Page 34 of The Ghostwriter

Poppy tells me that every time you come over and I’m not here, you ask if Danny is home.

Next to that last part, Poppy had written in giant block lettersNOT TRUE.

I flip the page.

May 20: I think Margot and I are right about the father of L’s baby.

May 30: Vince/Danny fight. Did he learn the truth about Lydia??? Everything feels different now. May #4, Clip #9

I’m turning the pages faster now, but there are only three more entries.

June 4: One of them is going to kill the other one.

June 7: Amazing day fighting for Equal Rights. Can’t wait to send the film in. Can’t wait to leave here forever.

And the last one, which chills me. Written just three days before she died.

June 10: Oh my god oh my god oh my god. I feel sick. No one will believe me and now I’ve lost the proof. I need to tell someone, but Danny will kill me if I tell.

I reread that last sentence again.Danny will kill me if I tell.

Could the stories my father has been telling me about Danny be true? I flip back to the beginning and read it all again, noting references to the movies she filmed. Clips she cited. Links to these entries that would show me what she wanted me to see. I push myself to standing and start digging through the rest of the boxes. I need to find those film reels.

***

Two hours later, I’ve emptied every box, touched every item—old bills mixed in with letters from famous authors mixed in with galleys and old manuscript drafts. But there are no reels of film. Tom had called during my search, and I’d let it go to voicemail, feeling as if I’m on the edge of figuring something out, and I don’t want my mind pulled away until I can grab it.

I head back downstairs and into the house, where I find my father watching television. “Hey, Dad,” I say, hoping he’s more lucid, though I wonder what he might reveal if he still thinks I’m my mother. What questions I might ask that would lead him to tell me more.

I settle on the couch next to him and we stare at a show about penguins in Antarctica. “Since when have you started watching naturedocumentaries?” I ask. “What happened toLaw & Order?48 Hoursmysteries?”

“Alma says I can’t watch regular television anymore. It confuses me and I have bad dreams.”

I look around for her, but she must be upstairs. “What ever happened to Poppy’s home movies?”

“No clue,” he says. “She’d get them processed, but I never saw any of them.”

“Did the police take them?” I ask.

“I know they were interested in finding them, but I don’t think they ever did.”

“Maybe she gave them to Margot?” A spark of hope blooms inside of me, an excuse to reach out to Poppy’s best friend.

“Margot said no,” my father says. “The police looked for them for a little while, but I got the sense they didn’t try very hard.”

“Well, they can’t have just vanished. They have to be somewhere.”

My father looks at me and says, “I think she tossed them all.”

“Why?”

“She and Danny had a huge fight, a few days before they died. I think she filmed something she wasn’t supposed to see, and she got rid of them.”

Danny will kill me if I tell.

“What was their fight about?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “She wouldn’t tell me.”

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