Page 60 of The Ghostwriter

“Your new school,” my father had announced, picking up his sandwich again, a large chunk of salami sliding out the back end of it as he took a bite. He chewed, then said, “You leave in four weeks.”

I try now to fight down the tears creeping into my voice, not wanting him to see how much that still hurts. How betrayed I felt. Howabandoned. “You just…yanked me out of my life without any discussion,” I tell him. “Just a series of clues leading me toward the things I’d need to take with me when I left for good.” We sit, shoulder to shoulder, the sun no longer high enough to cast shadows, the ground and trees a muted shade of gray.

“I was only trying to make things fun for you,” he explains to me now. “The treasure hunts, the clues… Poppy used to love them.”

“Or perhaps she played them because she didn’t want to upset you,” I suggest.

“That’s not how I remember it.” His tone is petulant.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, each of us lost in thought. Again, Jack’s words from yesterday come back to me.You need to ask yourself why this is the story he wants to tell.With other projects, the narrative has always belonged to someone else. My only job was to shape it into something that will resonate with readers. But this book—about my family, my past—belongs to me as well. Maybe it’s my turn to tell a story.

“Do you remember that trip we took to Miami?” I ask.

He thinks for a moment. “I don’t remember ever being in Miami with you.”

“Technically, you weren’t,” I tell him. “You spent all of your time either in the hotel bar drinking or trying to score drugs from one of the waiters.”

He gives me a quick look. “When was this?”

“My junior year of high school, so 1996? Winter break. I wanted to come home to Ojai and see Jack, but you said you needed a change of scenery.” I pause for a moment. “When it was time to go home, you told me to meet you in the lobby and we’d take a cab to the airport. You had torun a quick errand.”

“Do I want to hear the rest of this?”

“Probably not, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I waited for you for nearly an hour before asking the front desk if they’d seen you. They said you’d already checked out and left.”

He doesn’t look at me. “I left you there?”

“I was terrified. I managed to track down that waiter and beg him to drive me to the airport.” I take a moment, remembering my panic, hot and slick in the back of my throat. The sympathetic, knowing look the front desk clerk gave me. The quiet way she suggested I hunt down my father’sfriend, folding napkins on the outdoor patio. “When I got to the gate, I found you sitting there waiting for the flight, as if nothing was wrong. You were staring straight ahead, sunglasses still on your face. Likely high as a kite. I sat down and really laid into you. Told you what a shitty person you were, what a shitty father. Said I never wanted to take another vacation with you ever again. Not even to come home to Ojai. I informed you that I’d be spending all my breaks either at school or with friends, then I demanded to know what kind of a man did that to their only child. I unraveled years of pain and anger and laid it at your feet. I’m sure the people around us were getting an earful.”

“What did I say?” His voice is cautious, as if he doesn’t really want to know.

“At first, I thought you were livid.Keep our business behind closed doors, Olivia, you’d always said to me. But by then I didn’t care anymore. I wanted to call you out.” I give a shallow laugh. “To answer your question, you didn’t say anything. Just that stony silence you’d always have whenever you were too angry to speak. But then I realized you hadn’t heard any of it, because behind your sunglasses, you were asleep.”

He lets out a sharp snap of breath. “It’s a miracle you said yes to this job.”

“If I’d had any other options, I wouldn’t have.”

I wait for him to apologize, to say,I’m sorry I did that to you. I’m sorry for the incompetence and neglect. But I soon realize he isn’t going to. My father never apologizes. Not in the traditional sense. He’ll make a gesture—a grand one or a small one, depending on his transgression—but I’ve never once heard him say he was sorry.

And I realize how many years I’ve been waiting for that. A small nod of ownership. Of regret. I don’t know what I was hoping to get from retelling this story. Perhaps confirmation that it had happened. Acknowledgment from him that he remembered it too, that I haven’t been the only one carrying around these moments, heavy weights still wrapped around my heart.

But my father can’t even give me that anymore.

***

We make our way back to the house, the sky darkening from purple to black, the orchard lights dotting the path. When we get to the courtyard, I’m about to head upstairs to my room when he turns to look at me. “Every chapter has to have a point. Even if the reader can’t yet see it. Every story told must serve two purposes—to allow your reader to know your characters better, and to push the narrative toward the conclusion.”

It’s early evening, the time of day my father typically starts losing the thread of conversations, when he starts slipping into the past, thinking I’m my mother. Or perhaps this time, a protégé he helped somewhere along the way.

He stares at me a moment, as if waiting for me to confirm that I know what he’s talking about. When I don’t say anything, he takes a step closer. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Suddenly, I’m back to Jack’s questions from yesterday. About why the stories he’s been telling me—about a scary older brother and two younger siblings who were growing frightened of him—are the ones my father wants me to write about. His references to the treasure hunts he used to design. The unusual way he’d leave clues for me. A manuscript filled with stories that all point to him.

“I’m not sure,” I finally say.

He scrutinizes me, and in his expression, I see disappointment. Frustration. As if I’m missing the point altogether. “Then maybe you’re not the right person for this job after all.”

Chapter 27

---