Page 57 of The Ghostwriter

I look up at him. “You can’t be serious. I have a book to write, and no one can tell me anything I can verify.”

“Stay open to all possibilities. Let the story lead you.”

I roll my eyes. “You’ve been living in Ojai too long. Did you use crystals or do a sound bath to come up with that one?”

“I actually got it from an interview you gave a few years ago. I found it on YouTube.”

I stare at him, then scatter the broken pieces of twig onto the ground below me.

“I know you have a job to do, but don’t lose sight of the fact that your dad is dying,” he continues. “He asked for your help, and you came. No matter what happens with the book or what happened in 1975, you’ll always have that—the knowledge that you showed up when he needed you.”

“He never showed up for me.”

Jack gives me a sympathetic look. “Relationships aren’t transactional.”

Tom used to say something similar, but I brush away that ghost. Glad at least I won’t have to worry about explaining any of this to him. “I still have so many questions,” I say. “Nothing he’s told me matches up with the films or with Poppy’s diary.”

He nudges my shoulder with his. “Maybe it’s time to ask him about them.”

I shake my head and look up at the sky peeking through the branches of the trees. A blue jay flies from one branch to another, calling out to a friend. Then I look back at Jack. “Over the years, Margot and your dad have never wavered in their belief that my father is guilty.”

Jack sighs. “Margot was young. Think about a teenager’s brain. Layer over that the trauma of what happened to her best friend.”

“And your dad?”

“Danny was a hero to him,” Jack says. “Best friends, the way you and I were. How much is memory and how much is emotion?” He scratches his work boot in the dirt and says, “Have you thought about talking to your mom?”

“Very funny,” I say.

“I think you know the truth,” he says. “But you’ve built so many walls, you can’t see it anymore.”

I look at him, understanding crashing over me. “You never thought he was guilty.”

Jack looks into the trees beyond us, choosing his words carefully. “I could never reconcile the man I knew with a killer.” He shakes his head. “How could the guy who used to insist on ice cream sundaes for breakfast, who taught me how to tie a necktie, be the same person who murdered his siblings?” His voice grows quieter. “Your dad was a mess, but he always seemed to know when I needed him to get his shit together and step in. It’s like he intuited when my own father was struggling and just quietly gave me what I needed.”

I don’t know what I’m feeling, a mixture of confusion, maybe a little betrayal, a lot of regret. “You never told me that.”

“It wasn’t my place. Maybe if you hadn’t been halfway around the world, we could have had a conversation about it. But I wasn’t going to argue with you through letters.”

“You thinking my dad was innocent must have gone over well with your own father.”

Jack gives me a sad smile. “I never said anything to him either. What would be the point?”

“What did you think when my father started partying his way through the nineties?”

“I think everyone copes with trauma and grief in different ways.”

“And what about what he wrote on the closet wall?” I ask.

“We have no context. We don’t know when those words were written in Poppy’s closet, or even if he wrote it.”

“He wrote it,” I say, my voice coming out louder than I intend, so I soften it. “He also told me Danny killed the neighbor’s cat, but it was him on the film, burying it.”

“We have no way of knowing how that cat died. All we know is that your father buried it.” He must see the skeptical expression on my face because he says, “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you find out your father killed his brother and sister. What happens next?”

I think about it, about a path forward in the legal system. “Nothing,”I finally say. “There wouldn’t be any justice for Poppy or Danny. There’s no way he would be considered competent to stand trial.”

“Think about his life,” Jack says. “The years of substance abuse. The loss of everyone who mattered to him. He lives alone in that big house with only Angry Alma for company. What kind of life is that?”

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