In 2024, ghostwriter Olivia Taylor Dumont agreed to secretly ghostwrite a comeback book for her estranged father, Vincent Taylor, a famed horror novelist long shadowed by rumors that he killed his siblings, Danny and Poppy, in 1975. Financially cornered after a lawsuit and industry backlash, Olivia returned to Ojai and learned Vincent had Lewy body dementia; he pressed her to “fix” his handwritten legal pads into a memoir centered on his childhood and the months before the murders, forbidding her from interviewing others. While settling in, Olivia witnessed Vincent’s nighttime panic in which he searched Poppy’s window for a “hiding place” and said he hid “the knife,” and she began finding disturbing marginal notes in his draft, including “I wanted to kill Danny.”

As Olivia read and drafted, she uncovered contradictions: Poppy’s diary hinted at a filmed secret, rising conflict between the brothers, and a terrifying warning that Danny would kill her if she told. Defying constraints, Olivia investigated Ojai landmarks and secretly entered the preserved Taylor house, finding Poppy’s hidden window compartment and a threatening closet message—“Someday soon, you’ll be dead”—in handwriting she took to be Vincent’s. With Jack Randall’s help, she discovered Poppy’s missing Super 8 reels under a loose floorboard and digitized them. The footage revealed ordinary warmth, school vandalism tied to the PE staff, Vincent sneaking out at night, and a crucial scene showing Vincent—not Danny—burying a dead cat, contradicting Vincent’s claim and exposing his unreliability.

Olivia pressed on with interviews anyway. Margot Gibson described Poppy’s fear and alleged Vincent had once pressed a knife to Danny’s chest, believing Vincent killed both siblings despite his oak grove alibi. Mark Randall claimed he saw Vincent assault Poppy in the carnival haunted house and overheard plans to meet at the Taylors’ home, undermining the official timeline. Vincent deflected, suggesting Danny committed the vandalism and was increasingly dangerous, but Poppy’s diary and film showed a different picture of the May 30 fight: Vincent attacked Danny after Danny taunted him about Lydia’s abortion. When Olivia confronted former coach Paul Stewart, he admitted driving Lydia to the abortion but denied being the father and affirmed mediating a heated argument between Lydia and Vincent during the carnival.

Vincent’s instability intensified; after Olivia played a bonfire clip that showed Stewart at a party, Vincent erupted into a violent delusional episode and was hospitalized. Olivia then confronted her mother, who revealed that Danny had coerced her at the bonfire, impregnating her; Stewart only helped her obtain the abortion. She also confessed to retrieving Poppy’s camera the day Danny attacked Poppy, keeping the damaged Super 8—still with film—for decades. Olivia digitized the film and, upon returning to Ojai, showed Vincent sound footage of Stewart attempting to kiss Danny in the oak grove as Poppy filmed; Danny then noticed and chased Poppy. This forced Vincent to reconsider his conviction that Danny killed Poppy purely over a pregnancy, acknowledging Danny as an abuse victim and Stewart as a predator with motive to silence Poppy.

Vincent’s notes included “Danny watched her die,” leading Olivia to press him about his alibi; he admitted being at the house that night but said he arrived too late. Poppy’s final narrated chapters filled the missing pieces: after days of threats and the destruction of her camera, Poppy was stabbed in her bedroom by Paul Stewart, who twisted her wrist to drive the knife into her, wiped the handle, and fled. Danny hovered in panic, demanding the camera’s location, while Poppy deliberately concealed her gaze from her hiding places. Vincent arrived and fought Danny in the hallway; later, as Vincent fled with the knife in confusion, he met Lydia in the grove, and their shared look conveyed that Lydia had killed Danny to protect Vincent. Vincent and Lydia then leveraged Lydia’s abortion secret to secure Stewart’s false alibi.

With these revelations, Olivia and Vincent shaped the memoir’s public narrative to expose Stewart’s abuse and his likely role in Poppy’s death, while acknowledging that hard proof was gone. Vincent described entering the house to find Poppy dying and Danny fallen, panicking and removing the knife before pressing Stewart for an alibi. After submission, Vincent told Olivia “what really happened,” aligning with Poppy’s account that Stewart stabbed her and that Lydia killed Danny to save Vincent. In the aftermath, Olivia’s manuscript reignited their lives: additional Stewart victims came forward, leading to his indictment on multiple charges, though not for the murders; Vincent declined rapidly, moved to care, admitted he had sent Olivia away years earlier because she reminded him of Poppy, and died in late April. Olivia demolished the childhood house to close the loop, the memoir became a bestseller, and she reached back out to Tom as she invited him to see where she came from, determined to break the family’s cycle of secrecy.