Page 13 of The Ghostwriter

I enter the house, careful not to startle my father eating breakfast at the table. “How are you feeling?” I ask him. Alma is in the kitchen behind us, flipping through a catalog.

He looks at me, his expression blank. “Fine.”

I slide onto the chair next to him and Alma brings me a cup of coffee. I take a sip, savoring the heat and the caffeine soon to hit my system. “Can we talk about what happened last night?”

He holds a triangle of toast and stares at it, as if he’s not entirely sure what to do with it. Then he takes a tentative bite and says, “I had a bad dream. It happens.”

“It wasn’t a dream. You were awake.”

“Hallucinations are very common,” Alma says from behind us. “They happen pretty early in the disease, but it’s usually a tipping point toward progression. The best thing to do is to validate him when he’s having one and help him move through it.”

“Thank you, doctor,” my father says, his voice tight with sarcasm.

“This wasn’t some fantasy about you being a Broadway singer or seeing bugs that aren’t there. This was specific, about something that actually happened.”

“I’m not sure there’s much to discuss.”

“You’re kidding, right?” When he doesn’t say anything, I press on. “You basically said the knife wasn’t where you left it. You were panicked. Like something bad would happen if you couldn’t locate it.” I lower my voice, aware of Alma behind us. “Were you talking about the murder weapon?”

He pushes his plate away and drops his napkin over the remains of his breakfast. “My doctor has told me that my mind will play tricks on me. I will believe things that are outrageously false.”

“I don’t know, Dad. This seemed like more than that.”

“Olivia,” Alma says, her voice carrying a warning.

My father shakes his head, as if ridding it of voices. His fingers pluck the used napkin from the top of his nearly empty plate, and he smooths it out, spreading it on his lap again, pulling his food closer and poking at it with his fork. He takes a bite and says, “These eggs are cold.”

“You’ve already finished eating,” I tell him. Anxiety blooms inside of me, at how fragile he is. He seemed fine when I arrived yesterday, and I wonder how hard he had to work to hide it from me. How difficult me being here might be on the equilibrium that now seems so precarious.

My father’s eyes dart from me to Alma to the door, but before he can say anything, Alma says, “Enough. It was a hallucination. Not real. Your presence is dredging up things for him that are painful. I told you this is a mistake. Your father can’t handle it.”

But he bristles. “Don’t tell me what I can or cannot handle.”

Alma looks between the two of us, her stare challenging me to argue. “We have to leave at noon sharp.” Then she leaves the room.

I look at my father. “Where are you going on a Saturday?” I ask.

He gives a defeated look. “Life is easier if you don’t ask questions.”

***

“Are you sure you’re feeling up to this?” I ask him before we start. We’re in our old positions from when I was young—him at his desk, his chair turned away from the windows and facing me, and me in my chair by the door.

He gives a tiny shake of his head. “Evenings are rough,” he explains. “It’s sort of like sundowner’s syndrome. I lose my sense of time and place. But it typically doesn’t mean anything. Alma knows what to do.”

“It just seemed significant,” I say.

“I can assure you, it wasn’t.”

I have a colleague who once worked on a book about a serial killer. I remember her talking about what it was like to interview him in prison. “Everyone is an unreliable narrator,” she’d said. “But someone who has killed another person? They are the ultimate gaslighters. You begin to question everything—even the things you can see to be true.”

Could my father be a killer? It’s always been a possibility that’s lived in my peripheral vision. Shortly after I learned what had happened to Danny and Poppy, I asked him outright. “Did you do it?”

He’d scoffed at me in that arrogant way he had, as if he was above such a ridiculous and juvenile question. “I don’t have time for this, Olivia.”

He’d been packing for a trip, his assistant, Melinda, downstairs in the kitchen making me a dinner of hot dogs and tomato soup, her overnight bag sitting in the entry. I watched my father fold sweaters and pants, stacking them carefully in his suitcase, and I tried to imagine him with a knife, slashing at the bodies of his brother and sister. The rage that might have pushed him to commit something so violent. I tried a different tack. “I won’t tell anyone,” I promised. “You can trust me.”

He started to laugh as he snapped his suitcase shut, lifting it by its handle. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, brushing past me, his footsteps echoing as he descended the stairs.

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