Chapter 15 Nicola
SOMEONE’S POUNDING on my door.
Or maybe it’s the pounding in my head. It’s hard to tell right now.
My mouth feels like it’s been packed with cotton batting.
A thick thrush-like film coats my tongue, and mucus has crusted into the corners of my eyes.
I roll over and grope around on the bedside table for my phone, only to remember it’s not there.
“C’mon, Nic,” a voice calls from outside. Greer. “Breakfast’s on the table.”
I groan, force myself out of bed. I’m used to getting blackout drunk; I’m not, however, used to a—I check the clock on the wall—seven o’clock wake-up call.
I try to remember the days when I was out the door before sunrise, backpack slung over my shoulder, stuffed with lesson plans and graded assignments.
How quickly the body forgets; right now, mine feels like it’s about to crumple, leaving me to drag my way across the carpet.
Greer tries again. “You in there? Or have you been macheted to death somewhere in the woods?”
“Kind of feels like it,” I shout back. My sketchbooks lie scattered across the floor. I must’ve accidentally knocked everything off the desk before passing out. I start stacking them back into a neat pile. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
As her footsteps trample down the stairs, my fingers land on a paper that’s come loose: the portrait I sketched last night of not-Claire—the one I could’ve sworn I’d thrown in the garbage.
My eyes dart to the trash can, as if it’s somehow double-crossed me in coughing this back up.
Must’ve knocked that over, too; straightened it up but neglected to throw the papers back in.
Not-Claire smiles up at me. That slip of paper, burned during the bonfire ceremony, was supposed to purge her memory from this retreat, and yet here she is, back to haunt me.
I’m about to discard it, once and for all, when I notice a dull, reddish stain in the bottom corner.
What’s that? Not a wine stain, surely. The Moscato’s white.
I rub my thumb across it. Dry. Whatever it is had to have spilled a while ago.
I check my hands, my forearms. I didn’t cut myself, did I?
Laughter floats up the staircase.
I leave the sketch on the desk.
Breakfast, as promised, is waiting, family style, on the farmhouse table. I search the kitchen for Zach, but he must still be asleep.
“Hey!”
I turn to find Greer beckoning me to the end of the table. She has enough pancakes heaped on her plate to cause a coronary. I take the seat across from her.
“You’re looking rough,” she says.
She should talk. Dark circles rim her eyes. Maybe last night’s argument with Steffani affected her more than she’s letting on.
“I may have overdone it a little.”
She pushes her plate across the table so it’s in front of me. “Carbs and fluids.” She pours me some water, ice clinking against the plastic cup. “And—” She reaches into her pocket and removes a bottle of ibuprofen. “For the headache.”
“Do you always come stocked with Advil?”
“You’re not the first club member to show up with a hangover.
Look, we have a fun-filled day packed with activities, so drink up.
” I gratefully swallow two tablets and gulp down the water, while Greer fixes a new plate for herself.
The others are sawing into their pancakes, the grind of utensils against porcelain making my temples throb.
Getting drunk last night was a dumb decision.
There are less than forty-eight hours until my return flight.
My gaze drifts to the windows, and it’s almost like I can see Oliante in the distance, hazy and menacing.
I don’t want anything to stop me from enjoying this short reprieve.
“Hey.”
Connor slumps down on the bench next to Greer, tablet in hand. He doesn’t look like he slept much last night, either. “I have some good news and some bad news.”
Greer seems wary. “Okay, let’s start with the good news first.”
“Steffani’s gone.”
Her fork slips, slicing deep into her stack of pancakes, syrup crawling across the plate. She quickly pulls herself back together. “Gone.”
“I knocked on her door this morning to offer her a ride, but she’d already left.”
“Connor, why am I getting the feeling I’m not going to like the bad news part of this game?”
“Because the Challenger’s gone, too.”
Greer’s fork clatters against the plate. She’s halfway across the lodge before either of us can get up from the bench. Connor and I race after her as she slams the screen door open and steps onto the porch. There’s nothing in the driveway—just a muddy stretch of road where the car should be.
“Are you serious?” She smacks her fist against the railing. “Are you fucking serious right now? She stole my car?”
“Maybe not,” Connor says. “Zach’s room is empty. Looks like he left with her.”
She walks over to the road and crouches down, examining the tire tracks. “They’re fresh. They must’ve left, what, a few hours ago?”
“Do you want me to call the police?”
She takes a few steps in the direction of the tracks, then abruptly wheels back toward us.
“No, don’t call anyone. The members of this club expect privacy.
That means no police stomping around, investigating a case of grand theft auto.
Think about it. If the press gets a whiff of this, all our names will be on the nightly news.
Not a big deal for me, but what about Ros and Kemy?
” Her stare follows the road to where it disappears into the dusky pines.
“Besides, Zach’ll bring the car back. He probably just wanted to stop in town. ”
“Isn’t that more of a reason to track him down? He could drive back loaded up on alcohol, opiates, whatever else he’s using nowadays, and get into an accident. Now that would bring us attention.”
Wait, what? What are they talking about?
“He wouldn’t do that.” He starts to object, but she doesn’t give him the chance. “I know you don’t trust him, but trust me. I’ve known Zach for a long time. He’s going through some shit, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to behave irresponsibly.”
“He’s an addict. He’s homeless. He—”
She shushes him with a sharp head tilt in my direction. Then she turns to me and repeats herself: “Zach’s going through some shit.”
Maybe it’s the hangover, but I’m having a hard time processing this.
Did he say opiates? Claire’s brother, the one who was in business school, became addicted to painkillers after an ACL injury.
No one had known at the time; there weren’t any obvious physical indicators—nothing like the sores and dental decay associated with meth—and he’d been high-functioning for months before he started to falter.
One day, he simply stopped showing up to classes, and the next thing you knew, he was taking a semester-long “sabbatical” to a rehab clinic.
Claire assumed this meant she’d step into the role of golden child, that her father would finally start looking at her with approval; instead, she fell off the map entirely while all her family’s resources—including their time and attention—were funneled into her wayward sibling.
When Claire disappeared, they hadn’t even bothered booking flights to Oliante because her brother’s sobriety took priority over whatever trouble she’d gotten herself into.
It wasn’t until she washed up, dead, on the banks of Ellicott Creek that they finally decided to put their little girl first.
Claire had shown me photos of her brother on social media.
He looked normal, just like how Zach had looked normal on the flight.
Zach wouldn’t have shared something as personal as his substance abuse with a relative stranger, but still, I confessed what happened behind the scenes on To Catch a Killer, told him things no one else knew about me.
I can’t help feeling a little betrayed. What else was he hiding?
“We’ve all been through rough times,” Connor counters. “That’s no excuse for him dropping out of rehab.”
“You can’t force these things. The most we can do is offer to pay for the best clinic available. He’ll let us know when he’s ready—”
“The morgue’ll let us know when he’s dead.”
Greer stiffens. Jesus, is it really that bad?
“What happened to the car?”
We turn around to find the other club members filing onto the porch. Kemy leans against the railing, considering the empty space in the driveway.
“Steffani and Zach left this morning.”
Ros, still wearing her puffer vest and hiking boots, jogs down the stairs. “Please,” she says. “Please tell me you still have her phone.”
Connor and Greer exchange a look. “We’ll have to check,” she says, “but she didn’t record anything. We went through her photos and audio files last night.”
“That doesn’t mean she won’t tell anyone—”
“If she does, I’ll deal with it.”
Despite the confidence she’s trying to project, Greer looks like she’s feeling the weight of Steffani’s disappearance just as much as the other club members.
Does she actually think that Steffani might divulge their identities to the press, maybe as an act of revenge against Greer for refusing to investigate her father?
The remnants of the night air are just beginning to dissipate, and we can still see the faintest smoke of our breaths. “Come on,” Imogen says, a canvas tote swinging by her side. “No use worrying.” But Ros doesn’t seem to relax; if anything, her shoulders draw up even higher.
Greer turns to me. “I’m going to follow the tire tracks, see if I can figure out where they were headed. If you want to hang out here, we can walk to the morning activity together.”
Zach seemed agitated last night. If he was high, that could explain the paranoia: his insistence that Greer couldn’t be trusted, the way he kept looking over my shoulder.
Add in the stress of his father’s execution, and he might’ve blown through his pills faster than usual.
Drug addicts act impulsively, right? It’s not like he would’ve left a message letting us know where he’d gone, when he’d be back.
He would’ve just jumped in the car and left.
It all makes complete and perfect sense. So, why do I still feel like it doesn’t?
The club members amble down a narrow hiking trail.
“Actually,” I say, “if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll walk with the others.
” Maybe they’re aware of other reasons why he might’ve taken off in the middle of the night.
I’m his friend; it’s my duty to discover what happened, to make sure he’s all right.
Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I could swear Greer looks disappointed before schooling her expression into something more neutral. “Yeah, sure. I’ll catch up with you later.”
As I follow the others into the woods, my memory draws me back twenty years, to the morning I discovered Claire missing from her bed, her jacket still hanging on the door peg, her phone charging on the bedside table.
My dad told me she’d probably just gone into town, too.