Page 73 of The Ghostwriter

“The films are really helping set the tone,” I tell her. “Not just recounting the events on them, but the glimpses I’m getting of Ojai in 1975. The cars. Clothes. The vibe.”

“How many reels are there?” she asks.

“Only ten. They begin shortly after she gets the camera for her birthday in early March, but unfortunately they end about a week before the murders. We don’t have anything after June 5th. The camera was lost shortly after that.”

“What happened to it?” Nicole asks.

I stare at the clutter of boxes that still surround me, the windows dark. “No one knows,” I tell her. “She had the camera one day, and the next it was gone.”

Poppy

June 10, 1975

I crash through the trees, no longer trying to be quiet, fear hot in my chest. Behind me, I can hear my brother coming after me. The rasp of his breath, a grunt as he leaps over a log in his quest to reach me. To punish me for what I’ve just seen.

My camera is still in my hand, still filming. When he saw me, I jumped up and took off, terrified of what he would do if he caught me. I fly past the giant eucalyptus we used to call Big Ben and around the stump of a small one that Vince chopped down with a machete when he was eight.

My legs are burning but I don’t slow down. The edge of the field is just ahead. If I can make it to our yard, I might be safe. But as I reach the clearing, he slams into me from behind, sending me sprawling forward and landing hard on the ground, causing me to bite my tongue.

“Give it to me,” he says, grabbing my arm, my wrist, fighting me off with his other hand. I’m kicking him, trying to land something that willcause him to take a step back, to give me an opening into which I can slip past him. To save myself. To save my camera. But he’s bigger than me. Stronger.

I roll onto my back and start kicking him again, but he pins my legs by kneeling on them, pressing me into the ground with his weight. I squirm to get out from under him, but his grip is so tight I feel the blood pounding in my head and wonder if he might cut off my oxygen next. “Get off me,” I say, but my voice sounds like it’s coming from far away. “Stop it, Danny.”

He wrenches my camera from my hand, twisting two of my fingers in the process. Then he stands and hurls it into the trees, a distant crash as it hits one and shatters.

I rise from the ground and start to go into the trees to retrieve it, but he yanks me by the arm toward the house instead. I cast one last look back at the trees, trying to remember the direction it flew, hoping to figure out where it might have landed so I can go back to get it.

Danny shoves me through the back door, down the hall, and into his bedroom, closing the door behind us.

I turn on him, still tasting blood in my mouth, my elbows aching where they hit the ground, my knees stinging. “Danny,” I say, thinking of the way he used to laugh—big and loud—and the way it would fill me up, like helium until I felt like I might fly. When was the last time he’d laughed like that?

“Not a fucking word,” he hisses.

“How long?” I ask.

“None of your goddamn business.”

I take a step toward him.

“Don’t look at me that way,” he says.

“What way?” I want to reach out. To touch his arm. Show him I’m on his side—even though he destroyed my camera.

“Like that,” he says. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“It’s wrong,” I say.

We stare at each other, a silent standoff, the magnitude of his secret passing between us. And yet, so many confusing thoughts are swirling around inside of me. Things I believed to be true that aren’t. And my camera, smashed somewhere out there in the field behind our house.

“You’re bleeding,” he says, pointing to my knee. A trickle of blood travels from a cut down my shin. He hands me a tissue and I mop it up.

“If you don’t tell someone,” I say, “I will.”

“If you do, I’ll fucking kill you.” I can tell by the expression on his face that he means it.

“Danny, you have to tell.”

“Get out,” he says.

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