Page 3 of The Ghostwriter

On Friday, Tom is up to see me off, the early morning light just barely brushing the tops of the trees surrounding my house. I stand on the deck drinking my coffee, looking out over the canyon, an interesting mix of anxiety and nerves swirling through me. When the contract had landed in my in-box on Wednesday, I’d called Nicole to go over the details.

“They don’t want to disclose he worked with a ghostwriter, so you’re going to need to keep this quiet,” she’d said. “They’d suggested an NDA, but I was able to walk them back by reminding them that you’re a pro and have worked on projects like this before.”

“That’s fine,” I said. The last thing I wanted was to let anyone know I was ghostwriting a horror novel for a man despised almost as much as John Calder.

Nicole’s voice cut through the line, reading from the contract. “‘AUTHOR will not reveal collaboration on WORK in conversations, interviews, media,’ blah blah,” she read. “Obviously, since it’s Vincent Taylor, he’s going to want his fans to think he wrote it himself. But the publisher will know, and that’s all we care about.”

“Understood,” I told her, not bothering to say that I would take this secret to my grave—happily—if it meant I could get back to work. I tried not to think about what taking this job said about me. How easily I’ve lowered myself to Calder’s level, taking on a project for the size of the advance and not caring who the collaboration was with.

Tom comes up next to me and together we look out into the distance, the sky a silken pink that reminds me of the mountains surrounding Ojai at sunset. But of course I don’t mention that.

When I’d told him about the job, he’d had a hundred questions—who, where, how long. I deflected by telling him there was an NDA and that I wasn’t able to disclose anything. And while it was technically a lie—I hadn’t been asked to sign anything—I rationalized it by reminding myself that I’d worked on many books before where I couldn’t disclose I was the ghostwriter and that this wasn’t any different. But I knew he’d be angry if he found out. Tom grew up in a house full of lies—both of his parents were narcissists who cheated and manipulated and lied—and when we became serious, he was upfront about how lying was a nonstarter for him.

But I hadn’t known that yet when I gave him the backstory I’ve given everyone since moving back to the United States—that I was raised by two loving parents and that my father had died suddenly of a heart attack when I was abroad for high school, and that my mother had passed away from uterine cancer while I was in college. In those early days, when we were still sharing the basics about our lives, I never considered telling him the real story. I hadn’t told anyone, for years, about who I was related to, or what had happened in my family. So it never felt like a lie I was telling Tom specifically. The truth lives far away, in a distant corner of my past that I have no intention of ever visiting. There was no reason to worry about discovery because there was no way I’d ever have a reason to contact either of my parents. It doesn’t impact who I am as a partner to him. It’s simply not relevant.

“Are you all packed?” he asks me now.

“Pretty much,” I say.

He pulls me into a tight hug, and I feel a flare of guilt that this secret I thought was so carefully hidden is suddenly right next to me again. A beating heart, waiting for me to acknowledge it.

He walks me to my car, carrying my bag, and leans down to give me one last kiss through my open window. “Call me when you’re settled tonight, okay?”

My eyes lock on his, and in this moment, I regret taking the job. I shouldn’t be doing this—not just lying to him about the legalities of it but returning to a place I decided to leave long ago. But the contract is signed, the advance is being processed, and the only thing I can do is hope I can be in and out without incident.

***

I take the coast north, cutting east toward Ojai at Ventura, allowing my mind to travel back to my childhood, before I knew about the murders or noticed the cloud of suspicion that trailed after my father. To a time when we lived in a tiny apartment just off Ojai Avenue. Every Sunday, we’d eat lunch at Nina’s Diner, where I’d inhale one of their burgers with the famous red relish and my father would mainline black coffee, trying to regulate whatever hangover he had at the time. He’d entertain me with stories about Lionel Foolhardy—a clumsy and accident-prone boy whose good intentions created disaster wherever he went—pet guinea pigs accidentally set loose in the classroom when Lionel was assigned to clean the cage. A small fire caused by a science experiment gone wrong.

But that was before my father’s writing career had exploded. Before his drinking had gotten worse, before he’d spiraled into cocaine as well. It was only as an adult that I’d realized what he was doing—self-medicating to deal with whatever trauma he carried. Drugs, alcohol, women—he was a frequent topic in the tabloids until even the media grew weary of him.

I’m not estranged from my father because I think he killed Danny and Poppy. Despite his many flaws, I don’t believe the man I once worshipped could be a murderer. But fame and trauma turned a once loving father into one I barely recognized. Habits became addictions and the father I knew disappeared, replaced by a man who consistently let me down. Who, after my mother abandoned me, decided to do the same. Sent abroad to boarding school at age fourteen, I spent most school holidays rattling around an empty campus or with friends. When he did manage to cobble together a vacation, I spent my time alone because my father always booked last-minute speaking engagements wherever we went, and then he’d spend the rest of his time in the hotel bar. It’s hard to know who hurt me more—my mother for leaving and never looking back, or my father, who disappeared before my eyes. Pieces of him vanishing like a parlor trick, until there was no one left but me.

***

As I enter the outskirts of Ojai, I note the changes in the landscape. New money flushing the old Ojai out. I pass through downtown, traffic clogging Ojai Avenue as tourists crisscross the two-lane road, people floating by on bikes borrowed from the resort, and memories come flooding back. Of riding on my father’s shoulders, eating an ice cream cone. Of holding my mother’s hand as we crossed the street, her swishing skirt more vivid in my mind than her face. Of the light in Ojai, this magical golden hue that fades to pink just as the sun sets. The scent of eucalyptus and rosemary on the miles of trails surrounding the town.

And of Jack Randall, the son of Danny’s best friend, Mark. Jack, a boy who’d also been raised by someone traumatized by that day in 1975. We’d each learned early on how to live alongside memories never spoken aloud. But together, we searched for answers in secret, whispering our theories behind my closed bedroom door or at the lunch table at school.

Aside from poring over my father’s photo albums, we would visit the library, telling the librarian we were working on a report about the history of Ojai. In reality, we spent the time flipping through microfiche news articles from June and July 1975, looking for information on the murders. Those articles offered little more than vague pieces to the puzzle. An active case being aggressively pursued. But the ten-year retrospective in the Ojai paper was much more detailed, probably because my father was no longer a minor and people were ready to name names.

The police’s working theory from the beginning was that the killer was someone passing through town. Poppy had reportedly hitchhiked into Ventura and back again the weekend before, and they were looking for anyone who’d seen Poppy get out of that car, hoping to lock down a make and model. Track down the man who’d met a young, attractive girl and returned the following weekend because he saw an opportunity. Danny had just been collateral damage. But among the locals, there were rumors. Rumblings of a different story that began to surface. That were later passed between my classmates like that newspaper article. Stories about fights between my father and Danny. About how my father and Poppy had been seen arguing shortly before the murders. That my father had gotten physical with her.

There is so much to unravel, tangled not just by perspective, but by the passage of time. Nearly fifty years have gone by. Memories have faded. Innuendo and suspicion have calcified into something concrete. Everyone has a theory, but no one has any answers. And my father sits at the center, refusing to acknowledge any of it.

One thing he will say to anyone who dares to bring it up is that he had an alibi. He’d been with my mother, Lydia, which was verified by the teacher who’d also been with them, mediating an argument between my parents. It was good enough for the police. I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks.

Soon, traffic slows down enough for me to realize none of the familiar landmarks are left—the ice cream parlor with its round globe lights in rainbow colors, the mom-and-pop pharmacy where Jack once stole a five-cent piece of Bazooka gum just to prove that he could. But if I stare hard enough, I feel like I might see Jack on his BMX bike, weaving his way through the pedestrians, and me pedaling hard on my old Schwinn, trying to keep up. I know he still lives here, running his family winery, and I wonder if he’d recognize me. Or if his eyes would slide over me, just another tourist passing through.