Creek Ripper.
Really—” Here, I swallowed, not wanting to say the next part in front of the camera but forcing myself to anyway. “Really, I’m the reason she’s dead.”
When I watched it on television, with the ominous soundtrack and immediate cut to black, it all seemed overly dramatic. But that didn’t make my statement any less true: If Claire Tenenbaum had never met me, she would still be alive.
I don’t have a chance to tell him any of this, though, because at that moment, Ros’s drawl comes booming up the stairs. “Let’s go, everyone! Bonfire ceremony’s starting!”