NY Times Bestselling Thriller! THE GHOSTWRITER by Julie Clark ~ Includes an Excerpt!

“I know what your dad did.”

It was the year I’d turned 10, and one of my classmates had slid onto the bench next to me at school, his voice a hot whisper in my ear.

I set down my bologna sandwich. “He wrote a book.” I hadn’t been wild about my father’s meteoric rise as an author. He talked louder. Drank more than usual — which had been a lot to begin with — and traveled more, leaving me home with his assistant, Melinda, a young woman who now let herself into our house with her own key. Who would tell me my father was too busy to sign my math tests or quiz me for spelling.

My father’s success had caught the attention of the literary world — his books were now sitting alongside Stephen King on the shelves and bestseller lists, and in some weeks even outselling him. But it had caught the attention of the rest of Ojai as well, sparking whispers and memories that became loud enough for the kids to notice.

The boy, whose name I no longer remember, had shaken his head, eyes sparkling with glee to be the one to tell me. To shatter my childhood right there in the school cafeteria. “Your dad killed his brother and sister. Murdered them in their own home.”

“You’re a liar,” I’d accused him. “You’re just jealous.”

But the reaction of the other kids around us stole the certainty from my words. Because there wasn’t the scornful skepticism I’d expected, but rather a silent shock that he’d had the guts to say aloud what everyone else already knew.

That’s how it started. How I discovered the dark secret that lived at the center of my family.

From there, the murder of Danny and Poppy Taylor became a tale told in hushed whispers at slumber parties alongside Ouija boards and visits from Bloody Mary in the mirror at midnight. Two kids, just like us, stabbed to death in 1975 while the entire town celebrated the official beginning of summer at the annual Ojai Carnival 100 yards behind their house.

All of my classmates became experts on the story, despite the fact that by the time it began circulating among them, Danny and Poppy had been dead for over 15 years. How Poppy was supposed to meet her best friend at the Tilt-A-Whirl after making a quick stop at home for a sweater. How she’d been ambushed, murdered in her own bedroom while her older brother, Danny, had been killed in the hallway, just steps away from saving her.

Old newspaper clippings had been dug out of closets and passed around at recess like contraband, kids studying their class photos. Poppy’s slight build, wavy hair that looked like it tangled easily, freckles blooming across her cheeks. The way Danny’s face glowed with lost potential, his bright smile a promise never fulfilled.

They discussed where Danny had been found, how desperate he must have been to get to his younger sister, to protect her at the expense of his own life. But Danny had failed, Poppy had died and their names became the property of others, dragged out of the past and into the present. Don’t end up like Danny and Poppy. Buried inside the rote questions of parents. Will an adult be home?

Everything in my childhood suddenly made sense. The low buzz that seemed to follow us wherever we went. That extra space in line at the supermarket. A phone that never rang for play dates or birthday party invitations. I’d always assumed it was because my mother had left when I was five, a shame I carried until a bigger one pushed it away.

Once I knew, it wasn’t hard to find the albums tucked in the back of my father’s closet.

An early photo, my grandmother’s flowery cursive on the back — Danny age 9, Vince age 8, Poppy age 6 — lined up on a brown striped couch, posing with mugs of hot chocolate in their pajamas. Another, a few years later, playing cards around a small Formica kitchen table, their mother a blur in the background, their father’s cigarette smoke a gentle swirl rising up from the ashtray at the edge of the frame.

I marked the passage of time as the three siblings aged, the years and days creeping closer to June 13, 1975.