Page 42 of The Ghostwriter

I wander over to it and slide the doors open. Plain white walls. An empty clothes rod. It’s not a walk-in, but deep enough for a small child to hide in if she wanted to. I crawl inside and lean against the back, looking out into the room. Which is when I see the words written on the interior wall not visible from the outside. Faint scratches of an old marker, written in the distinctive hand of my father.

Someday soon, you’ll be dead.

Chapter 19

I reel backward, hitting my head on the wall behind me, then reach up and fumble with the cord on the closet light, but it doesn’t turn on. “Shit,” I mutter, my trembling fingers needing several tries to tap the flashlight icon on my phone.

I stare at the sentence, my mind scrambling to make sense of what I’m seeing. Thinking back to every conversation I’ve had with my father about Poppy, trying to dig out anything that would indicate conflict between the two of them. There were many stories, but nothing that would point toward my father deciding to write something like this on the wall of his younger sister’s closet.

A low dread begins to churn inside of me as I think about all the times I’ve seen my father lose his temper. The anger that would overtake him, the yelling. The rage. Especially after he started drinking and doing drugs. When I was younger, he wasn’t like that. I’d always assumed his temper had developed due to fame and substance abuse. That his true self was the one I remembered from when I was a little girl. But maybe it’s theother way around. Maybe, during that brief time of my childhood when I’d worshipped him, his true self had been buried deep inside, waiting to come out again.

I scoot out of the closet and stand in the center of the room, my heart pounding. Reconciling myself with the very real possibility that, as a teenager, my father had done something horrific and gotten away with it.

And now he’s trapped me into cementing his lies.

***

I call Jack. “Can you meet me?” My voice is barely above a whisper.

“This sounds serious,” he says. “Hold on a second.” While I wait, I try to think of an explanation, a reason my father would write those words on the wall of his little sister’s closet. A threat? A joke? Jack comes back on the line. “I’m all yours. Where do you want to meet?”

“The preserve.”

When Jack arrives, I lead him toward my father’s old house. Perhaps the same route Poppy might have taken fifty years ago. The shadows are long, afternoon sun barely tipping over the hills in the distance. We walk quietly until we get to the edge of the property when I put a hand on Jack’s arm to keep him from going forward.

“Why are we here?” he asks.

I ignore his question, keeping my eyes trained on the neighbor’s house. Making sure he isn’t gardening again or sitting on his back porch. Then I gesture for Jack to follow me. We sprint through the yard and up the back steps, where I twist the knob on the door that I’d left unlocked.

“What are you doing?” Jack hisses.

I step inside and gesture for him to follow. When I close the door, I turn to face him. His gaze darts from the door to the hallway where Danny died, and back to me. “I really don’t want to get arrested,” he says.

“Don’t worry, my father still owns this house,” I tell him.

His fear morphs into a look of disbelief. “Shut up,” he whispers.

“There’s more,” I say, leading him down the hall and into Poppy’s room. I pull out my phone and shine the flashlight on the inner wall. He leans in and I watch him, his eyes widening as the meaning becomes clear. “Oh my god,” he says.

We stare at each other for a beat and then he must realize where we are because he says, “This was her room, wasn’t it?”

I sink down onto the scratchy brown carpet and Jack does the same. We sit, facing each other, and I can still see the young boy I once trusted more than anyone. I can’t do this by myself. I can’t keep the secret of the book, the secrets my father so clearly doesn’t want me to discover, even though he’s tasked me with writing a book about them. I can’t tell Tom, but I can tell Jack. Tears well in my eyes and I cover my face, allowing myself to cry.

“Hey,” Jack says, scooting closer, wrapping his arms around me. He holds me until I can catch my breath. Until I’ve made a decision.

“I’m not here because my father is sick,” I tell him, wiping my cheeks and nose on my sleeve.

“No shit.”

I give myself a moment to gather my thoughts, knowing what it will cost me to reveal this, but knowing I need my only friend to help me sort through everything I’ve learned. Jack already knows the worst parts of my past; I don’t have to explain my secrets or give him context. “My father hired me to ghostwrite his memoir,” I tell him. “He wants to write about what happened.”

Jack is quiet as he absorbs the information and I continue, telling him about the incoherent draft of my father’s book, his refusal to allow me to work the way I usually do. I tell Jack about how hard he’s been trying to convince me that Danny was dangerous. Working toward something—a reason? Justification for what he’s planning to reveal? I tell him aboutfinding Poppy’s diary and her concern about my mother’s pregnancy and abortion. And then I swallow hard, forcing myself to say it out loud. “Do you think my father killed them?”

“We don’t even know when that was written.”

I shake my head, still trying to absorb that the man I’d once idolized might have done this to his brother and sister.

“What about the alibi?” Jack continues. “You can’t look at that one sentence, assign meaning to it and ignore everything else.”

---