What Lies in the Woods

At Liv’s home, Liv’s father, Marcus, muses on how, while Naomi was the one who was physically attacked, Liv and Cass were permanently impacted as well. Naomi finds this version of events dubious since it centers the physically uninjured friends: “[W]hen that knife went into my body, it was their good girls who were truly wounded, and their wounds that mattered” (129). Eventually, Naomi retrieves a slip of paper with numbers on it from Liv’s room, suspecting the numbers might refer to case or victim ID numbers.

Naomi cross-references the numbers Liv wrote down, creating a short list of missing women. Naomi investigates them and finally comes across a woman named Jessi Walker, who had a niece named Persephone. Naomi realizes that Jessi could have been wearing a bracelet with her niece’s name on it and that she could be the skeleton. Jessi went missing about two years before Naomi was attacked, which matches with the fact that her body decomposed and with the possibility that Stahl killed her during the summer when he had no known victims.

Naomi is overwhelmed by finally learning the identity of the skeleton and wants someone to confide in. She goes to Ethan’s room because “he [is] beautiful, and he [is] alive, and he ha[s] been kind to [her], and that [is] more reason than [she’s] ever needed” (137).