Chapter 21 Nicola
“MURDERED.”
The three of us—Connor, Greer, and I—are sitting in the upstairs loft. The lodge feels empty, lifeless, all the others having long since gone to bed. Connor reaches for the shard on the table in front of us and inspects the blood embedded in its cracks. “Do you think it was that girl? Steffani?”
“She didn’t know Zach,” Greer argues. “Why would she want him dead?”
He doesn’t volunteer an answer. Steffani hadn’t seemed overly interested in any of the club members; the only thing that mattered to her was bringing her father to justice—her father, the serial killer.
“Maybe it was her dad,” I suggest. “She had all that evidence about how he abused her. Who knows what else was in that folder? Did either of you take a look?”
Connor shakes his head. Greer hesitates, then says, “No, we didn’t get that far.”
“You saw the scars he left on her. Does that seem like the kind of man who’d let her just walk away?”
“The tablet’s programmed to alert me if an electronic device comes within range of the lodge,” Connor says, “and no one travels anywhere without a cell phone nowadays. There were no new notifications last night.”
“Can we check anyway? Just to be sure?” Maybe he accidentally silenced the tablet or fell asleep and missed the alert.
He looks uncomfortable. “No, we can’t.”
“Why not?”
He reaches into his messenger bag, extracts a bundle of white cloth, and slowly unfolds it. There, in its creases, is the tablet. The screen’s shattered; the bottom, where the USB port is, dented beyond repair.
“When did that happen?” Greer asks.
“Sometime after the funeral.”
It looks like someone took a hammer to it, but still I ask, “Could it have been an accident?”
He shoots me a look. “No.”
Greer picks up a splinter of glass that’s come loose. “I’ll bet you anything it was Ros. Remember how twitchy she got when Nic suggested calling the cops? Probably wanted to make sure none of us could change our minds.” She lobs the glass into the nearby wastepaper basket.
“What about Steffani’s phone?” I ask, remembering how he snatched it from her when she arrived.
“Gone. She must’ve taken it when she left.”
“Is there a landline?”
Again, he shakes his head.
“So, we’re stranded out here with no way of contacting anyone.”
“Not unless someone volunteers to walk into town.”
Outside, the pines appear much thicker and darker than yesterday. “How far is it?”
“About thirty miles. Most of which is through the woods.”
Thirty miles—that’s about a ten-hour walk, probably longer since it’s not on flat road.
And you’re leaving yourself exposed out there.
Don’t go into the forest. Isn’t that the golden rule of horror films?
The moment you leave the safety of the cabin or the lodge or whatever, that’s when you’re marked for death.
Greer must notice the look on my face because she says, “It’s a long walk, Nic.
And even if there weren’t a possible murderer on the loose, it’d be dangerous.
The trails aren’t well marked. If you wandered off them by accident… ”
Getting lost in the woods would be as good a death sentence as a hatchet to the back.
“We’re safe here,” he says. “There are locks on all the doors and windows. We’ll make an announcement tomorrow, tell everyone to stay inside and travel in twos.”
Travel in twos.
“But if it wasn’t an outsider…” I begin, then hesitate; I don’t know how to phrase this tactfully. “If it wasn’t an outsider, then it must’ve been someone staying at the lodge. You don’t think it could’ve been one of us?”
He leans back in his chair. “We’ve been going on these retreats for years, and no one’s ever turned up dead. The only change to our membership roster this year was—” Connor pretends to think about it before pointing his finger at my chest, like a loaded gun. “You.”
My back straightens. “What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t mean anything.”
Greer shoots a glare in his direction, and he immediately backs off. “Make sure the windows are locked in your rooms.” He stands and heads toward the staircase. “I’ll double-check all the common areas.”
“What about Zach?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t bury him if he was murdered. We need to preserve any evidence until the police arrive.”
Connor glances out into the backyard, at the mound of freshly tilled dirt next to the open grave. “I’ll bring him to the storage room. We can leave him there for now.”
“Do you need any help?” Greer asks.
“No, you two get some sleep. I’ll figure it out.”
I wait until his footsteps have faded before turning back to her. “What Connor said about the membership roster, he doesn’t think that I could’ve—”
“No, nothing like that. He just gets overprotective when it comes to our members. None of us had any reason to kill Zach. We all liked him.”
Overprotective. That’s one word for it. He and Greer obviously have a close relationship.
What does she see in him? Is it the way he tackles any problems she doesn’t want to deal with?
The way he makes sure that she and all the others are safe?
Claire once gave me that love languages quiz.
Hers was words of affirmation; mine was acts of service.
I understand how enticing someone taking care of you can be.
Greer stands and stretches, arching her back. “We should probably get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
Through the windows, the woods wait, like a bottomless black sea, ebbing and flowing with the wind. With the tablet’s security system out of commission, anyone could be out there, watching us. I hurry after her.
When we reach our respective doors, my stomach sinks at the thought of separating. I know Connor said he was double-checking the locks, but what if someone manages to break in anyway? If they walk upstairs, my room is right off the landing; mine would be the first door they reach.
“Hey,” I call before she can disappear into her room. “Do you think maybe we should stay together tonight?”
She stops, hand still wrapped around the knob. “Together?”
Embarrassment abruptly overtakes me. What the fuck, Nicola? I rush to provide an explanation. “We’re supposed to stay in twos, right? Just to be safe?”
The longer she stares at me, the warmer the back of my neck feels. Sweat breaks out across my temples. I shouldn’t have said anything; now she thinks…
Slowly, she walks forward, until she’s standing right in front of me. My gaze drops to her lips, to the freckle nestled in the left corner. “Just to be safe,” she repeats. She reaches around me, my breath catching in my throat, turns the knob, and pushes my door open.
I barrel into the room, grab my pajamas off the chair, and lock myself in the bathroom before she can say anything else. “Back in a sec.”
I strip down, avoiding the mirror as much as possible.
Back in high school, I was mercilessly bullied for being fat, but college opened up an entirely new world for me: one where people, artists, saw bodies like mine as aesthetically interesting.
Claire asked me to pose for her once, when she was taking her first photography course.
“I could watch you all day,” she told me as I stripped off my clothes, one piece at a time, revealing the curves that composed my shape.
She set up her lighting equipment, staged her twin bed to look the way she wanted, then after a few clicks of the shutter, she climbed onto the mattress, camera still looped around her neck.
“I thought we were shooting portraits for your class,” I whispered as she ran her fingers up the inside of my thigh.
“Maybe I want some for myself.”
Afterward, she flipped through the photos with me curled up next to her, chin propped on her bare shoulder.
When we reached the most intimate ones, in which hair stuck to my sweat-drenched forehead and my face scrunched in what looked like a mixture of ecstasy and intense pain, I reached across her for the delete button.
“No!” She slapped my hand away. “Are you kidding? These are the best ones. Look at you.”
I didn’t want to look at myself. I was too ugly in these, too exposed.
“Look,” she tried again. “You’re beautiful.”
I glanced at the screen out of the corner of my eye, not willing to face myself head-on.
She didn’t switch between photos; instead, she lingered on the one I could only assume she liked the best. As the minutes passed, as I became acclimated to this version of myself, I began to notice little things: the way my thighs puckered, all the texture there; how the soft rolls at my midsection added dimension and volume; the way the camera indicated the movement of flesh under my arms. My body might not have been like Claire’s, might not have conformed to the rigid beauty standards of the aughts, but that didn’t have to mean it wasn’t beautiful.
She set the camera aside and pulled me half onto her lap. I looked down and marveled at how my hips eclipsed hers, at how perfect we were together.
“I love you,” she murmured, and I loved her, too.
But times change, situations change. Now, it’s not until I’m safeguarded behind baggy sweats and an extra-large T-shirt that I feel comfortable enough to check my reflection.
Jesus, what am I doing? I should tell Greer to go back to her room.
Shift the dresser, block the entrance from possible intruders, and I’ll be fine until morning.
Instead, I switch off the lights and crack the bathroom door.
Greer is standing over my desk, looking at something. Her jeans have been tossed onto the floor, along with the bralette. When she bends forward, the hem of her T-shirt rides up her thighs. I swallow hard at the sight.
“It’s Claire, isn’t it?” The portrait I tried to throw away is spread open before her. “Not exactly the same—the chin’s different; the eyebrows, too—but it’s still her.”