Chapter 40 Nicola
NO ONE’S OUT on the trail today.
It’s sweltering, and by the time I’m halfway there, my toes are squishing in their socks, and my backpack’s damp from the sweat on my lower back. I keep pushing forward, though. The sound of rushing water grows louder, until finally, the grasses thin, and Ellicott Creek comes into view.
It hasn’t changed much since the days when my dad brought me out here. Shattered beer bottles still litter the creek bed, brown and green glass catching the light like a nicotine-stained church window. Crumpled potato chip bags and brightly colored bottle caps mark the path to the waterfront.
I step onto the dock, its planks weathered and creaking, and stare down into the murky water. Are there still traces of Claire down there? A lock of her hair snagged on a log? A fingernail lodged in the mud? Or is she finally gone for good?
I drop my backpack onto the dock and unzip the front compartment. Reaching inside, I pull out a necklace.
One with a lucky horseshoe charm.
After Claire went missing, I searched the house, desperate for any clue as to where she might’ve gone.
I started in the upstairs bathroom; if she’d forgotten her phone there, maybe she’d left something else.
My fingers slid around the drains, under the toilet seat, down the wall, until they caught on a single loose tile.
Inside was jewelry—cheap stuff, like what a teenager might buy from JCPenney.
I reached in and weeded out a necklace with flecks of rust barnacled across the metal, probably from being so close to all those damp pipes.
The previous owner’s daughter had probably tucked it back there for safekeeping.
Still, when my dad knocked on the bathroom door, instead of returning the necklace, I tucked it into my pocket.
It wasn’t until weeks later, studying photographs of the Ellicott Creek Ripper’s victims, that I realized Heather Dickerson always wore a necklace just like the one in my pocket.
I wipe it clean of my fingerprints and drop it into the creek. It shimmers, a minnow darting through the currents, before disappearing into the mud.
Back in the car, the air conditioner clatters as I stare through my windshield at the trailhead.
My vision tunnels, drawing me back to the morning my train was scheduled to leave.
My ticket was tucked safely into my wallet, while Claire’s remained on the kitchen table, unclaimed.
Dad was supposed to take me straight to the station, but instead, he veered onto a narrow side road.
As the pickup truck rattled over loose gravel, it felt like all the stones on the road had been dumped into my stomach, and now were being pitched around like a tin-can shaker.
“Where are we going?” I asked, feigning an easiness that I didn’t feel.
“Just taking a quick detour.”
We drove until we reached this same parking lot—empty that early in the morning.
The shadows had started to clump together into familiar landmarks: the maples penning the hiking trail on either side; the porta-potty that made us pinch our nostrils shut whenever we walked past, desperate to avoid the plasticky stink; the sun-bleached flyer notifying visitors of Upstate New York’s tick epidemic.
CHECK YOURSELF AFTER TIME SPENT OUTDOORS, it warned.
IF YOU DISCOVER A BULL’S-EYE RASH, CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY.
LYME DISEASE CAN BE DANGEROUS IF LEFT UNTREATED.
My dad turned the key; the engine went dead. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said, “before you went back.”
“Okay.”
“I wanted to make sure you knew, what happened to your friend wasn’t your fault.”
“Okay.”
“She made her choices. Now, you have to make yours. You need to move forward with your life, all right? You need to go back to the city and do well at school and stop thinking about what happened here.”
Silence burned up all the air in the truck. My fingers dipped into my pocket, traced the fine-link chain of the necklace, rubbed against the flat side of the horseshoe charm. Some of the rust—if it even was rust—flaked off onto my skin.
“And of course I’m here to help. Whatever you need to be successful, you know you can always count on me.”
A spider, legs spindly as knitting needles, scuttled across the windshield.
It faltered directly in front of me, and I found myself wondering what would happen if we started the truck right now.
Would its little Post-it feet stick fast to the glass?
Or would my dad knock the lever next to the steering wheel, activating the windshield wipers, crushing it into a lacteal smear?
Maybe he hadn’t even noticed it was there.
I couldn’t see the spider clearly—it was too dark for that—but I tried to imagine the eight beady eyes peppered across its face, all of them witnessing this scene transpiring between father and daughter. What did it think of us? What did it think of me?
“I’m just afraid,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “that it’ll happen again someday. I don’t know if I could live through that.”
The spider continued its journey across the windshield.
I knew the moment my dad noticed it; his hand reached for the lever.
But before he could press it down, my hand enveloped his—the pinkie that had doubled as a makeshift pacifier during sleepless nights, the index finger that had twisted my ponytail into the perfect ballerina bun before recitals, the thumb that had tucked an ice cube into a terrycloth boo-bunny every time my knee was brush burned.
“Nic,” he said, “you and me, we’re a team, aren’t we?”
Those hands… What else had they done?
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, we’re a team.”
“Good. That’s good.”
And then, he turned the key, the engine revving back to life, and steered us out onto the road. I’ve replayed that conversation countless times. Nothing unusual was said or done—certainly nothing that should’ve made me feel unsafe.
And yet, I had.
It’s hard to admit, even now, but sitting there, in the passenger seat of his truck, I was terrified.
When he asked if we were a team, I felt certain that if I said anything other than yes, he would’ve asked me to walk to the creek with him, and I never would’ve returned.
He must have known I’d found that necklace, that it was still in my possession, and that exchange was his way of making a promise: If I kept his secret, he would stop.
As the years passed, though, that memory was dismantled into simple words and actions, and the accompanying feelings receded.
I convinced myself that they’d been irrational, a by-product of my emotional distress that summer.
The necklace, tucked safely away in my desk drawer, meant nothing. My father was a good man.
All this time, I’d been telling myself that the media, the press, were rewriting my family’s story.
Really, I’d been the one doing it all along.
On the drive home, my car speeds past fence posts studding the fields; cardboard signs advertising fresh peaches, blueberries, and apples; barns festooned with political flags from the last election. The final lines of America’s “A Horse With No Name” dissolve into the DJ’s patter.
“—when we learned that Greer Woods, supposed daughter of infamous serial killer Tom Woods, was, in fact, one of his early victims.”
Her voice pipes through the speakers: “Tom Woods abducted me seventeen years ago. He locked me in the same shack where all his other victims were held captive, and when my three days were up, he planned on murdering me. Sheer luck prevented me from meeting the same fate as those other women.”
The announcer continues: “She also confessed to the murder of her biological father, Joseph Arnosti, a bounty hunter who had a number of abuse allegations filed against him. However, Tom Woods has since taken responsibility for that crime, claiming that she was confused about what happened that night. While this adds yet another charge to his sentence, Governor DeWitt has agreed to grant him life without parole following Greer Woods’s moving victim impact statement.
Tom Woods provided the following remarks about these recent revelations. ”
“I’m thankful to the governor for giving me this opportunity to make amends,” Woods says.
This must’ve been recorded immediately after his hearing.
He sounds unsure; gone is the magnetic confidence of To Catch a Killer’s leading man.
“I would like to start with my—” He stops himself, takes a breath, restarts.
“With Greer. I am proud of her for coming forward, and someday, I hope she can forgive me. Greer, please know that you are loved.”
I punch the dial, turn the radio off. I know how many years she invested into that reprieve, and I still don’t believe in capital punishment, but part of me wishes the governor had upheld the original sentence—that Tom Woods had been executed as planned.
He won’t give her up easily; years from now, she’ll probably still be receiving letters from the prison.
I know how much ignoring those will cost her.
I turn the corner to find an unfamiliar van parked in my driveway. Another news station jonesing for some footage, I think—until I realize someone’s waiting for me on the front step.
“Hey, Nic.”
She looks even more beautiful than when we parted ways in Washington.
The freckles on her nose and cheeks, drawn out by the summer sun, are even darker.
Black curls frizz slightly around her face.
She’s wearing one of those gas station attendant button-ups with the shirttails knotted above her belly button.
Embroidered on the pocket: GREER. The name Tom Woods gave her—now, the name she’s chosen for herself.
A tribute to the young woman who, like her, made the choice to escape, even if it cost her her life.
“I thought you were doing the whole road trip thing,” I say.
That had been the plan. She was supposed to stay in Montana until Tom Woods’s fate was decided, then drive across the country in a rental car.
She expected it would take a few months; what good’s a road trip if you aren’t stopping to see the sights?
However, it’s only been a few days since the hearing.
She jumps to her feet. Her combat boots have been replaced with raggedy Keds. “Change of plans. I had to stop in New Jersey to pick this up.” She slaps the door of the van, and the aluminum rattles.
“That’s yours?”
She grins and unhooks the back door, opening it wide to reveal an actual apartment on wheels: a shiplap ceiling, decorative license plates screwed onto the walls, a couch with half a dozen throw pillows that looks like it extends into a full-sized bed.
“Come on in,” she says, climbing into the back.
As we shimmy past the built-ins, I can’t help imagining what life might be like on the road—waking up every morning to a different landscape, exploring out-of-the-way pockets of the country.
As quickly as the thoughts appear, though, I elbow them back down.
I would never begrudge her this solo trip, not after how long she spent chained to Tom Woods.
Still—I draw my fingers across the butcher-block counter—it would be nice.
We stop in front of a window. “This is the best part.” She unhooks a wooden panel from the opposite wall and drags it down. It’s a work table—for cooking, maybe. But then she slides out a series of drawers that have been built into the side of the van:
Paints.
Markers.
Pencils.
“There’s an overhead compartment for storing canvases.
” She starts explaining how an extension can be lowered to create an outdoor art studio—perfect for when the weather’s good and the scenery’s inspirational—but I’m too caught up in the contents of the drawers.
She’d bought the same markers I’d considered pilfering from my classroom, the expensive ones I gifted to my third grader, Ava.
“Wait,” I say. “Is this… is this for me?”
“Of course it’s for you. You’ve seen my painting skills—or lack thereof. Although I am more than happy to add stick figures to your artwork whenever you want. I’ve been told they add a certain je ne sais quoi.”
I laugh, but my vision’s starting to blur with tears because suddenly, I’m not just imagining a life out on the road, I’m imagining the life I dreamt of back in college.
If I laid pencil to paper now, would the result be yet another portrait of Claire Tenenbaum—or would a different set of eyes stare up at me?
Greer watches me from across the van. She looks nervous, hopeful.
“I still want to take that road trip, but I thought, maybe, we could do it together?”
She waits for a response, but I’m too overwhelmed to give her one.
She quickly backtracks: “But I mean, you don’t have to come along if you don’t want.
I know you just paid off the house; you probably have things to do back here with the bank or whatever.
Or, you know what? I don’t have to go, either. I just want to be wherever you—”
Her last word gets lost in a kiss. She tastes like a chocolate milkshake, which makes sense since there’s an empty McDonald’s cup sitting next to the driver’s seat. I lick the flavor from her mouth, savoring the feel of her body pressed against mine.
“If we leave soon,” I whisper, “we’ll miss rush hour traffic.”
Half an hour later, my suitcases are packed, and we’re barreling down the highway.
Greer’s turned the radio on full blast and is singing along to the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” Such a lovely place.
I try my best to join in, but I don’t really know the words and end up doo doo doo–ing most of the song.
It’s not until it’s miles behind us that I realize we’ve passed the exit for the prison where my dad will spend the rest of his life.
I didn’t even notice.