The Ghostwriter

Olivia conducts her morning interview with Vincent, picking up on the topic of Danny. Danny used to bully Poppy and prevent Vincent from helping her, a memory that still angers Vincent. When Olivia voices her frustration about not being able to corroborate his stories with anyone else, Vincent advises her not to be so protective of her characters. Olivia reminds him that she doesn’t write fictional characters, so Vincent reminds her that she was the one who invented the Lionel Foolhardy character. He shows her pages of stories she wrote as a child to prove his point. Olivia is stunned to have forgotten this.

Vincent shows Olivia more keepsakes from her childhood. He reveals that he remembers seeing her at a literary conference once and attempted to reach out, but she had already left by the time he visited her hotel. Embarrassed, Vincent asks if she would be willing to stay to help him sort through his boxes for valuable items while writing the book. Olivia accepts on the premise that objects could help her in the absence of interviews.

Olivia asks about the part in Vincent’s manuscript where he writes “She shouldn’t have gone” (84) over and over. Vincent is initially unsure what to make of it, but guesses it is about Lydia. Once, he was grounded and could not attend a bonfire party that everyone else was attending. He was upset that Lydia had chosen to attend the party instead of staying with him at home. Olivia is disappointed that the anecdote isn’t relevant to the memoir.

On March 8, 1975, three months before his siblings’ deaths, Vincent is frustrated that he cannot attend the bonfire party, more so that Lydia chose to leave him behind. Before they leave, Vincent asks Poppy to watch over Lydia and prove that she isn’t cheating on him with anyone else. Poppy teases that she will film Lydia with her new Super 8 camera.

The party is happening at the house of Mr. Stewart, the young PE teacher who is popular with all the schoolkids. Lydia has become increasingly interested in running track, which Mr. Stewart coaches. Mr. Stewart is also the same teacher who got Danny interested in outdoor survival. Mr. Stewart will soon move into the house next to Vincent’s.

Olivia sends Neil a chapter draft about Danny and the dead cat. The next day, she brings some of Vincent’s family photo albums to their morning interview. Vincent comments on Poppy’s photos, describing her as a young activist who pushed back on the preteen obsessions of her time. Their conservative mother frequently clashed with Poppy over topics such as abortion rights. At school, Poppy lobbied for gender equity in the curriculum. Vincent compares Olivia to Poppy, suggesting that Poppy would have supported Olivia’s work had she been alive. When Olivia laments about the state of her career, Vincent encourages her to avoid regretting the past.

Vincent recalls Danny next, suggesting that Danny stopped being fun at a certain point. This was characteristic of Danny, who regularly tricked Vincent into dangerous and scary situations. Olivia and Vincent look at the last photograph taken of Danny before his death. A poster in the photo reminds Vincent of the time he had gone to a Pink Floyd concert with Lydia. They hitchhiked to the concert venue, which was a common occurrence for Ojai kids who wanted to reach Ventura. Vincent does not remember who gave them a ride, only the feeling of freedom the concert gave him.

On April 26, 1975, Vincent attends the Pink Floyd concert. Despite his protests, he and Lydia had hitched a ride with Mr. Stewart. When they get to the concert venue, Lydia goes to the bathroom for a long time and misses the opening act. Worried that Lydia will miss the start of Pink Floyd’s set, Vincent goes looking for her.

Vincent finds Lydia talking with Mr. Stewart, who is holding her by the back. Though Vincent cannot hear their conversation, he gets angrier the longer he watches them. He chooses to walk away instead of revealing himself to them.

A teary-eyed Lydia returns to Vincent and explains that the smell of the outhouse made her sick. Vincent doesn’t know whether to ask her if she is okay but believes that Mr. Stewart helped her to resolve whatever she was worried about.

Tom expresses the nagging feeling that Olivia is keeping something important from him. Olivia denies that she is and assures him that things are fine.

Vincent asks Olivia for help with his email. He gives her the password—”Rebecca”—which is Lydia’s middle name. Vincent asserts that he has always been in love with Lydia, even though she left him to raise Olivia alone. Olivia goes through Vincent’s inbox, helping him to clear junk messages and look for important emails. One of Vincent’s emails is from John Calder.

Later that night, Olivia opens Vincent’s email from her computer. She looks for Calder’s email, which conveys his interest in writing Vincent’s memoir. Pretending to be Vincent, Olivia invites Calder to pitch his ideas. She sits restless in bed, unable to share her worries with Tom without revealing the truth about Vincent. She refocuses her energies into transcribing her interview with Vincent.

In the interview, Vincent admits that he was so insecure about his relationship with Lydia that he used to wait at her house to make sure she came home straight from track practice. This confirmed that Lydia sometimes lied about her whereabouts, but only to stop Vincent from getting upset with her. Olivia wonders if Vincent discovered an uncomfortable truth about Lydia during their relationship. Vincent doesn’t remember, but then he refers to Olivia by her mother’s name, calling her a liar.

On May 2, 1975, Mr. Stewart gives Lydia a ride home. Vincent sees this and gets upset with Lydia, accusing her of lying about being at training. He went to the track himself and saw that she wasn’t there. Lydia explains that Mr. Stewart brought her to the city college track because it was better to train on than the high school’s dirt track.

When Vincent confronts her over her relationship with Mr. Stewart, Lydia defends her teacher, claiming he is the only person in her life who is invested in her future. She adds that Vincent doesn’t believe in her the same way because he has domestic expectations for her. Vincent walks away, resenting Mr. Stewart. He reassures himself with the consolation that Lydia isn’t cheating on him with Danny.

Olivia continues her correspondence with Calder, wondering why he’s trying to pitch for the book project when it is already in production. She anticipates that he is going to slander her.

Alma and Vincent return from an exhaustive occupational therapy session. Despite Alma’s warning not to disturb him until the next morning, Olivia goes up to ask him a question about tensions he’d described between Danny and Poppy in his manuscript. Once again, Vincent mistakes Olivia for her mother, telling her that she shouldn’t be there. Alma reminds Vincent that Olivia is his daughter and that Lydia lives in Bakersfield.

Alma decides that it is important to set boundaries with Olivia for Vincent’s sake. Olivia protests because this will impede her work, but Alma insists that pushing Vincent past his limits will exacerbate his health.

Olivia returns to the guesthouse and goes through the boxes in storage. In one of them, she finds a diary inside a film canister. She unlocks the diary, confirming her suspicion that it belonged to Poppy. The first entry Olivia reads discloses the rumor that Lydia is no longer pregnant.

On May 6, 1975, Poppy writes in her diary that Lydia was rumored to have gotten an abortion. Poppy’s best friend, Margot, reminds her that Lydia’s mother has a promiscuous reputation, suggesting that her behavior influenced Lydia. She adds that the rumor specifies that Vincent wasn’t the one who impregnated Lydia, which worries Poppy. They speculate about who the father could be.

Olivia calculates that Lydia is likely to have gotten pregnant while she was together with Vincent. She reads ahead in Poppy’s diary and sees references to film clips that supposedly upset Vincent. An entry on May 14 reads as one half of an argument between Vincent and Lydia. Poppy comments that Vincent is lying about his assertion that Lydia comes to their house looking for Danny. An entry on May 20 hints that Margot and Poppy have guessed at the identity of the man Lydia had sex with. An entry on May 30 references a fight between Vincent and Danny. Entries from the first half of June suggest mounting tensions in the household that make Poppy want to leave. The last entry Poppy wrote before she died is dated June 10—she laments the loss of evidence for an unspecified discovery. Poppy is worried that Danny will kill her if she reveals this truth to anyone.

Olivia goes through the boxes to look for Poppy’s film reels but does not find them. Vincent later speculates that Poppy disposed of the film reels because she recorded something she wasn’t meant to see. She and Danny fought over the reels several days before their death. Olivia guesses that Poppy might have stored them in her hiding place.

Alma leaves Olivia in charge of Vincent while she steps out for a family emergency. She gives Olivia meticulous instructions on feeding and administering Vincent’s medications. When they are alone, Vincent asks Olivia to recall a certain treasure hunt he designed for her. Many years earlier, he had written marginal notes in Olivia’s book to direct her to the front of school one afternoon. Adult Olivia isn’t eager to recall this story, realizing that Vincent doesn’t remember how it ended. Young Olivia had been so excited to find out what Vincent had planned for her. When she reached her father’s car, she was crestfallen to learn that it wasn’t her father inside, but his assistant, Melinda. Vincent had instructed Melinda to take Olivia on a shopping spree.

Vincent fails to understand why this outcome disappointed Olivia. He later tells Olivia he is glad she still remembers it.

Poppy received a Super 8 camera as a gift for her last birthday. She describes the camera as a useful tool to prove that her feelings and observations about her family are real.

On May 8, 1975, Poppy watches the reel of her birthday film in the garage. The reel is silent because she couldn’t afford a film with a soundtrack. The camera seller had encouraged her to use this to her advantage, paying attention to people’s actions to reveal the truth behind their characters. Watching the film, Poppy sees her mother’s carelessness, Vincent’s wistfulness, and Danny’s joyfulness. Vincent walks in while the reel is showing an intimate moment between him and Lydia. The scene soon shifts to the March bonfire party at Mr. Stewart’s old house. At one point, an angry Vince demands that Poppy turn the film off. He tries to snatch the reel from the projector, provoking a brief scuffle with Poppy. Their mother interrupts the fight. Poppy stores the reel in a canister marked March #1, unnerved by Vincent’s violence. She knows that he and Lydia have been fighting lately. She is unsure if he knows about her abortion yet.