Page 40 of The Ghostwriter

Near the end of my third week in Ojai, I’m back at Jack and Matt’s, drinking wine and talking about anything and everything other than why I’m still in town. Jack hasn’t pressed me again, though sometimes I can tell he wants to ask me a question about how exactly I’m helping my father when he’s got a perfectly capable caretaker in Alma. He doesn’t ask whether my father and I have arrived at some kind of mutual acceptance and forgiveness. He simply lets me be here, which is a gift.

“Tell Kamala that I want to see her in the Oval Office someday,” Matt says, setting down an artful charcuterie board on the table in front of us. He loves that I’m on texting terms with famous people.

“I don’t know Kamala, but I pitched AOC once for a book.” I take a cracker and break it in half. “I didn’t get it.”

Matt, with his loose jeans and floppy hair, is exactly who I imaginedJack would fall in love with. Whip-smart, sarcastic, and soft-hearted, he’s the opposite of Jack’s cowboy persona. He wears designer loafers without socks. He uses hair products.

Matt slides onto the bench next to me at their dining room table, nudging my shoulder. “How’s your dad doing?” he asks.

“He has his good days and bad days,” I tell him. “Alma has a lot of rules that supposedly keep him from getting too confused. But I’m not sure how well they’re working because a couple times, he’s mistaken me for my mother.”

“Jack told me she left when you were young,” Matt says. “Will you tell her he’s sick?”

My gaze locks with Jack’s before I say, “I doubt it.” If this were any other book, I wouldn’t hesitate to seek out the ex-wife of my subject. In fact, she would be the first person I’d want to talk with. To question her about her memory of that time. But my mother’s name sits on my list alongside Margot Gibson’s and Mark Randall’s like a bomb waiting to detonate.

“What was your mom like?” Matt asks.

Jack starts to speak, undoubtedly to tell Matt that my mother has always been a topic I don’t like to discuss, but I wave him off. Here, in Ojai, I can’t lie about my family. It’s not possible for me to tell people the stories I’ve created about two loving parents, how hard it was on my mom when my dad died, how she struggled to learn how to pay the bills and manage the house on her own. How she worked to hide her illness from me so I could finish college. And how devastated I was to lose her. Ojai exists as a bubble in my life. Everything and everyone who knows the truth lives inside of it, and I’m not afraid of speaking about it here. Confident I can keep it contained.

“I don’t remember much about her,” I say. “When I was young, I used to imagine I had one of those PTA moms who would bring in cupcakes for my birthday. Who would work at the book fair. In middle school I imagined her as a shop owner—maybe jewelry she made herself, ora bakery—and I would sit behind the counter, and everyone would comment on what a good assistant I was. Then my mother would say,‘I couldn’t do any of this without Olivia!’” Matt’s gaze softens and Jack grows still, their silence allowing me to continue. I don’t let myself imagine what Tom would say if he were here, listening to this story. In this moment, he seems light-years away from who I am and what I’m working on. Almost as if I’ve imagined him altogether. “And later, when my father started actively drinking, I used to fantasize about my mother coming to get me. The two of us living in a small apartment or on a houseboat in Ventura. Heating up frozen dinners and eating them at a tiny table. Watching TV on the couch, just the two of us. Not a lot of money, but security. Consistency.”

For years, my mother was a dark hole into which I poured hours of wondering. Imagining. Dreaming. After I went abroad for high school, I tried not to think about her at all, other than to lay the blame for my father’s addictions and my subsequent exile squarely at her feet. It was because of her that I’d been sent away to boarding school, my father claiming I was too old for a babysitter but too young to be left home alone while he traveled. It was her fault that she was unable to withstand the rumors about my father, about what had happened in 1975. If both my father and I could deal with the whispers that swirled around us, why couldn’t she?

“A mother is supposed to love and protect you,” I say. “Mine chose to abandon me, and it’s something I’ve never been able to forgive her for doing.”

“There,” Jack says, his voice just above a whisper. Meant only for me to hear. “Was that so hard?”

I know he’s referring to my honesty, how willingly I opened up. A quiet criticism of who I am when I’m not being myself.

Chapter 17

The snacks I’d bought myself when I first arrived have finally run out. Though Jack sent me home last night with leftovers, I’d rather save them for dinner, so I’m raiding my father’s pantry, grateful for the break. I find a package of Doritos, rip them open, and lean against the counter, savoring the quiet of the main house. As soon as I eat something, I plan on checking my father’s email again to see if John Calder has gotten back to him. Or whether he will at all. The last two times I checked, there hadn’t been anything. Just more emails from the Gap.

I’m reaching into the bag for another handful of chips when my phone rings. It’s my friend Allison, finally getting back to me. I look around, desperate for something to wipe my hands on before settling on my pants, and brace myself.

“Allison,” I say, my voice hollow and breathless.

“Sorry I’m just now getting back to you,” she says when I answer. “Fiji was amazing. What’s the deal with this Ojai property?”

“Just research on a potential project,” I say. “I want to track down the owner.”

I’ve been back to the house several times, sneaking through the preserve when the neighbor’s car is gone. I’ve peered in windows, dug around in the garden, and tried to orient myself with the floor plan from the outside, matching what I can see with photographs from my father’s albums. I feel a rush now at the idea that I might be able to track down the owner and get in.

“This particular house was pretty locked down,” Allison says. “My supervisor says he sees this with homes owned by entertainment industry folks who almost exclusively purchase their homes through an LLC. This one was no different. I was able to get the name of the LLC, and from there you can go to the secretary of state’s website and see what pops up. But it’ll probably be another entity.”

I look out the window to the orchard in the distance. “What’s the name of the LLC?”

“I’m emailing it to you as we speak.”

“Thanks so much for digging into this for me. I really appreciate it.”

“Happy to help,” she says. “Look, I’ve got to run. Catch up when you’re back in town?”

“Definitely,” I tell her.

We disconnect and I check my email, the Doritos forgotten on the counter next to me. At the top is the message, as promised. I open it and scan past the boilerplate language to the name of the entity that owns the property.

Lionel Foolhardy, LLC.

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