Page 9 of The Ghostwriter

I keep flipping, dread filling me as I realize there’s very little I can use. There is no story. Occasionally, there are notes jotted in the margins, written in a different color ink, as if my father had gone back and added them later. The kind of thing authors do when they’re revising and want to remember to drop in an idea. But these aren’t ideas related to anything on the page.

I had to bury Ricky Ricardo quickly.

The darkest places to hide: storage shed, Poppy’s closet, attic, garage

THAT GODDAMN MOVIE.

And then, scribbled near the bottom of a page near the end of that first legal pad is a sentence that chills me.I wanted to kill Danny.

Vincent

June 13, 1975

8:30 p.m.

I watch the flames burn, careful not to let them grow too tall. I don’t have a lot of time, and I need to get this done. Lydia is waiting and I don’t want her to worry. Or come looking for me, asking why it’s taking so long to bring her a sweatshirt.

I’d dug a hole, the way Danny had taught me so many years ago, and tossed the bloody shirt into the bottom of it. Then I’d covered it with trash I’d grabbed on my way out of the high school, the custodians slow to gather it on the last day of the school year. The shirt I’d changed into smelled musty from my PE locker, but at least it was clean. I’d also grabbed a sweatshirt for Lydia, glad I’d been too lazy to clear out my things like Mr. Wallen had told us to.

I let the heat and smoke burn my eyes, willing them to stay open. Hoping that when I close them later, I’ll see the shadow and outline of the flames and not everything else.

I watch a plastic cup warp and burn, the smoke pungent and sharp, letting the flames die down, not wanting the trash on top to completely burn. I want people to see what it was and not look deeper to the ashes of the T-shirt at the bottom.

When they’re low enough, I cover it all with dirt, tamping it down with my feet until I can be sure the flames and embers are dead. I scrape my shoes over the top, disguising the hole—again, just like Danny taught me—before making my way back through the oak grove to meet up with Lydia. Coming up with a story for why I smell like smoke, in case anyone asks.

Chapter 5

I leave the manuscript on the desk and head down to my car, needing to clear my head. I drive aimlessly at first, the winding roads of my father’s neighborhood leading me back toward the center of Ojai, letting my mind settle. My father isn’t well, and what I read about Lewy body dementia mentioned hallucinations and faulty memories. About people insisting on things that were verifiably not true. I can’t be certain my father’s scribblings aren’t any more than that. Burying Ricky Ricardo? A delusion. The man is losing his mind. And as for that last note—I wanted to kill Danny—hyperbole. People say things like that all the time. The piece I’m most intrigued by is the full page of the same sentence, over and over.She shouldn’t have gone.A rumination. But on what?

My stomach growls and I pull into a parking space a few blocks from Ojai Avenue as my phone buzzes with a text from my real estate agent, Renee, a whip-smart woman with sharp edges and a blunt way of delivering information.Showed the house yesterday. Seemed promising at first, but they ended up deciding not to offer. I think we need to have a seriousconversation about reducing the price. Call me.I sit there, the temperature of the car slowly rising as I bounce between two awful truths: I will have to sell my house and I will still owe John Calder money.

I shove my phone down to the bottom of my purse, as if that will protect me from Renee’s blunt analysis, and walk toward Nina’s Diner, suddenly craving one of their burgers. But like all the rest of the shops I remember along Ojai Avenue, Nina’s is gone, replaced with a gourmet grill and a bohemian coffee shop. My stomach rumbles again, pushing me inside. The interior is airy and light; nothing like the walk-up window of Nina’s, where we could order and then sit outside on a sunny day.

I order a burger and some truffle fries, then turn to survey the new space. The tables are filled with tourists eating lunch, the blond wooden floor making the room feel brighter, hanging plants descending from a raised ceiling.

I smile at the waitress as she passes me a brown bag with my food, then make my way outside. I only get a few paces away when I see him across the street. Or at least I think it’s him. He’s taller now with broad shoulders, but I recognize the way he moves, like the memory of a song I used to know.

I should turn away. Duck into a store until he’s gone. But instead I call out. “Jack!”

He turns at the sound of his name but can’t locate anyone he recognizes so I raise my hand in a half wave. “It’s me. Olivia.”

He squints, then crosses the street, a grin breaking out across his face. “Oh my god,” he says. When he’s in front of me, he hesitates before pulling me into a tight hug, then releases me, his gaze making me uncomfortable.

I gesture for him to follow me around the side of the building, away from the sidewalk, and we cross the bike path that meanders through downtown, curving in and out of a stand of trees. We sit on a fallen log and face each other. “What happened to Nina’s?” I ask.

Jack shrugs and says, “Closed down. I think in 2006? They tried to open up another one near the high school, but that one closed too.”

I take a bite of my burger, which isn’t nearly as good, and say, “There’s nothing left.”

“Progress,” he says, then tugs on the end of my hair. “You’re blond.”

My heart does a tiny leap at the sound of his voice, so familiar yet so different. Deeper, riper, the years adding weight to it. He wears a flannel shirt and blue jeans, work boots peeking out beneath. Jack had been my best friend from age eight onward. He was the only one who never treated me like an exhibit at the zoo, something to be studied from a safe distance—causing a lot of conflict with his father, who’d been Danny’s best friend. After I’d gone to boarding school in Switzerland, we’d written letters—hundreds of them. I would tell him how much I hated it there, how much I disliked my entitled classmates. He confided in me about how his father’s drinking had spiraled into alcoholism and would report my own father’s misdeeds from the American media.

“I’ve looked for you, you know,” he says now, giving a tiny shrug. “Nothing stalkery. Just on social media. But I could never find you.”

Eventually, our letters had dwindled. By the time I was graduating from high school, it had been months since we’d written and I felt like it was time to cut all ties with my life in Ojai, including Jack.

“I went to France for college,” I say. “After that, I moved to Paris and married a professional skier. That didn’t work out,” I finish awkwardly.

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