The Ghostwriter

by Julie Clark

It’s hard to know who hurt me more—my mother for leaving and never looking back, or my father, who disappeared before my eyes. Pieces of him vanishing like a parlor trick, until there was no one left but me.

“Siblings define who you are at that age. I’d always been the middle child, measured against Danny and Poppy my entire life. Then suddenly they were gone and all that was left was this vast emptiness. Silence. Except for my mother’s crying.”

This is the consequence of speaking out as a woman. We are labeled hysterical, emotional, unreliable, and finally, incompetent.

The truth lives in people’s actions, their unguarded moments, not in the lies they tell.”

I’m beginning to realize that once you lie about your past, you wall yourself off from the present.