Page 12 of The Ghostwriter

“What’s going on?” I ask. “Is he okay?”

My father’s gaze snaps onto me, his eyes widening as if seeing a ghost. “Oh, Lydia,” he says. “I think I lost it.”

The air rushes out of me. Gone is my commanding father, replaced by a scared old man I barely recognize. I’m about to remind him of who I am when I catch Alma’s expression, cautioning me not to argue with him. “It’s okay,” I say instead.

Alma steps forward. “Let’s get you back to bed, Vince. I’ve got your medicine right here.” She takes an empty water glass from the nightstand and goes into my father’s bathroom to fill it up.

He looks at the window again. “I can’t figure out why it won’t work.”

“Is there something wrong with it?” I ask.

“Poppy’s hiding place. It’s supposed to lift up,” he says, his voice a whisper. “But now…I can’t find the opening. It’s gone.”

Alma returns with the water. Before she can reach him, my father turns toward the window again, running his hand along the base of the sill as if searching for something. “Where did it go?” he asks Alma.

“We’ll look more carefully tomorrow, when it’s light,” Alma says, guiding him away from the window. She wears an oversize nightgown thathits right above her ankles, and I notice her toenails are painted purple. My father hangs on to her, his hair mussed from the pillow. The bed is in disarray, the covers torn off and in a pile on the floor, as if he threw them off in his panic.

“Here,” Alma says, holding out her hand, a pill cupped in her palm.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Your medication,” she says. “It keeps you safe. It lets you sleep. That feeling you’re having right now? The overwhelming fear and panic? The medicine will make it melt away, remember? Now take a deep breath with me, in and out.” She models and my father follows along. “Another one,” she says. He complies. “Now the pill.”

He’s jittery, his hand shaking as he plucks it from her hand and drops it in his mouth. She helps him hold the glass of water and he swallows it down. Together, they form a tableau, standing in a pool of light, the black window behind them, latched on to each other’s eyes as they wait for the medication to kick in. My legs feel like jelly, the adrenaline still rushing through me, and yet I feel like an interloper. I don’t belong here. I don’t know how to handle this.

“I just wanted to check on it,” my father says to me, his voice sounding calmer. “Make sure it was still there.”

I finally find my voice. “Check on what?” I ask. “What did you hide in there?”

He gives me a withering look I know well. As if he can’t believe he has to spell it out for me. “The knife, Lydia.”

Chapter 6

I find myself back in the guesthouse, the door locked and the lights out, staring out the window toward the house. The lamp in my father’s room is on for a little while longer and then that, too, goes dark.

The knife, Lydia.

The knife.

The knife.

The words swirl around inside of me, my emotions wrestling with my intellect. I’d looked at Alma after he’d said those words, expecting to see shock. Fear. But all I saw was a calm steadiness, as if she either hadn’t heard him or she didn’t care.

While I was in the house, Tom must have called because I have a voicemail from him.If you’re still awake, give me a call. I couldn’t sleep and just want to hear your voice one more time.There’s no way I can call him back; I’m too rattled and he’d hear it in my voice and press for answers. I click my phone asleep and turn it upside down on the nightstand, sliding deeper under the covers. But my eyes refuse to close. Afraid of what I’lldream when I do. What stories my subconscious might want to tell me. Less than twenty-four hours after arriving, I’ve shifted from thinking I know who my father was to thinking perhaps I didn’t know him at all.

***

I must have slept because I wake the following morning with a start, my eyes gritty, my neck stiff. I find an email from our editor, Neil, in my in-box. It’s short.We can’t use this. There’s nothing happening here.

I stare at the message, taking a moment to figure out what he’s talking about before I remember. The chapter I’d sent yesterday.

I text Nicole, even though it’s a Saturday.Neil hates the chapter. I did the best I could, revising a mostly coherent scene. I haven’t been through the rest of it yet, but I’m not hopeful of finding anything better.

Her response comes almost immediately.I’m at the gym, but I had my assistant set up a Zoom with the team Monday morning at 7 AM your time. Let’s get an idea of their vision for the book so you can do what you do best.

I don’t respond because I don’t know how to tell her that a bigger revelation, perhaps a memory my father has kept hidden for fifty years, has slipped out and into the open. Taunting me, forcing me to question everything.

***

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