Page 20 of The Ghostwriter

I flip to another image, a close-up of his face, laughing at something I’d said. I’d fallen for his eyes first—a velvety brown that would hold me in place. I loved the way he listened to me talk, as if the world had stopped and I was all that was left.

Another photo, one where we’d grabbed a drink at a dive restaurant near the beach, the wind tousling his brown hair, reminding me of how he looks in the mornings, his eyes still heavy with sleep.

I should call him—he’d texted during dinner, checking in—but I know what he’ll ask.How is it going? Are you meeting interesting people?So many questions that will lead to things I can’t talk about.

But the pull of hearing his voice is too great.

“Things are not going well,” I tell him when he answers. “This project is so much more complicated than I originally thought.”

“In what way?” he asks.

I wiggle myself deeper under the covers and roll onto my side, trying to figure out how to explain the problem without telling him anything of substance. “My subject is…unreliable,” I say.

“Can’t you just write what they want you to write and be done?”

“It’s not that simple,” I explain. “I can’t write things that are outright fabrications. I’d get slaughtered, and I can’t afford another hit to my reputation. The problem is, I can’t figure out what’s true and what’s not. And tomorrow morning I’ve got a Zoom with the publisher to basically tell them that.”

Tom blows out hard. “Tell me what you need from me. Solutions? Distraction?”

I close my eyes and say, “Distraction. Definitely.”

So he launches into a description of his newest client—a woman with too much money and too much time on her hands. I try to laugh in all the right places, but he must sense my disconnect because he says, “I think it’s time to let you sleep.”

After we say goodbye, I click my phone asleep and roll onto my side, staring at the moon through my window. I know that I haven’t given Tom the chance to show up for me. He wouldn’t care who my father is or what he allegedly did. I could tell him, he would still love me, and we could move on. Jack’s words from earlier tonight run through my mind again.You can’t hide from who you are.

But shedding my past felt like stripping off an old prison jumper and stepping into the kind of freedom I’d always dreamed of. And really, telling Tom the truth at this point would only hurt him. I have no intention of maintaining a relationship with my father once the book is done. I’ll try to write what my father wants me to write, it’ll be his name on the cover, and I can go back to letting Tom and the rest of the world believe that my parents were who I said they were.

Chapter 9

Monday morning at seven sharp, I find the Zoom link Nicole’s assistant sent over. I’ve been working on an outline of the scene my father described, of coming across Danny digging a hole for that cat. Capturing his voice isn’t hard; I know how my father likes to tell a story—slowly, rolling out the surprises one delicious twist at a time.

But I also have another scene drafted, in a separate document. Of my father’s night terror, every detail I can remember from the moment I heard him scream to the vibrant purple shade of Alma’s toenail polish. I don’t plan on showing that to anyone, but I needed to get it down. Needed to know it was there because I still don’t know if I’m writing a bookwithmy father, or if I’m going to have to write oneabouthim.

It’s not just the way my father seems to shift between reality and fantasy, like stepping through a veil. Last night I woke up to see the outline of him standing in his window, illuminated from behind so that he was just a silhouette. Staring across the courtyard and into the window of the guesthouse door. Unlike that first night, he was perfectly still, perfectlyquiet. Almost as if his body was there but his mind was somewhere else. Tonight I plan to dig an old sheet out of the linen closet and tape it over the window so if he does it again, I won’t know.

Nicole’s face appears on the screen as she lets me into the meeting first. “This is going to be tricky,” she says. “We don’t want them to think you’re not up to the task of writing this book. We just need you to have more leeway in writing it.”

“I have to be able to interview other people about what happened from their perspective,” I tell her. “If I can’t, we won’t have much of a book.”

“Got it,” she says.

A new window opens, and I’m surprised to see an entire conference room full of people, an older man sitting at the head of a long table. He has salt-and-pepper hair and wears readers and a button-down shirt. As he starts to talk, it takes him a moment to realize he’s still on mute.

He presses a button on a remote and says, “Sorry about that. Nice to finally meet you, Olivia. I’m Neil Grayson, Vincent’s editor.” He gestures toward the others sitting around the table—three women and one man. “You’re on our big-screen TV in the conference room and I’ve gathered the sales and marketing teams here with me.” He quickly runs through their names, and they wave. “And I’ve got Sloane Valerian, the publisher of Monarch, on speakerphone.”

A disembodied voice says, “Hello, Olivia and Nicole. So glad we could all gather and regroup. I apologize for not zooming in, but I’m in the car on the way to the airport.”

I pick up my phone and text Nicole:Jesus.

She texts back:This is good.

Another face pops on the screen—a young man with a stylishly rumpled appearance that probably requires several hours of prep to achieve. He unmutes himself and says, “Sorry I’m late. I’m Lance Cameron, Mr. Taylor’s literary agent.”

Lance Cameron is the son of my father’s former literary agent, Arthur, who passed away several years ago, leaving his eponymous agency in his son’s hands. Since then, there have been rumors of lawsuits over financial discrepancies and established authors jumping to other agencies, but unfortunately, my father isn’t one of them.

Nicole takes charge. “Thank you, everyone, for taking time out of your busy schedules to meet this morning. The goal of this conversation is to let Olivia catch us up on Mr. Taylor’s project, as well as explain some of the unique challenges she’s facing. We thought it would be easier if we could talk instead of doing it over email. I’m going to turn it over to Olivia so she can walk us through what she’s got so far and what her ideal next steps would be.”

“Thanks, Nicole,” I say. “It’s nice to see you all. As Nicole mentioned, this project presents a unique set of challenges. I’ve spent the last couple days trying to sort through Mr. Taylor’s first draft and conducting some preliminary interviews with him. I’m sure you’re aware that he’s been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.” Neil nods on the screen. Lance doesn’t look up from whatever it is he’s looking at, most likely his phone. “Due to this condition,” I continue, “we have only about two or three hours per day where he’s lucid enough to work. The remaining time has been spent trying to untangle what he’s written.”

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