The Ghostwriter

Olivia tries to reconcile her findings thus far but still feels that she has too many lingering questions about the night of the murders. She cannot accept the scenario that Danny killed Poppy and that Vincent killed Danny in retaliation. She conducts more research and starts to write new pieces to get a better sense of the era her father grew up in. Getting to immerse herself in the reality of her father’s youth is her favorite part of being a ghostwriter.

Three weeks into the project, Olivia visits Jack and Matt. She shares how Vincent has mistaken her for Lydia. Matt asks what Lydia is like, prompting Olivia to admit that she doesn’t have many memories of her. Instead, Olivia frequently fantasized what life would have been like if she grew up with Lydia instead of Vincent. These fantasies spun into resentment when Olivia moved abroad for boarding school. She hasn’t forgiven Lydia for leaving her behind with Vincent. Jack commends Olivia for being honest and vulnerable, implying that she usually isn’t.

Allison finally returns Olivia’s request for details on Vincent’s childhood home. The property is held by a firm called Lionel Foolhardy, LLC, which angers Olivia.

Olivia breaks into Vincent’s childhood home. She inspects each of the rooms for clues, imagining life in the Taylor household and what the crime scene must have looked like. In Poppy’s room, Olivia finds the hiding place Vincent referenced in a loose panel under one of the windows. Olivia initially thinks she has found the knife that killed Poppy and Danny. Instead, she finds a pro-choice advocacy button Poppy hid from her mother.

Olivia inspects Poppy’s closet and finds an inscription in Vincent’s handwriting promising that Poppy will die soon.

Olivia is shocked by the possibility of tension between Vincent and Poppy. She worries that by writing Vincent’s memoir, she will erase his negative reputation.

She calls Jack over to Vincent’s childhood home to show him the inscription. Burdened by the emotional weight of the book project, Olivia cries and admits her purpose for being in Ojai. Jack argues against jumping to conclusions with the evidence Olivia has uncovered thus far. He gets her to resolve to talk to the district attorney about the 1993 grand jury.

Before leaving the house, Olivia uncovers another hiding place under the floorboards. Inside are Poppy’s film reels, covering the months from March to June of 1975.

Olivia recovers 10 film reels, which she believes will help her to unlock the truth. She has the reels processed into digital files and watches them later that day. In the first reel she watches from March, she sees her parents as teenagers. The next clips show Danny and various scenes of their home life. Olivia longs to see Poppy, who remains behind the camera through the entirety of the reel.

The next reel Olivia watches is from May. It includes clips of profane graffiti in the school gymnasium, a burnt-down sports equipment shed, and Vincent sneaking out into the grove behind the house at night. Many of the subsequent clips in this reel feature Vincent, as if Poppy is monitoring him. This reminds Olivia to cross-reference the reels with Poppy’s diary entries.

Olivia looks for the March #1 reel that upset Vincent. The reel shows the bonfire party at Mr. Stewart’s old house. Olivia watches the clip repeatedly and is unsure what provoked her father. She then turns to the next reference in Poppy’s diary, dated May 10: “I don’t even know who he is anymore” (166). Olivia finds the clip, which shows Vincent, not Danny, burying the neighbor’s cat.

On May 10, 1975, Poppy is searching for the neighbor’s cat in the grove. She hears a noise and finds Vincent digging a hole and crying. Poppy asks him what he is doing, but Vincent dismisses her, ordering her to return home. Poppy moves closer and realizes that Mr. Stewart’s cat is dead and wrapped in one of Vincent’s shirts. Vincent pushes her away, reiterating his order to go home.

Olivia realizes she needs to retract the chapter draft she sent Neil depicting Danny as the cat killer. She feels that she can no longer proceed without interviewing other people. Instead of arguing her case to Nicole, it occurs to Olivia that she can interview subjects under the pretense that she is seeking closure for her relationship with her father’s family.

Excited by this loophole, she calls Tom to tell him that she found a way to keep her conflicting agreements. Just then, Alma calls Olivia to attend to her father. Tom overhears this and immediately becomes upset with the revelation that Olivia lied about her father’s death. No longer able to trust her, he hangs up on Olivia and refuses to take any more of her calls. This plunges Olivia into two days of grief for her relationship. She is too scared by the idea of returning to Tom in person, only to be rejected again. Several check-in emails from Nicole push her to refocus on the project.

Olivia visits Margot Gibson, Poppy’s best friend, and introduces herself as Poppy’s niece. Margot entertains her questions at once. Olivia asks about the driver Poppy hitched a ride with the weekend before she died. Margot explains that Poppy went to a rally that day. Going to Ventura, she hitched a ride with a woman and her child. Returning home, she hitched a ride with a creepy man. Poppy asked him to drop her off at the high school instead of her home address, though Margot stresses that this lead was a dead end in the investigation.

Margot shifts Olivia’s attention to Poppy’s mental state in the days leading up to her death. Poppy was troubled by a discovery that she wouldn’t disclose to Margot. Poppy refused to attend Mr. Stewart’s annual end-of-school party, but Margot forced her to go anyway. At the party, Poppy became drunk and made a scene. Margot guesses that it had to do with the mounting tensions between her brothers. She suggests that Poppy was afraid of Vincent, especially after he threatened Danny with a knife the week before his death. Margot speculates that Danny was Vincent’s real target and Poppy was just collateral damage, though she cannot explain the enmity between them.

Margot admits that she didn’t go to Poppy’s house the night that she died, because she thought Poppy needed space. She also expresses her doubts around the alibi Vincent and Lydia supplied, citing a conversation where Vincent asked Poppy to meet him at the house shortly before Poppy was murdered. Olivia doesn’t believe that Vincent would make Lydia wait in the grove just so he could talk to his sister first. Margot’s theory hinges on the idea that the coroner misidentified the time that Danny and Poppy died, making it possible for Vincent to keep both appointments in one night.

Olivia asks Margot who she thinks is responsible for Lydia’s pregnancy. Margot is no longer sure, but she shares Poppy’s suspicion that it was Mr. Stewart. Olivia recalls the graffiti and the equipment shed from Poppy’s reel, and Margot explains that Vincent likely did this to retaliate against Mr. Stewart. Olivia shows her the clip Poppy took of Mr. Stewart’s bonfire party, but Margot doesn’t know what to make of it. Olivia then shows her a clip of Poppy’s last birthday. Margot recalls that Poppy lost her camera the week she died, though Poppy was also evasive about how this happened. While watching more of Poppy’s clips, Margot identifies a cat in-frame as Ricky Ricardo, Mr. Stewart’s cat. This reminds Olivia about the note in Vincent’s manuscript to bury Ricky Ricardo.

On May 16, 1975, Lydia waits for Vincent to return home. She overhears Poppy and Margot discussing theories about the graffiti incident in the gym. Margot asks Lydia if Mr. Stewart mentioned it to her during their training session that day. Lydia evades the question, suggesting that she and Mr. Stewart talk exclusively about running during her sessions. Danny exits his room at one point and pays no attention to Lydia.

Poppy speculates that the graffiti was a personal attack on Mr. Stewart. Soon after Mr. Stewart’s name comes up, Lydia leaves the room to watch television. Margot thinks this proves her theory that Mr. Stewart got Lydia pregnant. Poppy is scandalized that a teacher would pursue a student, though it would explain why Vincent and Lydia have been fighting so much lately.

Several days later, the sports equipment shed burns down. The rumor that goes around is that a student did it because they had a vendetta against one of the school’s three PE teachers. Poppy wonders why Vincent would go through the trouble of defaming Mr. Stewart at school when Mr. Stewart is their neighbor. Poppy then remembers that she saw Vincent burying Mr. Stewart’s cat. She starts to believe that Margot’s theory is correct.

Olivia attends another meeting with the Monarch book team. Though Neil expresses their satisfaction with the chapter draft about the cat, Olivia reluctantly asks to retract the chapter, citing the new information she learned from Poppy’s film reel. The book team allow her to clear the film reels with Vincent before sending them copies of the files for review. Olivia doubles down on her lie with Nicole, claiming that she found the film reels among Vincent’s belongings in storage. Olivia realizes that, like her father, she tends to withhold the truth when it is too complicated to explain.

Olivia meets with Mark Randall, Danny’s best friend and Jack’s father. She asks about Danny’s romantic life, leading Mark to confirm that Danny wasn’t in a committed relationship when he died. Olivia asks why Mark believes that Vincent is the killer, and Mark shares that he saw Vincent arguing with Poppy at the carnival. Vincent seemed to be intimidating Poppy when Mark saw them. Poppy had something to tell him, so Vincent told her to meet him at home. Mark told Danny about it, prompting Danny to return home to intercept their meeting. He theorizes that Danny died trying to save Poppy from Vincent. Guilty over sending Danny to his death, Mark instructed the police to investigate Vincent.

Olivia asks Mark for his opinion on Mr. Stewart. Mark does not think the teacher was a threat because he had a girlfriend at the time. Mark is also fond of Mr. Stewart because he would throw parties and let Mark and Danny steal beers from his fridge. He supposes that Mr. Stewart’s behavior wouldn’t be acceptable by contemporary standards. At the end of their interview, Mark encourages Olivia to either leave the past alone or risk discovering an uncomfortable truth.