Chapter 22 Nicola
WHEN I WAKE UP, Greer’s still there.
I roll onto my side, every muscle in my body feeling like a cloth that’s been wrung out and hung on the rack to dry.
Watching her sleep, mouth half-open, little wheezes of breath whistling out of her, I’m filled with an embarrassing amount of gratitude.
I expected her to slide out of bed in the middle of the night, collect her clothes, and tiptoe into the hallway, but here she is.
Maybe I need to stop assuming the worst. That everyone I care about will leave. Or be taken away.
I trace my finger down the length of her arm, through the garden of peonies and gardenias that’ve been tattooed there.
It skids over wisp-thin hairs, over freckles scattered in between dragonfly wings, over rough patches of scar tissue that are all too familiar.
Scars are the cost of growing up in a rural community, where anything can get you.
The broken wires on the playground’s chain-link fence that scrape your skin.
The rusted nail puncturing the heel of your sneaker.
The hammer strike to your thumbnail that turns it purple, so it falls off a week later.
We all have our fair share of scars. Me and Greer and—
Steffani.
Could she really have killed Zach? They disappeared at the same time, which doesn’t seem like a coincidence, but she seemed so small, so weak.
Then again, striking someone from behind doesn’t require any great show of strength, just the element of surprise, and she certainly would’ve had that.
But why would she have done it? Why would anyone?
It’s like Greer said last night, he may have been a little prickly, but everyone seemed to like him. What am I missing here?
Outside, sunlight’s just beginning to bleed across the sky.
It’s still early; there’s probably no one else awake yet.
Zach’s room is at the end of the hallway; it’s only a few steps from my door to his.
I slowly ease the tangled mess of bedsheets from around my ankles.
I don’t want Greer to wake up and find me gone, but at the same time, I feel like I owe this to Zach.
Especially after how quick I was to believe him responsible for his own death.
All the doors in the hallway are closed.
I hurry to his, half expecting to find it locked.
However, when I turn the knob, it opens easily.
I take in the neatly made bed, the uncluttered desktop.
Is this the right room? It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here this weekend.
I throw open the closet, check under the bed, but whatever he brought has already been removed.
Someone must’ve packed his belongings and carted them off somewhere.
How could he have been erased this easily?
Gone without so much as a leftover receipt in the trash, a smear of toothpaste on the sink.
I remember a lecturer at Cooper telling us about damnatio memoriae, the condemnation of memory, when someone’s name, their image, was struck from all records. Historical negationism.
A statue, nearly identical to the one in my room, stands on a pedestal in the corner.
Zach told me about it when we first arrived at the lodge, suggesting maybe Greer had bought them in bulk to decorate.
Unlike mine, this one’s clutching some sort of rolled-up blanket.
I take a closer look, realize it’s a replica of an ancient fertility statue, and what it’s holding is very much not a blanket.
I stifle my laughter, not wanting to wake the others, although honestly, it’s a relief to snicker at something so juvenile after everything that’s transpired this weekend.
I pick up the statue, bring it close to my face.
All things considered, it’s pretty well-crafted.
We took a ceramics course sophomore year, and I remember using a similar shade of dark umber paint.
Different finish, though, one that was more spongy and—
My thoughts stutter out suddenly.
Wait.
Wait, is that—
I don’t have the ceramic shard with me—Connor took it with him after our conversation—but this statue looks like it has the same finish and color.
I rotate it in my hands, checking for any missing slivers, but find none.
If there’s one in this room, though, another in mine, how many more statues might be scattered around the lodge?
Could one of these have been the murder weapon?
I’m about to set it back on the pedestal when I remember the hinge at the back of its neck, the empty cranny within. I lift the head and peer inside.
Notebooks.
There’s an entire stack—pocket-sized ones, like the kind you’d buy at Dollar General in a four-pack. I extract the top one, flip the cover open.
Overheard Imogen asking Connor for advice, since she’s being sued by one of her clients for harassment.
The client presented thousands of texts between them as evidence, claimed Imogen “breached physical boundaries” by hugging her at the ends of their sessions, then started showing up, unannounced, at her house to “check in.” Imogen claims she was concerned for the client’s well-being, since she was planning to leave an abusive relationship; however, since no domestic disturbance reports were ever filed, she’s having a hard time proving the relationship was troubled.
I reread the paragraph. Why did Zach feel the need to write this down?
Maybe it’s a personal journal, and he was reflecting on how that information made him feel?
But as I flip through the rest of the pages, there’s no self-examination, only more dry facts about Imogen: snippets of conversations between her and the other club members, the location of her private practice.
I remove another notebook.
Connor keeps a photo of his brother—Michael?
(Needs to be fact-checked)—in his wallet.
Apparently, he used to call Michael every week to exchange memories of their parents.
When Michael finally pushed back, saying he didn’t want to revisit that part of his life anymore, Connor tried to guilt him into continuing.
After the cult was disbanded, Connor moved in with his grandparents, who wouldn’t even allow his mother’s name to be spoken in the house.
He claimed Michael was the only person he’d ever been able to speak with openly.
Less than a month later, Michael died by suicide.
Connor blames himself; he probably should.
“Needs to be fact-checked.” Why would anything about us need fact-checking? A dull, throbbing inevitability stirs the air. I thrust my hand into the hollow belly of the statue, pull out the remaining notebooks, almost fumbling them to the floor in my haste.
The next one is Hannah’s.
Hannah’s father was caught after firefighters responded to a blaze in their basement, right next to his torture chamber.
I believe that Hannah started the fire herself, fully aware of the crimes her father was committing down there.
Her mother might’ve known, too; she was committed to a psychiatric hospital last year.
Hannah mentioned during a therapy session that her mother is showing signs of improvement, but this might be wishful thinking.
Could the guilt of not stepping in sooner have caused her mental breakdown?
Horrified, I flip through the other notebooks: one for Ros, one for Kemy, one for Greer.
I don’t bother looking at more than the first sentence of that one because anything else would be an invasion of privacy and make me just as guilty as he was.
A Post-it note adhered to the inside front cover reads: “Audrey Banerjee, Monday, 3:30 P.M. Marriott Waterfront.” Was Zach planning to meet up with someone in Seattle after the retreat?
I reach the final notebook, open to the first page.
Nicola feels that Greer abandoned her after her father’s arrest on To Catch a Killer—
I slam the pages shut and double over, chest tucked against my knees.
It’s like I’ve been dragged right back home, the minister’s wife squeezing my hand as I confessed, only to discover my own words hollered back at me from the cover of a magazine.
I traveled all the way across the country, and yet I’m right back where I started.
My fingers scrape against something sharp on the back cover.
A staple. A business card’s been fastened there: contact information not for a reporter, but for an editor at a publishing house, a message scribbled at the bottom:
So excited to work with you!
He wasn’t just writing articles; he was writing an entire fucking book about us.
I’m disgusted—with Zach, yes, but mostly with myself.
How could I have gotten him so wrong? I’d believed that he could be trusted, that he was my friend.
Was any of that real, or was every interaction we shared calculated?
Did he follow me on social media, scroll back until he found a childhood photo of me, my dad, and Robert, the toy poodle?
Was his story about Linda, the chain-smoking gecko, even true, or was it supposed to make me feel like we had something in common?
I stare at the stack of notebooks still locked in my fist. With the others, he’d eavesdropped on their conversations, their therapy sessions, but with me, he didn’t even have to bother.
I turned over everything he needed without a second thought.
All he had to do was offer a few kind words, and I spread my life out into the open for him.
He must’ve realized from the beginning how pathetic I was, how desperate, and he took full advantage of that.
I reopen the notebook, forcing myself to skim through the pages just to make sure I’m not jumping to conclusions. I want so, so badly to be wrong, but every secret I confided in him is laid bare on these pages. When I reach the end, though, there’s a message that seems unrelated to me:
Connor’s Room: 8068
Is that some kind of code maybe—like for a safe?
There are tons of blank pages at the back of Connor’s notebook, so why write this down in mine?
Unless there’s something in his room that has to do with me.
On the ride here, the other club members mentioned him running background checks.
What if Connor somehow found the one thing I’ve tried to keep hidden all these years?
What if they’re somewhere in his room right now—
A floorboard at the top of the stairs creaks.
Someone’s in the second-floor hallway, their footsteps getting closer and closer.
I rip the page out, scraps sticking in the spiral binding, and dump the notebooks back into the statue.
There’s no way I can leave without being seen, so I lunge for the closet, throwing myself inside and closing the door.
Just as Hannah enters.
I watch through the crack as she checks each of the dresser drawers in turn.
She moves on to the desk, and that’s when I realize it’s only a matter of time before she opens the closet to look in here.
I shift backward, careful to avoid rattling the wire hangers on either side of me, like that’s going to stop her from noticing me the moment the door’s flung wide.
She closes the final desk drawer, but instead of turning toward the closet, she tips the statue, the head swinging open, reaches inside, and collects the notebooks.
I wait for her to start flipping through them, the same way I did. She just tucks them in her pocket, like she already knows what’s inside them, like she expected to find them here. She replaces the statue and scurries into the hallway.
I ease the closet door open. Did Hannah already suspect Zach was going to sell us out?
His last night at the lodge, he’d seemed nervous, constantly checking over my shoulder, like someone might be hiding in the shadows.
Was that someone Hannah? Had she been following him, trying to catch him in the act?
The fact that Hannah, helpless little Hannah, recognized what he was while I remained in the dark chafes.
How can I still be so gullible after all this time?
I imagine Zach returning to his room after one of our heart-to-hearts and doing a little victory lap in front of the mirror, laughing at his good fortune and my complete fucking stupidity.
I jam the sheet of notebook paper to the bottom of my pocket.
Back in my room, Greer is still sleeping, completely unaware of the hole that’s just been ripped into my life.
I crawl under the blanket, trying my best not to disturb her.
Still, she rolls onto her side, wrapping her arms around my stomach and plastering herself to my back.
“Nic,” she murmurs, her breath disturbing the wispy hairs at the back of my neck.
“Yeah?” I ask, but she’s already started snoring again.
Ironic that he tried convincing me that she was the liar, that she couldn’t be trusted. He probably wanted to generate more friction, trigger a confrontation that could’ve been the centerpiece for his book.
I settle back against her, focus on the rise and fall of her chest, try to let it lull me to sleep. An hour later, I’m still wide awake.