Page 21 of The Ghostwriter

I sit on the floor next to the empty box, my mind racing. I count back from the date of the entry—May 6—and do some math. I suppose it’s possible my mother had gotten pregnant before she’d started dating my father in February of that year, but it would have been tight. It would have required her to wait a dangerously long time to get the abortion if so, and I know that wasn’t likely.

There’s so much about my parents I don’t understand. So much about them I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to unravel. What my mother saw in my father. Why she stayed with him when everyone else was certain he’d killed Danny and Poppy. I flip to the next entry, dated May 8.

Something’s on that film that Vince doesn’t want me to see. March #1, Clip #3

I turn the page, hoping for a longer entry, but Poppy seems to have decided the diary might not be a safe place to write anything down. I make my way through the rest of her entries quickly.

May 10: I don’t even know who Vince is anymore. May #1, Clip #7.

One entry is just dialogue.

May 14:

It’s like you’re not even into me anymore.

If I wasn’t into you, I wouldn’t be here. Why are you so angry at me all the time?

All of a sudden it feels like you’re pulling back from me.

I’m at your house every day after school! How is that pulling back?

Poppy tells me that every time you come over and I’m not here, you ask if Danny is home.

Next to that last part, Poppy had written in giant block letters NOT TRUE.

I flip the page.

May 20: I think Margot and I are right about the father of L’s baby.

May 30: Vince/Danny fight. Did he learn the truth about Lydia??? Everything feels different now. May #4, Clip #9

I’m turning the pages faster now, but there are only three more entries.

June 4: One of them is going to kill the other one.

June 7: Amazing day fighting for Equal Rights. Can’t wait to send the film in. Can’t wait to leave here forever.

And the last one, which chills me. Written just three days before she died.

June 10: Oh my god oh my god oh my god. I feel sick. No one will believe me and now I’ve lost the proof. I need to tell someone, but Danny will kill me if I tell.

I reread that last sentence again. Danny will kill me if I tell.

Could the stories my father has been telling me about Danny be true? I flip back to the beginning and read it all again, noting references to the movies she filmed. Clips she cited. Links to these entries that would show me what she wanted me to see. I push myself to standing and start digging through the rest of the boxes. I need to find those film reels.

***

Two hours later, I’ve emptied every box, touched every item—old bills mixed in with letters from famous authors mixed in with galleys and old manuscript drafts. But there are no reels of film. Tom had called during my search, and I’d let it go to voicemail, feeling as if I’m on the edge of figuring something out, and I don’t want my mind pulled away until I can grab it.

I head back downstairs and into the house, where I find my father watching television. “Hey, Dad,” I say, hoping he’s more lucid, though I wonder what he might reveal if he still thinks I’m my mother. What questions I might ask that would lead him to tell me more.

I settle on the couch next to him and we stare at a show about penguins in Antarctica. “Since when have you started watching nature documentaries?” I ask. “What happened to Law he’d been so busy with his new book and with the move from our apartment and into the giant house on the east side of town, a Spanish compound with a wall surrounding it, cutting us off from the world.

I flipped back toward the beginning of the book and found page 8, where the word meet was circled, and another clue written in the margin. The last two digits of our phone number.

I found page 29, the word in circled. In the margin: my birthday.

The yard became a background noise to my hunt, deciphering his message, paging forward and backward in the book until I had the whole message memorized.

Meet in front of school at three.

“It was The Egypt Game, ” I tell him now. “I was eleven.”

He nods, growing animated, and picks his fork up again. “I’d just gotten back from a trip, and I wanted to do something special for you. I remember coming up with the idea on the plane ride back. You always got so mopey when I’d travel, and I wanted to get you excited about something.” He chews, looking at me, waiting for me to pick up the thread. To agree with him about how much fun that treasure hunt had been.

I stare at him, wondering how he could possibly think that was a happy memory for me. I remember how I’d held that clue close to me all afternoon. How I’d hoped my father had sensed my loneliness and planned one of his grand adventures for the two of us.

But with my father, it was always good to keep my expectations low. His success had changed him, his new money not only buying us a new house, but a flashy new Mercedes for himself. Hiring Melinda, who sat in a small office under the stairs managing my father’s calendar and telling me he was too busy to eat dinner with me. Dropping a McDonald’s hamburger on the table, still in the bag, and letting me eat it on the couch while I watched 90210 , not even noticing when I switched over to Twin Peaks.

“‘Meet in front of the school at three,’” I say now, my voice low and robotic.

But my father doesn’t notice. “Yes! That was the clue.” He finishes his food and pushes his plate aside, pleased.

But it’s like he’s recalling something from a story he’s told himself so many times, it’s crystallized into something that never happened. Eliminating all that came before and after.

“I remember waiting impatiently for school to let out,” I tell him. “I spent the afternoon imagining how you must have snuck into my room after I’d gone to sleep to pencil those clues into the margins, knowing I’d find them the following day. Planning a fun afternoon just the two of us.” I wait, wondering if the rest will come to him or if I’ll have to tell him the story again. Remind him of the many ways his memory is failing him, forcing me to relive another one of his disappointments. “Finish your protein drink, take your pills, and let’s finish your documentary,” I say.

He stares at me, and I can tell that the events from that day are lost to him. Finally he says, “Tell me the rest of it.”

I shake my head and gather his plate and fork, crumpling his napkin on top of it. “It doesn’t matter, Dad. It was a long time ago.”

“Tell me, Olivia.” His voice is commanding, and I freeze—old habits dying hard—sinking back down into my chair again.

“When the bell rang, I lost my nerve,” I tell him. “All afternoon I’d been imagining what we’d do. Where we’d go. Ice cream and a drive-in movie. Or a trip to Santa Barbara for dinner at a fancy restaurant. But as all the kids rushed out around me, I couldn’t picture you out there with the rest of the parents, milling around waiting.”

“I showed up,” he says, his tone slightly unsure. As if even he couldn’t count on his former self to do the right thing.

“I saw your car parked down the street, that silver Mercedes you bought, remember?” He nods, and I continue. “I felt excited. Hopeful. Thrilled that you’d come for me. Imagining your laughing face, happy that I’d cracked the code, assembled the clues you left for me in the margins of my book.” I stop talking, reliving that moment, how a bright, white joy seemed to carry me down the sidewalk, the sun glinting off the windshield of my father’s new car. “It was a fun afternoon,” I finish, standing again. Carrying his dishes into the kitchen and setting them in the sink. Filling a glass with water and bringing it back to him where he’s still seated, staring at me.

I gesture toward his pills and slide the water toward him, but he ignores them. “You’re lying,” he says.

“I’m not,” I insist, looking past him and into the living room where the penguin documentary is paused on the screen.

“Why won’t you just tell me?” he asks.

“Because it doesn’t matter,” I say back, my voice rising. “It’s just one example of many where you let me down.”

“But I showed up,” he insists. “I was there—you just said so.”

I shake my head, incredulous that he can latch on to such a small detail—the fact that I was picked up that day—and spin it into a narrative where he comes out looking like a loving father. “No, Dad. You didn’t. When I opened the car door, it wasn’t you behind the wheel. It was Melinda. You’d sent her to take me on a shopping spree.”

I can see the moment he remembers, and I wonder what’s playing through his mind. Perhaps a last-minute conference call with his editor that he felt was more important than I was. Or his first drink of the afternoon stretching into two or three, taking school pickup off the table. “Is that such a bad thing?” he asks. “Surely Melinda was a better person to take you shopping for clothes than I was.”

Even now he can’t own it. He can’t see how heartbreaking it was for me to open that car door and see the person he’d essentially hired to parent me so that he didn’t have to. “Sure, Dad. You’re probably right,” I tell him. Knowing there’s no use trying to explain it to him. Knowing he’ll never fully understand what I needed from him.

Just then, Alma returns, dropping her purse on the floor. “A fractured wrist and a red cast,” she announces. My father and I turn to face her, torn from our conversation and forced back into the present. “Did he eat everything?”

“Plate’s in the sink,” I tell her. “Protein shake consumed, meds done.” I grab my phone from the table where I’d left it and head toward the back door. As I’m closing it behind me, my father says, “I’m glad you remember.”