Chapter 17 Nicola #2
When I can’t find any on her, I return to my easel.
Did her father beat her, before he was arrested?
Is that why she defended Steffani last night?
Because she was able to relate to what she’d been through?
Hannah might not have any visible bruises, but the signs are there all the same: the way she disappears into the background, her oversized reactions to small mistakes.
She didn’t reveal anything about her father at the bonfire ceremony, but I’m stunned to find myself thinking: If anyone else’s parent received the death penalty, I hope it was hers.
I don’t, of course. I don’t wish anyone dead, but god, it can be so easy to give in to our worst impulses sometimes.
“There you are,” Ros calls. I whirl around, expecting to find Zach, but it’s Greer skidding down the embankment. She tosses her suede jacket over the chair to my right. “Did you follow them?”
“As far as we could. The tire tracks led to the bridge.”
“Shit.” Ros slaps her brush against the canvas with a wet thwack. “I swear, if she tells anyone about us—”
“She won’t.” Greer drops into the chair. “Trust me, she doesn’t care about this club. The only thing she cares about is getting retribution.”
“I hope you’re right, because if our names end up online, I will track you down. You know that, right?”
Greer sighs, clearly used to these kinds of threats. “I know, Ros.”
“Good.” She settles back in her chair and resumes painting.
Greer rests her elbows on her knees, hangs her head. She looks exhausted. Finally, she peers up at me, curls sagging into her eyes. “Having fun?”
“Tons. Whose idea was this?”
“Mine.” Of course. “Based on all the paintings in your living room, it seemed like something you’d enjoy.”
Right before graduation, I’d informed my dad that I was going to throw away the paintings I’d completed in college.
All of them brought back memories of time spent with Claire—or time spent mourning her.
The following day, an employee from a shipping company knocked on my door, ready to pack and transport them back home.
I’d accused my dad of overstepping, and we’d exchanged some harsh words.
He kept the paintings in storage until the To Catch a Killer producers asked to film in our home. Then he brought them out and arranged them into a gallery in our living room.
“What do you think?” he asked when I came home from school. He was tense, clearly ready to strip the walls bare at the slightest hint of discomfort from me.
I’d expected the paintings to dredge up feelings of guilt and loss, but instead, it felt like a reunion with old friends still awash in the giddy glow of our twenties. “Thanks.” I smiled, as he hugged me to his side.
I angle my easel so Greer can see the rough outline there. “This one will not be joining the gallery.”
“Not bad, but if I may—” She loads a brush with black paint and readies it above the canvas, as if waiting for my permission.
I motion for her to proceed. A thick slash appears in the sky, followed by another, until she’s painted what looks like a stick-figure dragon.
“Rawr,” she says, then looks at me as if to say, your turn.
I pick up my brush, dip it in the black, and draw a little group of stick men fleeing the clearing, their hands waving in the air; their mouths, dots dabbed onto their faces.
“Trying to escape, is that the plan?” She grabs another brush and splashes first yellow, then orange, then red across the painting: flames raging through the woodland grove. She flicks her brush one final time before saying, “Nice try, but no one can outrun a dragon.”
“Oh, really?”
I stick my thumb in the water cup, then swipe the canvas, so there’s nothing but a smudge where her dragon used to be. Her jaw drops in comic disbelief. “Wow, is that how it’s going to be?”
“That’s how it’s going to be.” I wipe my thumb on my overalls, already speckled with paint from my classes. When I look back up, she’s smiling at me, and I can’t help but smile back. It feels just like old times.
“So,” Kemy says, interrupting the moment, “what happened last night? Did you agree to help Steffani investigate her father?”
Greer grabs her brushes and dunks them in the water. “We can’t. To Catch a Killer hasn’t been renewed for a second season. The network execs are waiting to see what happens.”
“I thought the ratings were good. What are they waiting for?”
“To see if my dad will be available for filming.”
An uncomfortable silence fills the clearing. The network’s waiting to see if his sentence gets commuted; they don’t want to renew the show for another season without a serial killer attached, and there’s no way he can sign a contract if he’s dead.
“Have they considered partnering you up with someone else? It doesn’t need to be Tom Woods. What about his last victim—the one who escaped? I would think she’d have some valuable insights about the nature of serial killers.”
Greer continues swirling the brushes around and around.
“A judge determined that she’s entitled to her privacy, since she was a minor when the crime was committed.
The press has played nice so far. She’s not going to fuck that up by appearing on a stupid television show.
Besides—” She knocks the brushes against the side of the cup, shaking any remaining droplets loose, and lays them on the table.
“She doesn’t want to see me. It’d just bring up all kinds of bad memories, I’m sure. ”
“Have you asked her?”
She hesitates before admitting, “No.”
“Do you think maybe you should?”
Greer wrongly assumed that I wouldn’t want to hear from her after To Catch a Killer premiered; is it possible she could be making the same mistake with her father’s final victim? That maybe she would welcome the chance to reconnect with the woman who saved her life by calling 911?
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes with the show,” Greer says, “but at the end of the day, we caught a serial killer, and that never would’ve been possible without my father. He helped all those families get closure; whether you like him or not, he did good here.”
Ros lays her paintbrush on the nearest table. “Greer, honey, with all due respect, our parents aren’t capable of doing good. That’s just not who they are.”
“I know who my father is, thanks.”
“Do you? Because it took wading through all my childhood memories for me to understand who mine really was. Have I ever told you about the time we went on vacation to Niagara Falls? We were all enjoying the view, when out of nowhere, my father picked me up and started swinging me back and forth, like he was going to toss me over the edge. There’s even a photo: We’re both laughing, and I’m dangling upside down over the safety rail, ponytail swaying above the water.
I could feel the mist on the back of my neck.
” She reaches back and rests her hand there.
“I was scared shitless, but I never said anything.”
Greer, likewise, says nothing. She stares at the damp patch spreading under her waterlogged brushes, her hands tensing into fists in her lap.
“Him getting arrested was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Ros continues. “Have you even considered what your life might be like without your father? If maybe that would give you a little more freedom, a little more—”
“You know—” Greer stands and yanks her jacket off the back of her chair. “It’s probably time for me to start getting lunch ready.”
Ros, clearly sensing she’s crossed a line, backtracks. “Oh, come on, we didn’t mean to upset you. There’s no need to leave.”
“I’m not upset. I just want to make sure food is on the table when you get back. Enjoy yourselves, and I’ll see you in a few hours.” Ros prepares to make another attempt, but Greer doesn’t give her the chance. “It’s fine, really. Just give me some space.”
With that, she starts for the hiking trail.
“Wait!” I vault to my feet, almost tipping over my easel in the process. I reach out to steady it. “Mind if I come with you? I forgot something back at the lodge.”
A blatant lie. She must know it, but still she says, “Yeah, sure, wouldn’t want you losing your way.”
“You’re stealing Nicola away, too?” Ros gripes, but Greer simply turns and starts climbing back up the embankment. I follow, but before the pines eclipse the view behind me, I take one final look at the still-empty chair across the circle.