Chapter 18 Nicola
GREER REMAINS UNCHARACTERISTICALLY SILENT as we walk, probably thinking about what Ros said.
It’s all well and good for Ros and Kemy to support the death penalty; their fathers were arrested, tried, and sentenced in states where it’s been abolished.
They can only ever consider hypotheticals, whereas Greer’s dealing with the cold, hard reality of having a father whose execution has been scheduled.
Tom Woods only appeared onscreen once in To Catch a Killer: in his pilot episode interview, arranged through the warden.
However, each subsequent episode featured a collect call from Montana State Prison.
Watching the show, he seemed nice enough, but we all know how misleading editing can be—and how charming sociopaths can make themselves when they know it’ll benefit them.
I couldn’t say how accurately he was portrayed because I never had the chance to talk to him.
I wanted to, though.
He phoned once, while we were working in my kitchen, and I was disappointed when instead of putting him on speaker, Greer made her apologies, then fled upstairs.
At first, I attributed my disappointment to missing out on a fleeting brush with fame.
What a wild story—to say you’d once talked to Tom Woods, serial killer.
But I quickly realized that wasn’t what interested me.
Was it the fact that I wanted Greer to introduce me to her father?
To reassure me that I was important enough to warrant that kind of introduction?
But no, that wasn’t it, either. So then what was it?
It wasn’t until she’d disappeared, taking her camera crew with her, that I understood.
I’d wanted to listen to his voice. Turn up the volume, shut my eyes, and make believe he was right in front of me—the door to his car standing wide open.
Would I have trusted him? Would I have liked him?
Would I have climbed into the passenger seat, the same way Claire had with my father?
Would I have fallen into the same trap she had?
Greer and I veer onto a different trail from the one we hiked down before. “I thought we were going back to the lodge,” I say.
“Do you want to? We can, if that’s what you want.”
I don’t, not really, and so we keep walking until the pines start thinning out.
That’s when the lake comes into view. Light catches on the surface, gleaming like a fresh coat of varnish; the choppy texture of the waves makes it look like someone took a palette knife to the water. Greer starts running for the shore.
“Wait!” I call as she shrugs off her jacket. “I don’t have a swimsuit with me.”
She grins before stripping off her T-shirt, revealing a sheer beige bralette underneath. I drop my gaze to avoid staring at her nipples.
“Private property. No swimsuit necessary.”
She unlaces her combat boots, toeing them off before unbuttoning her jeans and pushing those down as well.
She hasn’t shaved her bikini line even though it’s summer, but she doesn’t seem to care.
Tattoos cover most of her body: two full sleeves from shoulder to wrist, the entirety of her right hip all the way to her pelvis, two panels on the backs of her calves, and while it’s tough to see, a line of something running between her breasts.
She takes off for the dock, feet pounding across the weathered wooden planks, and then she leaps, limbs akimbo, flailing in midair, and splashes into the water.
Her head breaks the surface; she spits out a thin stream of water. Her curls are plastered to her forehead. “You coming?”
I didn’t plan for this, but neither did she if her mismatched underwear is any indication.
So I unbuckle my overalls and start stripping.
When I’m down to my bra and panties, I gingerly walk the length of the dock.
Greer doggy-paddles out into the water before turning around to look at me.
I suddenly feel exposed. Fighting the urge to wrap my arms around my flabby stomach, I start to lower myself onto the edge so I can slip into the water a little bit at a time.
“Oh god,” Greer says, “don’t do that. You’ll never get in if you do that.”
“Why?”
“Just jump.”
That means the water’s probably freezing.
I think about telling her, “I’m fine here, thanks,” maybe dipping my toes in and leaving it at that, but something about the way she’s watching makes me want to throw caution to the wind.
So, I take a few steps backward and run toward the end of the dock.
For a moment, I’m airborne, arms stretching out to catch the misty clouds above, before I crash into the water.
The cold knocks the air right out of me, vacuum-sealing my lungs. All I can see is the white froth of bubbles in front of my face as water shoots up my nostrils. I surface, sputtering and hacking, to the sound of Greer’s laughter.
“It gets better,” she reassures me as I wipe the stinging water from my eyes.
“Thanks. Good to know.”
She kicks her legs up until she’s floating on her back, staring at the sky. “Remember the last time we went swimming?”
It was in Ellicott Creek, one of the sections where volunteers regularly skim the surface free of bottle caps and beer cans. I don’t want to think about that, so instead I say, “I remember the last time you went swimming: that dunk tank at the county fair.”
“And whose fault was that? Almost half an hour up there, and no one managed to knock me off the bench—”
“Yeah, because they were making everyone pitch from, like, fifty feet back.”
“I’m about to walk away, all warm and dry, when up steps your dad.
He makes a couple weak-ass throws, and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we’re all good.
’ Then suddenly, he winds up like he’s pitching the fucking World Series, and the next thing I know, I’m paddling around in water that tastes like dysentery. ”
“He took his team all the way to States in high school.”
“I can believe it. I think that sonuvabitch nearly drowned me.” I reach over and shove her shoulder; she floats away but quickly paddles back to me. “How’s he doing, your dad?”
With anyone else, that question might come across as cruel, a reminder that he’s getting what he deserves in prison. I know she’s only asking, though, because she’s concerned. “I’m not sure. I haven’t spoken to him since he was arrested.”
“Most of our club members aren’t in contact with their parents anymore. It’s completely normal if you hate him—”
“I don’t hate him.”
“I’m just saying, after what he did, no one would blame you.”
Claire. I swallow down the lump that’s lodged itself in my throat. “I don’t hate him,” I repeat. “I know I should. I know it’d be the right thing to do, but I can’t.”
A wave blows across the surface of the lake; the two of us rise and dip, water slapping against our skin.
“Have you ever been to Niagara Falls?” she asks.
“Of course.”
“I went for the first time while we were filming. Took a day trip with the PAs. They asked me to take a photo of them, and through the lens, it looked like they were right on top of the water, like if they leaned backward over the safety rail, they would’ve tumbled right in.
But you know what was missing from that photo? ”
“What?”
“The fucking grass. If they’d fallen backward, they would’ve landed on a little strip of lawn. They might’ve walked away with bumps on the backs of their heads, but apart from that, they would’ve been fine. You couldn’t see it in the photos, but it was there.”
“So, you think Ros was lying?”
“No, she believes everything she says. But it’s easy to look at an old photo and fill in any missing details with whatever you think makes the most sense.
She probably doesn’t remember a family vacation from almost forty years ago, but she knows her father was a dangerous man.
So the ground disappears, and in its place, rapids threaten to rip her away.
She’s rewritten her past, dropped in clues so she can tell herself, ‘Of course he was a serial killer. No normal father would dangle his child over the Falls.’ I’ve never needed to do that.
I can accept that my father was a murderer and, at the same time, loved me more than anything in the world. ”
“It’s possible to do bad deeds and still be a good person?”
“Exactly. We contain motherfucking multitudes.”
I turn my head to look at her. We’re so close, our fingers are only a ripple away from touching.
“Can I ask you a question?”
She hums her consent, her gaze never drifting from the clouds meandering across the sky.
“Did you really film To Catch a Killer because you wanted to get justice for the victims—or was it to help your father?”
Greer hesitates, then asks, “Can’t it be both?” She waits for my answer, but I don’t have one. “You know, my dad used to take me to the lake when I was a kid.”
I try to imagine Tom Woods splashing around in the waves.
It was just the two of them growing up; her mother died when she was little, same as mine.
Looking at Greer, it’s hard to frame a mother in the picture—she’s so completely Tom Woods’s daughter.
She’s beautiful, like him: same angular cheeks, same snubbed, upturned nose.
“One day,” she continues, “we swam out as far as we could—so far out the sunbathers on the shore looked like specks. All we could hear was the sloshing around our ears, and our gasps of breath as we treaded water. Then he said, ‘It’s just you and me, Greer, until the end.’ He took my hands in his and tugged me underwater.
And we stayed down there, watching each other through the swirl of bubbles, until we couldn’t anymore. ”
Water shimmers on her skin. The freckles on her nose are darkest, but others ghost across her cheeks—the memory of summers past. My eyes covertly slide down her body to nipples poking out from under fabric. They don’t look anything like mine.
They don’t look anything like Claire’s, either.