Page 14 of The Ghostwriter

I push the memory away. “I started reading the manuscript,” I say now. My father looks at me, searching my expression for a hint of what I might have thought, but I’m having a hard time meeting his gaze. “There’s not a lot I can work with.”

I wait for him to get angry or defensive. But he seems to collapse into himself. “I was afraid of that,” he says. “This illness, it’s deceptive. It tricks you into thinking you have a grasp on reality, on events of the past. You believe them, fully and completely.” He sighs. “But then you find out that nothing you believed is real. None of it happened the way you think it did.” He sits forward, his expression intense. “I need you to remember the good things. The treasure hunts I used to design for you. The way everything came together at the end—the clues, the prize. The fun.”

I’m confused, and a little worried about this sudden segue, wondering if this is how our conversations will go—on topic for a few minutes and then veering off into some other lane, some other memory that has nothing to do with the memoir. “Dad, we need to stay focused on the book. I tried doing what you asked—I revised a chapter and sent it to your editor. He said it didn’t work.” I wait to see if he’ll be the one to suggest what needs to happen next. When he doesn’t, I say, “That’s why I need to talk to other people. I have to be able to make sense of this narrative.”

He sits back again, resigned. “I don’t think we need to do that,” hesays. “I’m at my best in the mornings and I haven’t completely lost the thread yet so I can still tell you what you need to know. To make sense of whatever mess I’ve created.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” I explain. “A memoir is your recounting of your life, but it’s stronger with voices of the others who were there.”

Downstairs I can hear Alma in the kitchen, the clatter of pots and pans faint through the closed door.

“I can’t let you do that,” he says. “No one can know about the book until it’s ready to release.”

“Why?” I ask. “Early buzz can only help you.”

He looks at me, his watery blue eyes latching onto mine. “Because there are things I never told the police. I want to be very mindful of what we say, how we say it, and most importantly when we say it. You have to trust me on this, Olivia.”

I stare at him, thinking again of last night.The knife, Lydia.Thinking about the jotted notes in the manuscript.

She shouldn’t have gone.

I wanted to kill Danny.

Finally I say, “Well, let’s start there. Did you hide the murder weapon in Poppy’s window?”

He looks as if I’ve slapped him. “Is this how you work with all your subjects? Corner them at the start and accuse them of murder?”

“You just said—”

“This isn’t easy for me. I’ve spent fifty years staying silent—at my own peril. It’s not a matter of what needs to be said, but how the story should be told.”

I fight down my impatience, reminding myself that if this were anyone else, I wouldn’t have phrased my question that way. Interviewing a subject—especially at the beginning—is a delicate balance of building trustand looking for openings. There are no rules, only instinct. “You’re right. I apologize. Why don’t you start by telling me about Poppy and Danny. Whatever memories come first.”

He inhales through his nose and closes his eyes, reminding me of a musician about to perform. When he opens them again, he says, “Danny loved to camp. When he was younger, he took an outdoor survival class and fell in love with the woods. With the solitude of nature.” He pauses, thinking. “But he could be scary at times. He’d get this look in his eyes that was terrifying. Like he was working hard not to hurt you.”

“Was he always that way?” I ask.

My father gives a faint smile and says, “No, when he was younger, he was vibrant.”

“That’s a really interesting word. What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. In elementary school, kids were drawn to him, to his energy. It was like he lived on a different plane than the rest of us. They’d do whatever it took to live inside his orbit. But things changed when he was a teenager. He used to read these survival books. You know…how to live in the woods eating only plants and bugs.”

“Did your family go camping a lot?”

“I can’t believe we never had any of these conversations,” he says. “I always thought we’d have more time, but…” he shrugs. “To answer your question, no. My family didn’t camp. My father wasn’t an outdoors kind of person. He worked and then he came home and watched the news with a cocktail. My mother would have died if she didn’t have access to her hot rollers and a telephone. But Danny loved sleeping out in the grove near our house. He’d take a tent and a sleeping bag and set up out there. Sometimes he’d be gone for the whole weekend.”

“Your parents let him camp out there alone?”

My father laughs. “It was the seventies. They didn’t care, so long as he didn’t interfere with their weekly bridge game or Walter Cronkite.”

“How old was Danny at this point?”

My father takes a moment to think. “The first time he went out there on his own was when he was about twelve,” he says. “Initially, just among the trees in the field behind our house if it was dry enough. Later, he’d venture into the oak grove.” The oak grove, an expanse of land just a few blocks from his childhood home. “He did it all the way up until he died. One time I asked him if he’d ever want to live like that, and he told me he thought about it all the time. That living at home felt constricting. He was going to apply to some tiny college up in Oregon, and I think the appeal for him wasn’t just the distance from Ojai and from our family, but because it was a place he could still find the outdoor space he needed.”

It feels as though my father and I are inside of a bubble. His voice is deep and melodic, and I find myself hypnotized. He’s never spoken so candidly about his siblings, and it feels like finally scratching an itch that has plagued me for decades. I want to sink into his words the way I used to when I was little, listening to him spin a tale about Lionel Foolhardy. I want to mute out everyone and everything and just listen to my father tell a good story.

“So Danny was unhappy?” I ask, reminding myself that I’m not the audience; I’m the author.

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