Page 83 of The Death Row Club
“Because they lived such a secluded lifestyle, no one noticed when she disappeared. The two of us looked a lot alike. It wasn’t that hard for me to slip into her place.”
“But your friends,” Nic argues. “Your family—you were all over the news after the arrest. Someone would’ve stepped forward to identify you.”
“Who? I was just some disposable foster kid, shuffled around from house to house. Never stayed at a school long enough to make friends. It’s nice that you think someone would’ve come forward to claim me. I never thought they would.”
That’s a lie. After the arrest, I’d been certain that one of my former foster families would reveal my identity. If I remembered them—the Koerbers, the Eberhardts, and all the others—then surely they must’ve remembered me. But as the months passed, and no headlines with my real name appeared, it became clear that no one was going to challenge me. Fair enough. They hadn’t seen me in over a decade, and a lot had changed since then. Tom had gotten my teeth fixed; there used to be a gap between the front ones wide enough to slide a credit card through. My cheeks had slimmed down; my jawline had sharpened. Tattoos now covered all the scars. It made sense that they hadn’t recognized me. Most mornings, when I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t recognize myself.
Or maybe they’d thrown me away as easily as the spare toothbrushes handed to me whenever I arrived somewhere new. I should’ve been relieved; no one was trying to snatch away my new life. Instead, I lost track of the number of times I cried myself to sleep.
“So, you knew what he was all along,” Nic says. “Why didn’t you turn him in sooner?”
I’d had access to a phone at the cabin—that landline phone on the wall—and later the internet. I could’ve contacted the police at any time, but I hadn’t.
“He told me he’d stopped. I believed him.”
After my real father had finished bleeding out, Tom loaded him into the trunk. I was still trembling with the shock of what I’d done. We drove into the mountains under cover of darkness. The trees towering on either side of the road interlaced their branches like silent accomplices. Finally, Tom veered off the pavement, onto the dirt shoulder.
“We’ll do it here,” he told me.
He removed two shovels and a pickaxe from the back seat, and together, we dug a grave far from the road. It took hours thanks to all the roots blocking our path, and by the time we’d finished, the sky had lifted to the color of stonewashed denim. The blister nestled between my thumb and index finger had popped, leaving a loose flap of raw skin. Still, I hadn’t hesitated to return to the trunk with Tom, to help him haul my father out, drag him all the way back to the grave.
By then it was clear that Tom had done this before. As we packed dirt into the grave, I wondered what would happen now.It’s no good if you want to die; that’s what Tom had said to me only the day before. Now that my father was dead, I was free. The road stretched before me like an open invitation. I could go anywhere, be anyone.
Unless Tom killed me first.
He slapped the grave with the back of the shovel, flattening out the soil so passersby would be none the wiser about what lurked underneath. I couldn’t imagine who would be wandering this far off the marked trails, but Tom, as I would later learn, was cautious, always preparing for the worst. It’s the reason why, when he was arrested, I was still able to access a trust that he’d established in my name. Even back then, he was making contingency plans in case he was ever caught.
“What will you do now?” he asked.
I shrugged. He knew these mountains better than I did, but if he came for me, I might still be able to outrun him.
“You should stay.”
“Stay where?”
“With me,” he said, as if that should’ve been obvious. “You need a roof over your head, and I have a spare bedroom.”
“Are you trying to lure me back so you can murder me in the night?” I half joked.
“Why would I lure you back when I could kill you right here?”
My gaze drifted to the shovel still loosely grasped in his fist. Noticing, he tossed it to the ground.
“Come back with me, and I promise I’ll never do that again.”
“What?”
“I lost my daughter, years ago. You lost someone, too, didn’t you?”
My mom. I nodded.
“I haven’t been myself since then, but I think…” He wiped the sweat from his brow, gazed back toward the road. “I don’t think it has to be like that anymore. For either of us.”
I understood what he meant then. Something had changed the moment I’d climbed into his passenger seat of my own free will, accompanied him back to the cabin, and agreed to stay. He’d remembered what it was like not to be alone—to have someone to care about, who cared about you. I could be the daughter he’d lost, and he could be the father I’d never had.
We could change each other for the better.
“But he didn’t stop,” Nic says, pulling me back to the present. “He kept right on killing, and you had no idea.”
