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“No. Danny. I always thought he’d killed Poppy because of the baby. Because he thought Poppy was going to tell.” He gives a tiny shake of his head. “I hated him for years, knowing what he’d done to your mother. Believing he’d been the one to kill Poppy. It felt righteous and white-hot and pure.” His voice spits that last word. “But now I have to rearrange all of it in my mind. Learn how to think about Danny in a different way. To allow myself to give space to what had been done to him. To what he had to carry for so long.” He pauses, gathering himself. “It’s not an excuse for what he did to your mother. I’ll never forgive him for that. But it gives those actions context. He was just a child.”
Then my father does something I’ve never seen him do. He cries. And I hold his hand and let him.
***
When he’s gathered himself, I say, “I want to put all of this in the book. We can’t prove Mr. Stewart killed them, but we can expose him for what he did to Danny. And likely to other kids as well. It would make sense that he would kill them both to keep them quiet.”
My father’s expression grows distant. Remembering his brother and sister. Absorbing the secrets they both carried. Adjusting to this new reality, one that finally absolves him. He nods. “Do it. Write it.”
“I already did,” I say. “Let me read it to you. Tell me if you want any revisions.” I flip to the manuscript on my computer and start to read aloud. “‘I walked through the back door, into a silent house. Poppy was supposed to meet me there, and at first, I assumed I’d arrived before her.But within seconds, I realized that was not the case. The smell of blood—I’ll never forget that metallic, cloying scent that seemed to fill my nostrils, forcing me to breathe through my mouth—was overpowering. I saw Danny almost immediately. Dead in the hallway, where he’d landed. Trying—and failing—to reach Poppy, who was crumpled on her bed in a pool of blood.’”
I read my father the rest. How he’d scurried out the back door again, taking the knife with him. How he hadn’t been thinking and then worried it might implicate him. How he and my mother had asked Mr. Stewart to alibi them, and their surprise at how easy it had been to convince him.
When I’m done, I look up at my father, relieved to see his approval.
“It’s great,” he says. “Send it to Neil.”
“I do have one lingering question,” I say. “You’ve spent the last fifty years believing Danny killed Poppy. But who did you believe killed Danny?”
“Send the manuscript,” he says, as if I hadn’t spoken.
“They’re going to have the same question,” I tell him. “It should be a quick fix.”
“I want you to send it now,” he insists.
He watches as I attach the chapter and send it off to Monarch, cc’ing Nicole.
Then he says, “Now that’s done, I need to tell you what really happened.”
Poppy
June 13, 1975
7:00 p.m.
I’m fading in and out of consciousness. I open my eyes in time to see Vince jump Danny from behind. As if from a great distance, I hear their bodies hitting the wall, careening down the hallway. Vince screaming, “What the fuck did you do to her?”
I can’t feel my hands or feet, just a dull ache at my core. My mouth doesn’t work, my voice nothing more than a whisper. I want to tell them who did this to me before my brothers destroy each other.
More moments flicker through my mind—laughing with Margot at lunch in the fifth grade, my parents dancing to Sinatra in the living room last Christmas. My brothers at the breakfast table—years ago—passing the Sunday comics between them, the sound of cartoons on the television in the background. And later, their fighting. Always the fighting.
I never should have gone to that party. Or had those beers, whichhadn’t made me feel lighter. They’d made me angrier, amplifying it like the megaphone Mr. Stewart used in PE.
Mr. Stewart.
I’d been looking out the kitchen window waiting for Vince to arrive. Mr. Stewart must have come in through the front door because one minute I was alone and the next, he was standing next to me.
“I think we need to talk. Clear the air,” he’d said.
“Get out of my house. My parents will be home any minute.”
Mr. Stewart had shaken his head. “I saw them as they were leaving. Going to the movies in Ventura. Your dad told me how much he hated the first night of the carnival. So many people. So much traffic.” He peered out the back window and then back at me. “Looks pretty quiet around here though.”
As he spoke, my hand had inched to the left on the counter, slowly landing on the knife drying there. When I had a good grip on it, I sprinted from the kitchen, down the hall to my room.
The pain is almost gone now. My brothers tear at each other in the hallway, and I hate that my last moments will be spent listening to them fight.
I should have run out the back door. I see that now. Screamed the whole way back to the carnival, telling anyone who would listen who Mr. Stewart really was. What he’d done to Danny. What he’d certainly done to others in that equipment shed.