Page 53 of The Ghostwriter
After I leave my mother, I sit in my car trying to absorb what I’ve just learned. All these years, my mother has held on to evidence that might have given everyone answers. The revelation that Danny had killed Poppy because of something she’d filmed would have shifted everything for my father—from sociopathic murderer to self-defense. It would have shifted everything for me as well. I try to think about what kind of life we could have had, if my mother had only been brave enough to speak up. I’m numb, barely able to feel anything, the revelations still bouncing around inside of me. But I know that won’t always be the case. Soon, understanding will seep in, and I’ll have to deal with the aching loss for what could have been. The rage over what has been stolen from me and from my father.
But I also can’t ignore the fact that I’ve done the same thing. I think of the Olivia I once was, a curious young girl eager to know the truth. And at some point, I abandoned her, just as surely as my own parents had abandoned me.
And then I think of the life my mother is living inside the tiny box of that apartment, knowing with certainty that’s how I’ll end up if I don’t do something different.
I need to call Tom. To voice these thoughts out loud, to make them a part of the permanent record before I lose them again to my pride.
I open up my phone to the text Tom sent me two weeks ago. Once again, I don’t know what to believe.
I think of my parents, of the connection that still binds them across the years and decades. Each of them alone, yet not. I type, Vincent Taylor is my father . I stare at the words, running them through the lens of my contract, making sure I’m not revealing something I shouldn’t. That I am Vincent Taylor’s daughter is information anyone could discover if they cared to look. A fact many people already know. I continue. That’s all I can tell you right now, but know that nothing I’ve said about this trip is untrue.
Before I can change my mind, I hit Send. My chest opens up as if filled with a thousand birds escaping, flying into a bright-blue sky.
Then I turn to the shoebox sitting on the front seat of my car and google local companies that might be able to transfer the film still trapped inside the camera into a format I can watch. I find one that can turn it around in a couple hours and follow the GPS directions to the store.
Inside is cluttered, with a counter that runs along the back, a fiftysomething man wearing rumpled clothes and readers. “You the one with the Super 8 camera?”
“I am,” I say, sliding my mother’s shoebox across the counter.
He lifts the lid and pulls out the camera, turning it over in his hands, examining the film compartment. “Not sure what we’ll find when I get in there,” he says. “Is it okay with you if I break off the cover?”
“Just do whatever you need to do.”
“Some of the film might be exposed and damaged.”
“I’ll have to take that risk,” I say. “How long until you can have it done?”
The man looks at his watch and says, “Give me a couple hours. You want a link or an external thumb drive?”
“A link will be fine, but I’d like to have the camera back.”
He nods. “Not a problem. I can recommend a company that does camera repairs if you want. I don’t think it’d cost too much.”
“Maybe. Thank you.”
I drive to an Olive Garden and sit at a table near the kitchen, picking at my salad and tearing off pieces of breadsticks, unable to eat. Sick with what I’ve already learned, anxious about what’s left.
A voice in my mind whispers that my mother isn’t the villain here. It’s Danny. The boy who raped her and got her pregnant. The boy who killed his sister. I can have some sympathy for my mother, sixteen years old and terrified.
My heart breaks for my father. A boy who’d stumbled into a horrific scene and done the only thing he could to save himself.
“You want anything else?” the server asks me, eyeing my barely touched food.
“Just the check, please.”
My phone buzzes with an email from the film transfer place and a link to the digital file. I’m tempted to watch it here but decide to wait until I can be somewhere private. Where I can have the space to see what secret Poppy needed to share with my father, the secret that got her killed.
***
I return to the shop and the man gives me a funny look as I hand him my credit card. “You know the people on that film?” he asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “But the camera was my aunt’s, back in the seventies.”
He shakes his head as he hands me back my credit card but doesn’t say anything more. I take the shoebox with the camera back to my car and head toward home.
***
When I enter my house, I feel a loosening of my shoulders, my muscles finally unclenching. The air feels stuffy after being closed up for two months and I open the sliding doors to the patio, letting the cool canyon air inside, then look in my freezer for something to eat. I pull out a couple of Trader Joe’s tamales and put them in the oven, then sit at the dining room table, my laptop in front of me, trying not to think about how different this would feel if Tom were here to greet me with a hug and a hot meal. A back rub after the long drive home.
A quick pass through my bedroom had revealed that he’d been here, clearing out his things. The stack of books that usually sat on his nightstand was gone. So were the shirts he keeps in my closet. His toothbrush. I found his key on the kitchen counter next to the coffee maker. No note. No goodbye. Just an emptiness.
But I refuse to believe this is the end. I have a plan. A way forward, to show Tom that I can be honest with him. That there aren’t any more secrets and that I don’t want to live a life like my father’s. Or my mother’s, for that matter.
Her words from this morning come back to me. Information is power, yes. But it’s also a burden because once you know something, you can’t pretend you don’t. I stare at the link to Poppy’s last film, hesitating. Remembering the strange look the man at the transfer place gave me. Knowing that whatever is on this film will give me answers I might not want.