Page 27 of The Ghostwriter

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“The smell in that outhouse…it got to me. I got sick behind.”

She looks away, unable to meet my eyes.

I squeeze her hand, relieved. Suddenly understanding Mr. Stewart’s concern. Glad that for once, I hadn’t rushed in with assumptions and anger. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s see if we can get closer.”

Chapter 12

“I know you can’t tell me about the job, but how are you spending your time when you’re not working?” Tom asks.

My father has a standing physical therapy session every Thursday at eleven, so we’d stopped early, and I’d gone out on another research trip. I’d called Tom from the car on my way back from the cemetery where Danny, Poppy, and my grandparents are buried. Their gravestones were modest, lined up in a row:

Edmund Frederick Taylor

Beloved father and husband

January 19, 1937–November 15, 1978

Patricia Sampson Taylor

Devoted mother and wife

July 27, 1941–December 4, 1980

Patricia “Poppy” Marie Taylor

Forever in our hearts

March 3, 1961–June 13, 1975

Daniel Edmund Taylor

Gone but never forgotten

February 26, 1958–June 13, 1975

I imagined my father coming here to visit his family and wondered what it had felt like to be the only one left. And what it will feel like when that’s me.

“I’m never not working,” I tell Tom as I check the driveway for my father’s car. Making sure he and Alma are still gone before I disconnect my phone from the car and make my way around the house toward the courtyard and the guesthouse.

He sighs.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, tossing my keys onto the nightstand and settling at the desk.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Our last few conversations have been weird.”

“Weird how?” I’m running through the week since I arrived. We’ve talked every day, usually right before I fall asleep, and everything seemed fine to me.

“I don’t know,” he continues. “I know this job is hard. I know you’re struggling. But I feel like there’s something else you’re not telling me.”

I laugh. “There’s a lot I’m not telling you.”

“No,” he says. “This isn’t about the job. It’s an evasiveness. A distance.” He’s quiet for a moment before finally saying, “I don’t know. I’m probably imagining it.”

“I’m fine. We’re fine,” I tell him, hoping he can hear the certainty in my voice and not the guilt over how much I’ve been concealing.

But after we get off the phone, I’m worried too. That he’s intuited mystress and wondered if it was something other than the job troubling me. Tom once told me his radar is tuned differently than most people’s. He picks up on signals the rest of us ignore. I’ve always thought it was wonderful that he could read me so well. But now it’s become a liability, and I will need to be extra careful when we talk. To give him my full attention so that he doesn’t start asking questions that I don’t want to answer.

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