Olivia Taylor Dumont begins with the moment, at age ten, when a classmate told her, “I know what your dad did,” and accused her father of murdering his brother and sister. She initially denied it, but the silent assent of other children made her realize a dark family secret existed, shattering her childhood certainty.

She explains that her father’s meteoric success as a horror novelist had amplified local scrutiny and gossip, while his lifestyle shifted to louder behavior, heavy drinking, travel, and reliance on his assistant, Melinda, who often kept distance between father and daughter. The rumor of the murders circulated among schoolchildren as a macabre legend told at slumber parties: Poppy Taylor, ambushed at home after running back for a sweater, and Danny Taylor, killed in the hallway trying to reach her, both stabbed on June 13, 1975, while the Ojai Carnival unfolded just behind their house.

Old newspaper clippings and class photos were passed around, turning Danny and Poppy into cautionary figures and folklore. Olivia connects this notoriety to the social isolation she felt growing up—neighbors’ distance, a silent phone, and few invitations—which she had once attributed to her mother’s departure when she was five but later understood as fallout from the murders.

After learning the truth, Olivia found photo albums in Vincent Taylor’s closet and studied images marking the siblings’ lives as they approached the fatal date: childhood scenes at home, Danny’s academic recognition, Vincent’s fifteenth birthday, and Poppy’s ninth-grade photo. She reread a ten-year retrospective that celebrated Danny’s promise and Poppy’s activism and filmmaking aspirations, while describing Vincent as a boy whose jokes could turn cruel and who struggled to fit in—yet somehow dated the girl who became Olivia’s mother.

Olivia reflects that these stories revealed inherited traits—her father’s intensity, her mother’s insecurity, her aunt’s fire, and her uncle’s charisma. As a ghostwriter, she notes the difficulty of uncovering what people hide and how death buries secrets beyond retrieval, leaving only a decades-old murder at the core of her family identity.

She imagines the evening of June 13, 1975 from above: Poppy running home for a sweater near dusk, time of death around 7 p.m., Danny’s shortly after. She emphasizes Poppy’s lack of any chance to survive and observes that within an hour her father became an only child. Opinions differ on whether the trauma fueled Vincent’s career or whether darker interpretations apply.

Concluding, Olivia calls her father a talented novelist and “professional liar,” acknowledging she cannot trust everything he has told her. She invites readers to judge for themselves, signing the foreword on June 13, 2025, the fiftieth anniversary of the murders.