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The darkest places to hide: storage shed, Poppy’s closet, attic, garage—the treasure hunt.
I wanted to kill Danny—the discovery of my mother’s abortion.
But this one—Danny watched her die—can only mean one thing. My father had been there too.
***
“What can you tell me about this line?” I ask the following morning, pulling the last legal pad out of my bag and flipping to the page I marked with the Post-it. I read it aloud to him. “‘Danny watched her die.’” Then I look up at him, waiting.
His face is a mask I can’t read. He’s not surprised, or angry. Surely, he expected me to find the clues eventually, just like I found the clues in my book so long ago.
When he doesn’t say anything, I continue. “You’ve given me a lot to work with. Lots of stories that will help me reshape what you’ve already written.” I speak carefully, not wanting to upset him, knowing how easily that could happen—even before his illness. “Lots of ways to help Danny and Poppy come alive again on the page. But at the start of this, you said there were things you never told the police.”
My father stares at me, waiting for me to go on. Perhaps knowing where I’m headed.
“Tell me what you meant by that line.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” But his voice is weak, as if he can’t muster enough force to speak at full volume. “I don’t remember.”
“You keep telling me that Danny had been the one escalating, but that’s not what I’m seeing in Poppy’s movies.” I gesture toward my computer, my voice rising. “A finished draft of this book is due in less than eight weeks and I’m not even close to being done. I can’t do my job if you’re not honest with me.”
Every project has this moment. When I have to push across the abyss—go from the easy stories to the harder ones. The ones that live inside all of us but don’t ever come out. “We’ve talked a lot about the dynamics in the house. The rising tensions between you and Danny in particular.” I breathe out slowly. “You brought me here to do a job, and part of that job is asking hard questions. So I’m going to ask you a hard one and I need you to trust me with the truth. And then together, we can decide what to do with it.”
He gives a tiny nod.
“Was your alibi a lie? Were you at the house that night?”
“Yes.” His voice is quiet. Steady. As if he’s been waiting for me to ask that question all this time. He looks at me, his cheeks sunken as if ravaged by grief. “But by the time I got there, it was too late.”
Vincent
June 13, 1975
6:15 p.m.
I’m making my way through the maze of the haunted house, looking for Poppy. I saw her enter just seconds before I did, but she’s vanished. A low anxiety has been buzzing inside of me all afternoon. I finally confronted Lydia earlier at her house.
“I know what you did.” I stood next to the kitchen counter while Lydia cut an apple.
She looked up at me, confused, the knife still in her hand. “What do you mean?”
“I know you cheated on me. I know you got pregnant and had an abortion.” The words rushed out of me, hot and fast, making my stomach feel hollow.
She stared at me, color draining from her cheeks, and I could tell she was considering denying everything. But before she could come up with a story, I pushed on. “Don’t make it worse by lying.”
She set the knife down, the apple forgotten, and covered her face with her hands. I felt frozen, unable to step toward her, unable to walk away. Through her tears, she said, “I love you.”
I nearly laughed. “You have a great way of showing it. Who is the father?”
She looked up at me, surprised, as if she couldn’t believe I didn’t already know.
“I need you to say it.”
Just then, her mother came through the front door, the sickly sweet smell of Jean Naté perfume wafting in with her. “Did you get dinner started, Lydia?” she asked, dropping her purse on the dining room table and collapsing into a chair.
Lydia wiped her eyes quickly, put on a bright smile, and said, “I was just about to.”
“This isn’t over,” I’d said as I left.