“I know what your dad did.”

It was the year I’d turned ten, 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 dazzled 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 voice. 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.