Page 85 of The Ghostwriter

This is how it ends.It surprises me, how far away everything feels. The secret I’ve been holding, a ticking bomb that detonates here, before I had the chance to tell anyone.

A sound catches my attention, somewhere in the house. A door closing. My eyes fly open again, and this time I see Danny standing in the doorway to my bedroom. Still staring at me, as if he can’t believe what’s happening. And I remember why I’m here in the first place.

Vince has arrived. My other brother, just a year younger than Danny.Irish twins,our mother used to joke, back when she still found jokes in places other than the inside of a wine bottle. I stare at Danny, waiting to see if he also hears the noise, but he doesn’t turn around.

I want to yell, to warn Vince to leave. To get out of the house. But of course, I can’t. And so, as the edges of my vision grow blurry, I see Vince creeping up behind Danny, taking in the scene, the bloody mess with me at the center of it. I close my eyes again, unable to watch them destroy each other, once and for all.

Chapter 35

I spend four days at home drafting several new chapters of my father’s memoir. Chapters that tell the truth of what happened. I want to have something to share with him when I return to Ojai. And I will be returning, regardless of what Alma wants. I need my father to know that this story doesn’t have to end the way he wants it to.

Nearly two months to the day after I made that first trip back to Ojai, I make it again. This time armed with answers.

***

I find him in the courtyard, enjoying the early May sunshine, his right hand wrapped in gauze. I approach him tentatively and sit on the bench next to him, resting my laptop on my knees. “How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Better,” he says. “That must have scared you.”

I wave away his words. “I should have done a better job to prepare you. I had no idea it would upset you so much.”

“Of course you didn’t,” he says.

The entire drive back, I ran through different ways to tell my father what I’d learned. What I suspect actually happened. And how to tell him without sending him back to the hospital.

“I went to see Mom,” I tell him.

He closes his eyes and nods. When he opens them again, he looks defeated. “Why can’t you just write the book I asked you to write?”

“Because that’s not the way I work, and I think you knew that, which is why you hired me.” Then I touch his arm. “I know you didn’t think I was paying attention, but I was. I found everything you left for me.”

He gives me a weak smile. “I know.”

“Why go through all that, Dad? Why not just tell me what you wanted me to know?”

He’s quiet for a moment, and I’m not sure if he’s trying to formulate an answer or if he’s gone somewhere else in his mind. “I wanted one last hunt with you,” he says. “Besides, when you thought I was being deceitful, you felt the information you were discovering was truer than if I’d just come out and told you.” He gives me a half shrug and continues. “When I first started showing symptoms, I made a plan. I put the notes in the margins for you to find. I knew what stories I wanted to tell. I just needed you here to listen.”

“I have one more clip I need to show you. Are you up for it?”

“I’ve got some pretty heavy-duty meds in me, so I’m game,” he says.

I nod and open my laptop. “That last week, Mom found Poppy’s Super 8 camera in the preserve. Danny had broken it because of something she’d recorded on it. The film from that day was still in it, and I had it transferred to digital.” The video is paused, frozen on the tree trunks of the oak grove near their house. “She meant to give the camera back to Poppy at some point, but then everything happened. This was Poppy’s last movie, shot just a few days before she died.” I glance at him, trying to gauge his mental state. “I need you to be ready,” I warn. “This one has sound. You’re going to hear their voices.”

A gentle smile floats across my father’s face. “The eleventh roll,” he whispers.

The beginning of the reel had been scenes from the ERA rally. She’d captured the speakers, the crowds of women, and finally Poppy, who’d turned her camera around on herself, lit up with an energy and passion that had brought tears to my eyes when I’d first seen it. How young she was. How happy. But I’ve skipped over all of that to the very last clip.

I press Play. At first all you can see are trees and someone walking through them. But this time we can hear the crunch of leaves. Birds singing. The camera finds the edge of Poppy’s scuffed tennis shoe, then back up again. A tent comes into focus, and Poppy zooms in on the two figures in front of it. Mr. Stewart, facing Danny.

“What are you doing out here by yourself?” Mr. Stewart asks.

“You’re the one who told me how powerful it is to camp alone in the woods,” Danny says, his seventeen-year-old voice lower than I expected it to be. Cracking with anger. Or nerves.

“You’ve been avoiding me since I moved in,” Mr. Stewart says, closing the space between them.

“I wonder why.”

Mr. Stewart steps even closer, forcing Danny to move back.

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