Chapter 14 Nicola
IT’S WELL PAST two o’clock in the morning. The strumming of “Wonderwall” has ceased, the only sounds now the waxy chirps of crickets. I should be asleep, but instead, my sketchbook’s open, the nearly empty bottle of Moscato on my desk.
I put down my pencil, assess what I’ve drawn.
What was supposed to be an imaginary woman has turned out to, once again, be Claire.
They all turn out to be Claire. It’s part of the reason I gave up on my dream of becoming an artist. Every time I examined a half-finished portrait and recognized her, it felt like a betrayal.
A betrayal of my subconscious, but also, a betrayal of the talent that was supposed to be an escape hatch from my hometown.
For a moment, the graphite shifts into vibrant Technicolor, and I swear I can see the flecks of gold in her irises as she watched me from across the drafting table where we both worked.
The weight of her stare presses down until finally, I rip the page out of my sketchbook, fold it in half, and toss it into the trash can.
I reach for the bottle, hurriedly chugging what’s left.
It’s never enough.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, a single light’s been left on, illuminating a figure sitting at the farmhouse table, empty bottles clustered in front of him. Zach.
“Hey.”
He lifts his head.
“Nic. Hey.” He tries for a smile, but falls short. “You can’t sleep, either?”
“Not tonight.”
“How’d it go with Greer?”
“Fine. How’re you doing?”
“Fine.” He sweeps his hand, as if to say nothing wrong here, and accidentally knocks over one of the bottles.
It topples to the floor, the racket making me flinch.
Neither of us is fine. I know all about getting drunk because you want to cross the wires in your brain, plug them into the wrong sockets, so they can no longer process the pain of what’s happened to you.
I rest my hand on top of his. “If you want to talk, I’m not going to bed anytime soon. Or if you just want someone to sit here with you, I can do that, too.”
Zach’s hand trembles under mine. It takes a moment for me to realize he’s crying.
“You’re a good friend,” he says. “You’re a really good friend, Nic.”
He stands, teetering forward until his arms are wrapped around my midsection, his bent head resting in the crook between my neck and shoulder.
We remain there, my T-shirt growing damp around the collar, his sobs hiccupping in his chest, gradually growing softer and softer until finally, he pulls back. “You shouldn’t trust her.”
I don’t need to ask who he’s talking about. “You’re probably right. She’ll keep disappointing me until I stop letting her.”
“That’s not what I mean. She’s lying to you; she’s lying to all of us—”
In the foyer, a door creaks open. Zach falls silent. We wait for footsteps, either coming toward us or heading away, but the lodge has gone still.
“What do you mean?” I ask when it’s clear that no one’s coming.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” His gaze is fixed over my shoulder; I turn around in case someone’s behind me, but there are only shadows. “Promise.”
And with that, he disappears through the doorway.
What did he mean, Greer’s lying? Something about the show?
I grab another bottle of wine and head into the foyer.
That feeling comes over me again, like I’m being watched.
I rush up the stairs, and am about to sneak back into my room, when the whisper-shouts start from down the hall. I follow them to Greer’s door.
“—more than anyone, I thought you’d understand.” Steffani.
“I understand that you’re hurting right now.” Greer. “But what you’re talking about isn’t going to make you feel better.”
“Who are you to say what’ll make me feel better? All these years, I’ve only wanted one thing: him, dead. Can you honestly stand there and tell me he doesn’t deserve it?”
Silence—for so long, I start to wonder if the entire conversation was nothing more than a hallucination. Then, Greer says, “I’m sorry.”
“You are such a fucking disappointment.”
Footsteps cross the floor. I wrench backward, get halfway down the hall before the door slams open and out storms Steffani. Our eyes lock.
“How much of that did you hear?”
Shit. I open my mouth, ready to make up all sorts of lies, but she cuts me off. “You know what? Fuck it, it doesn’t matter.” She points to the bottle gripped in my fist. “You willing to share?”
That’s how we end up on the balcony, lounging in the oversized Adirondack chairs.
When Steffani props her feet up on the railing, her jeans slide up enough for me to see another nasty scar running up the back of her calf—the skin there puckered and discolored.
I try not to stare. The night air has turned crisp, and in the distance, you can see the bridge arching across the water, thousands of stars rippling in the currents.
“It’s nice up here,” she says, burrowing deeper. “We don’t have a lot of stars where I’m from.”
“Where are you from?”
“California. Los Angeles. The closest we ever get are the airplanes flying into LAX. I mistook them for shooting stars when I was little. Made a wish every time another batch of tourists arrived.”
A gemstone dangles over the collar of her T-shirt. It reminds me of my father’s first victim, Heather Dickerson—of the lucky horseshoe necklace she wore in all her photos. The one that turned out to be not so lucky after all.
“So, Greer’s not willing to help?”
“Guess not.” She takes a swig from the bottle. “Probably shouldn’t be surprised, what with all the shit I’ve heard about her and her father.”
“What’ve you heard?”
“That she knew he was a murderer.”
What? “That’s not true.”
“Are you sure? They lived all alone, in the middle of nowhere, for decades. What are the chances she didn’t know what was happening?”
“But she’s the one who called the police—”
“Like that means anything. Maybe the guilt became too much for her.”
Greer would never, could never, stand by while innocent women were murdered. “You know everyone’s saying the same thing about me, right? That I knew what my father was, even helped lure girls into his truck.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
I force myself to hold her razor-edged stare.
For a moment, I’m convinced she’s somehow managed to cut through all my defensive layers, that she knows about what happened in college, but then she looks away.
“All right,” she says, and I allow myself to breathe again.
“But just because you didn’t doesn’t mean the same’s true for her.
She’s so eager to defend him—in court, on her show.
She wants to help him escape justice, whereas I think men like him should get what’s coming to them.
” She reaches, probably unconsciously, toward the scar on her stomach.
“Some men deserve to die for what they’ve done. ”
Her father. She doesn’t just want him convicted, she wants the death penalty. No wonder Greer wasn’t all that eager to help.
A loud creak erupts from the staircase.
“Damnit.” She twists to look behind us. “That’s probably the jackass who wanted to throw me out. I’m supposed to stay in my room. If he finds me out here—”
“Go.”
She’s sprinting into the hallway before I even finish the word, leaving me all alone with the bottle of wine.
It’s almost full, and while I know I shouldn’t, I start slugging down the rest like it’s the only thing keeping me alive.
Have they really been saying that about Greer, that she was somehow complicit in her father’s crimes?
I’ve been so focused on my own steadily declining reputation, I haven’t bothered searching for smear campaigns launched against her.
I have no doubt any allegations being made are just as false as the ones targeting me, but knowing she might’ve been struggling, too, makes me feel a shameful sense of relief. What can I say? Misery loves company.
I attempt to set down the now-empty bottle, but it tips over, rolling across the deck and clanking against the posts.
Guess that means it’s time for bed. When I push myself up, though, my knees go rubbery.
I collapse backward. The balcony spins like someone dropped me onto the Scrambler at the county fair; my stomach lurches as the woods fade, then shift back into focus.
Maybe I could stay out here tonight. The weather’s nice enough.
Something trickles down my chin, and when I go to rub it away, I realize it’s drool.
I imagine waking up to find all the club members looming over me, assessing my spit-slicked skin, my T-shirt rucked up to my bra line, shaking their heads in disgust. Looks like what they’re saying online is true: Nicola Fischer is nothing more than a useless drunk, chasing her loneliness and guilt to the bottom of a bottle.
I grab ahold of the railing and drag myself to my feet.
It’s too high for me to tumble over, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing that keeps me from splattering onto the ground below.
The floor pitches and rocks under my feet, and as I stumble into the hallway, I press my palm against the wall to help keep my balance.
My door’s cracked open, a thin line of light cutting across the hallway. It blurs and sharpens, a trembling guitar string recently plucked. I elbow my way through, ready to fall into bed and not wake up until tomorrow afternoon.
Someone’s standing next to the bed.
Their face warps. I squint as hard as I can, but the more I try to focus, the more everything breaks apart.
“A head,” Picasso once said, “is a matter of eyes, nose, mouth, which can be distributed in any way you like.” Their features (eyes, nose, mouth) swim across my vision, each one settling and resettling in a place that’s not right.
“What,” I start, my tongue swollen in my mouth, “are you…?”
The desk’s breaking apart, the walls, the floor, and I’m breaking apart, too. My mind smudges, paint smeared across the canvas, over and over again, until everything goes blank.