Page 39 of The Ghostwriter

I stare at the screen, thinking again of the story my father is telling me, spinning Danny as dangerous. Of Poppy’s diary hidden deep inside my duffel bag with references to films long gone. Wondering if somehow the information my father claims he never told police has something to do with the alibi.

I press the button to print the article and collect my things to go home.

***

“When is it okay to break an agreement you’ve made?” I’d called Tom as soon as I got in my car.

“Never,” he says.

His answer doesn’t surprise me, but I need him to give me a different one. “But what if you’re stuck?” I ask. “Like, you can’t honor one agreement without breaking another.”

“You figure out how to honor both, to the best of your ability.” He doesn’t even hesitate. There is no gray area for Tom. Only honor and truth and openness. “It may not be perfect, but that’s sometimes the best you can do.”

I wish I lived in a world like Tom’s. Where there are no secrets. No fictional backstories. No complicated traumas that make people behave in unexpected ways.

When I get back to my father’s house, I find Alma gathering their things, preparing to leave for his physical therapy appointment. My father sits on the couch, waiting, his hands clasped like an obedient child’s.

“Did you know there was a grand jury in 1993? That the coroner who did Poppy and Danny’s autopsy was using drugs?” I ask.

He looks up at me and I’m relieved to see his gaze clear. “My attorney had heard rumblings, but they quickly determined they didn’t have enough evidence to move forward.”

I wait for him to continue, but of course, he doesn’t. Apparently, that’s all he’s got to say on the subject of his near-indictment.

“Why didn’t you push for the investigation to continue after your parents died?”

He lifts one shoulder, a half shrug, and says, “All I wanted to do was forget. Your mother and I…we were traumatized. I’m certain it was at the root of all her problems later. Mine as well. We probably never should have gotten married. There’s a term for it now—trauma bonding.” He sighs. “My thinking at the time was that nothing would bring them back. My parents believed it was the man who’d given Poppy that ride home the weekend before. Who’d come back for the carnival, followed her to the house, and Danny got in the way. And that person was long gone.”

I cut my gaze toward Alma and lower my voice. “Here’s what I’m wondering.” I pause, trying to find a way to word my question so that he doesn’t feel attacked. “In all the articles I read, no one—and I mean no one—ever mentioned Danny as unstable or volatile. The only place I’ve ever heard that is from you.”

“Because no one outside of the family ever saw it,” he says. “And you’re the first person I’ve ever told.”

I think about how convenient it is that there isn’t anyone left of his family to corroborate this for him. It’s time for me to finally ask him about what he thinks Danny did to their sister. But what he says next sucks all the air from my lungs and renders my question obsolete. “Danny was a lot of things to me—hero and abuser—but I could never figure out how to suggest he could have been a killer.”

Chapter 16

I’ve read and reread Poppy’s last entry.

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.

This, plus the stories my father has told me over the last two weeks, paints an ominous portrait of Danny, and yet, Danny as the killer doesn’t make sense. If Danny killed Poppy, then who killed Danny? My father? It’s possible he’s building up to confessing just that; however, the idea feels too simple to me. And while I’m not comfortable presenting his stories as fact, the only thing I can do right now is write them down and try to see through them to whatever might be lurking below.

I spend several afternoons at the Ojai library, immersing myself in that era. I read through old issues of theOjai Valley News. But I’m not only interested in articles about the murders. I read about city councilmeetings. About the sports teams at Nordhoff High. Ojai Valley School and Thacher, the local boarding schools. I read about new businesses. Local gossip. The weather. Politics at the time.

And I start to write. AirPods shoved into my ears, I listen to the hits of 1975. Aerosmith. Queen. The Eagles. Laptop open, trying to time travel back to Ojai, the summer of 1975. I lose myself, my own problems falling away. It’s a relief to shed my life and dip into another era.

I also spend hours in the grove behind my father’s old house, now the Ojai Meadows Preserve. When my father was young, this was nothing more than fifty acres filled with weeds, tall grasses, and small clusters of eucalyptus trees. But now, they’ve turned it into a nature preserve with walking trails, native oak trees, and a pond. I also explore the trails in the nearby oak grove where Danny used to camp alone. Where he’d buried the neighbor’s cat. Trying to imagine my parents, Poppy, and Danny, living in this stretch of land, using it as their backyard.

And between the conversations with my father, the time in the library doing background, and getting my sense of the setting, I look into the coroner. The man who’d possibly gotten the time of death wrong. Digging into that developing story in 1993 has been a distraction, but not a waste of time. I think about questions I might ask. The coroner himself is unfortunately deceased, but I have a list of names. The DA at the time of the inquest. The lead detective on the case, looking for links to people from my former life as a journalist. Any old favors I can call in to get confirmation that the coroner had been high the night of Poppy’s and Danny’s autopsies.

I’m in my element. This is a job I know how to do, and one that I’m exceptionally good at. I’ve managed to keep myself busy enough not to return to my father’s in-box, to see if Calder has responded, telling myself it doesn’t matter what he thinks or what he wants.

Ghostwriteris often a term men like Calder push back on. They fight to have their name on the cover alongside the subject of the book. However,I’m happy to disappear, letting my subject’s voice shine through. I love to inhabit their lives, their minds—and with everyone I start off easy.Tell me what you remember about that year. Tell me about your parents. Your siblings. What your school years were like.I build trust.

The work I’m doing with my father is a collaboration, like all the others I’ve done—the Olympic ice skater I spent three months shadowing on tour. Watching him rehearse in the mornings, perform in the evenings, then talking for several hours late into the night. Writing the book on a tour bus. In airports. Eating fast food and mainlining black coffee to make my deadline. Or the world-famous country star who’d lost her ability to sing, but who now spearheads funding for major medical research.

I force myself to forget that this particular job is personal. I try to stay objective, open to the stories my father is slowly unraveling for me—three siblings who loved each other and what happened when one of them suddenly became dangerous.

***

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