The End
I don’t even have time to absorb that ending before I hear Jeremy’s Jeep pulling into the garage. I stack the pages together into a pile and then glance at the monitor. Verity still hasn’t moved.
He suspected her?
I squeeze my neck, trying to ease all the tension that last chapter infused into my muscles. How could he still take care of her? Bathe her and change her for the rest of his life? Feel like he owes her the promise of his vows?
If he truly thought she killed Harper, how could he stand to be in the same house as her?
I hear the garage door open, so I walk to the office door and step out into the hallway. Jeremy is holding Crew in his arms at the foot of the stairs.
“Six stitches,” he whispers. “And a lot of pain meds. He’s out cold for the night.” He walks Crew upstairs to put him to bed. I don’t hear him check on Verity before he begins to make his way back down again.
“Want some coffee?” I ask him.
“Please.”
He follows me into the kitchen, where he hugs me from behind, sighing into my hair as I start a pot of coffee. I lean my head against his, full of so many questions. But I say nothing because I don’t even know where to start.
I spin around while the coffee brews and wrap my arms around him. We hold each other in the kitchen for several minutes. Until he releases his hold on me and says, “I need to shower. I have dried blood all over me.”
I notice it then. The drops on his arms, the smears on his shirt. It’s starting to be our thing, being covered in blood. I’m glad I’m not superstitious.
“I’ll be in the office.”
We kiss, and then he runs upstairs. I wait for the coffee to finish brewing so I can make myself a cup. I’m still not sure how to approach him with all my questions, but after reading that last chapter, I have so many. I think it might be a long night.
I hear his shower start when I finish pouring myself a cup of coffee. I carry it
back to the office with me and then spill it all over the floor. The cup shatters.
The hot liquid splashes my legs and begins to seep under my toes, but I can’t move.
I am frozen in place as I stare at the monitor.
Verity is on the floor. On her hands and knees.
I lunge for my phone at the same time I scream Jeremy’s name.
“Jeremy!”
Verity’s head tilts to the side, as if she heard my scream from upstairs.
Before I can open my camera app with unsteady fingers, she crawls back into her bed. Gets back into position. Stills herself.
“Jeremy!” I yell again, dropping my phone. I run to the kitchen and grab a knife. I run up the stairs, straight to Verity’s room. I unlock her door and swing it open.
“Get up!” I yell.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t even flinch.
I rip the covers off her. “Get up, Verity. I saw you.” I’m full of rage as I lower the side of her hospital bed. “You aren’t getting away with this.”
I want Jeremy to see her for who she really is before she has an opportunity to hurt him. To hurt Crew. I grab her by the ankles and pull on her legs. I have her halfway out of the bed when I feel someone rip me from her. I’m swung around, carried to the door. He plants my feet on the floor of the hallway.
“What the hell are you doing, Lowen?” Jeremy’s face and his voice are so full of anger.
I step forward, pressing my hands against his chest. He pulls the knife away from me and grips my shoulders. “Stop.”
“She’s faking it. I saw her, I swear, she’s faking it.”
He steps back into her room and slams the door in my face. I open the door, and he’s lifting Verity’s legs back onto the bed. When he sees me entering the room again, he tosses the covers over Verity and shoves me out into the hallway.
He turns and locks her door, then grabs me by the wrist and pulls me behind him.
“Jeremy, no.” I’m grabbing at his wrist that’s locked tightly around mine.
“Don’t leave Crew up here with her.” My voice is pleading, but he can’t hear the worry. He can only see what he thinks he knows, what he walked into. When we reach the stairs, I back up, shaking my head, refusing to descend them. He needs to take Crew downstairs. He grabs me by the waist and lifts me over his shoulder and carries me down the stairs, straight to my room. He sets me down onto the bed, gently, even in the midst of his anger.
He walks to my closet. Grabs my suitcase. My things. “I want you to leave.”
I lift up onto my knees and move to the foot of the bed, where he’s shoving all my things into the suitcase. “You have to believe me.”
He doesn’t.
“Goddammit, Jeremy!” I point toward the upstairs. “She’s crazy! She’s been lying to you since the day you met her!”
I’ve never seen so much distrust and hatred pouring out of a human. The way he’s looking at me has me so terrified, I scoot away from him.
“She’s not faking it, Lowen.” He tosses his hand in the air, toward the direction of the stairs. “That woman is helpless. Practically brain-dead. You’ve been seeing things since you got here.” He shoves more clothes into my suitcase, shaking his head. “It’s impossible,” he mutters.
“It isn’t. And you know it isn’t. She killed Harper and you know it. You suspected it.” I climb off the bed and rush to the door. “I can prove it.”
He follows after me as I run to Verity’s office. I grab the manuscript, every page of it, and I turn around just as he reaches me and I shove it against his chest. “Read it.”
He catches the pages. Looks down at them. Looks back up at me. “Where did you find this?”
“It’s hers. It’s all there. From the day you met her up until her car wreck.
Read it. At least read the last two chapters, I don’t care. Just, please, read it.” I’m exhausted, and I have nothing else in me but pleas. So I beg him. Quietly.
“Please, Jeremy. For your girls.”
He’s still looking at me like he doesn’t trust a single word coming out of my mouth. He doesn’t have to. If he would just read those pages—see what his wife was truly thinking in the moments she was with him—he’ll know I’m not the one he needs to worry about.
I can feel the fear welling up in me. The fear of losing him. He thinks I’m crazy—that I was trying to hurt his wife. He wants me to leave his home. He wants me to walk out of here and he never wants to see me again.
My eyes sting as the tears begin to fall down my cheeks.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please. You deserve to know the truth.”
I expect it to take him a while to read the entire thing. I’m sitting on my bed, waiting. The house is quieter than it’s ever been. Unsettling, like the calm before a storm.
I stare at my suitcase, wondering if he’s still going to want me to leave after this. The entire time I’ve been here, I’ve been holding on to that manuscript, keeping it a secret from him. He may never forgive me for it.
I know he’ll never forgive Verity.
My eyes flick up to the ceiling when I hear a crash. It wasn’t loud, but it sounded like it came from the room Jeremy is in. He hasn’t been up there for very long, but it’s enough time to at least skim the manuscript and know that Verity was not at all the woman he thought she was.
I hear a cry. It’s low and quiet, but I hear him.
I fall onto my side and hug the pillow as I squeeze my eyes shut. It kills me to know how much he’s hurting right now as he reads page after page of a truth so harsh, it never should have been written.
Footsteps are above me now, moving around upstairs. He hasn’t been up there nearly long enough to read the entire thing, but I can understand that. If I were him, I would have skipped to the end to see what really happened to Harper.
I hear a door open. I run across the hall to the office and look at the monitor.
Jeremy is standing in Verity’s doorway, looking at her. I can see both of them from the monitor. “Verity.”
She doesn’t answer him, obviously. She doesn’t want him to know she’s a threat. Or maybe she’s been faking it because she’s afraid he’ll turn her into the police. Whatever her reason, I have a feeling Jeremy isn’t going to walk away from the room until he gets his answer.
“Verity,” he says, stepping closer to her. “If you don’t answer me, I’m calling the police.”
She still doesn’t answer him. He walks over to her, reaches down, and pulls one of her eyelids open. He stares at her for a moment, then walks toward the
But then he pauses, like he’s questioning himself. Questioning what he read.
He turns around and walks over to her. “When I walk out of this room, I’m taking your manuscript straight to the police. They’ll put you away and you’ll never see me or Crew again if you don’t open your eyes and tell me what’s going on in this house.”
Several seconds pass. I’m holding my breath, waiting for her to move.
Hoping she moves so that Jeremy will know I’m telling the truth.
A whimper escapes my throat when she opens her eyes. I slap my hand over my own mouth before it turns into a scream. I’m afraid I’ll wake Crew, and this is not something he needs to walk into.
Jeremy’s whole body tenses, and then he grabs his head in both hands as he backs away from her bed. He meets the wall. “What the fuck, Verity?”
Verity begins to shake her head adamantly. “I had to, Jeremy,” she says, sitting up on the bed. She’s getting into a defensive pose, as if she’s terrified of what he might do.
Jeremy is still in disbelief, his face full of anger and betrayal and confusion.
“This entire time…you’ve been….” He’s trying to keep his voice down, but he looks like he’s about to explode into a rage. He turns and releases his anger with a fist against the door. It makes Verity flinch.
She holds up her hands. “Please, don’t hurt me. I’ll explain everything.”
“Don’t hurt you?” Jeremy spins around, taking a step forward. “You killed her, Verity.”
I can hear the anger in his voice, and it’s just over the monitor. But Verity has a front row seat to it. She tries to jump off the bed to escape him, but he doesn’t allow it. He grabs her by the leg and yanks her back onto the bed. When she starts to scream, he covers her mouth.
They struggle. She’s trying to kick him. He’s trying to hold her down.
Then his other hand forms a circle around her throat.
No, Jeremy.
I run straight up to Verity’s room and stop short when I reach the doorway.
Jeremy is on top of her. Her arms are trapped beneath his knees, her legs are kicking at the bed, her feet are digging into the mattress as she wheezes.
She’s trying to fight back, but he overpowers her in every way.
“Jeremy!” I rush to him and try to pull him off of her. All I can think of is Crew and Jeremy’s future and how his anger is not worth a life. His life.
“Jeremy!”
He isn’t listening. He refuses to let go of her. I try to get in his face, to calm him, to talk sense into him. “You have to stop. You’re crushing her windpipe.
Tears are streaming down his cheeks. “She killed our daughter, Low.” His voice is full of devastation.
I grab his face, try to pull him to me. “Think about Crew,” I say, my voice low. “Your son will not have a father if you do this.”
I see the slow change in him as my words sink in. He eventually pulls his hands from her throat. I double over, gasping for as much breath as Verity is right now. She’s sputtering, trying to inhale. She tries to speak. Or scream.
Jeremy covers her mouth and looks at me. There’s a plea in his eyes, but it’s not a plea for me to call for help. It’s a plea for me to help him figure out a better way to end her.
I don’t even argue with him. There is not a single cell in her body that deserves to live after all she’s done. I step back and try to think.
If he chokes her, they’ll know. His handprints will be on her throat. If he smothers her, particles from the pillow will be in her lungs. But we have to do something. If he doesn’t, she’ll get away with it somehow because she’s manipulative. She’ll end up hurting him or Crew. She’ll kill him just like she killed her daughter. Just like she tried to kill Harper as an infant.
Just like she tried to kill Harper as an infant.
“You have to make it look like an accident,” I say, my voice quiet, yet loud enough to be heard over the noises she’s making beneath the palm of his hand.
“Make her vomit. Cover her nose and mouth until she stops breathing. It’ll look like she aspirated in her sleep.”
Jeremy’s eyes are wide as he listens to me, but there’s understanding there.
He pulls his hands from her mouth and then shoves his fingers down her throat. I turn my head. I can’t watch.
I hear the gagging, and then the choking, and it feels like it goes on forever.
Forever.
I sink to the floor, my whole body wracked with tremors. I press my palms against my ears and attempt to ignore the sounds of Verity’s last breaths. Of her last movements. After a while, the sound of three people’s lungs turns into two.
It’s only Jeremy and me breathing right now.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God...” I can’t stop whispering it over and over as the enormity of what we’ve just done begins to register.
Jeremy is quiet, other than the cautious breaths he’s releasing. I don’t want to look at her, but I need to know it’s over.
When I turn my body to face her, she’s staring at me. Only this time, I know she isn’t in there, hiding behind that vacant stare.
Jeremy is on his knees by the bed. He checks her pulse, then his head
collapses between his shoulders. He sits, his back to the bed as he catches his breath. He brings both hands to his face, cradling his head. I don’t know if he’s about to cry, but I would understand it if he did. He’s been hit with the reality that his daughter’s death wasn’t an accident. That his wife—the woman he devoted so many years of his life to—was not at all the person he believed her to be. That she was manipulating him the entire time.
Every good memory he’s ever had with his wife died right along with her tonight. Her confessions ripped him apart, and I can see it in the way he’s doubled over now, attempting to process the last hour of his life. The last hour of Verity’s life.
I slap my hand over my mouth and I start to cry. I can’t believe I just helped him kill her. We just killed her.
I can’t stop looking at her.
Jeremy stands and then lifts me into his arms. My eyes are closed as he carries me out of the room and down the stairs. When he lays me on the bed, I want him to crawl in with me. Wrap his arms around me. But he doesn’t. He starts pacing the room, shaking his head, muttering under his breath.
We’re both in shock, I think. I want to reassure him, but I’m too scared to speak or move or accept that this is real.
“Fuck,” he says. And then, louder. “Fuck! ”
And there it is. Every memory, every belief, everything he thought he knew about Verity is sinking in.
He looks at me and then strides over to the bed. His trembling hand pushes back my hair. “She died in her sleep,” he says, his words both quiet and rigid.
“Okay?”
I nod.
“In the morning…” His voice is mixed with so much breath as he tries to stay calm. “In the morning, I’ll call the police and tell them I found her when I went to wake her up. It’ll look like she aspirated in her sleep.”
I haven’t stopped nodding. He’s looking at me with concern, with empathy, with apology. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.” He leans down and kisses me on the top of my head. “I’ll be right back, Low. I need to go straighten up the room. I need to hide the manuscript.”
He kneels down so that he’s eye to eye with me, as if he wants to make sure I’m getting it. That I understand him.
“We went to bed like normal. Both of us, around midnight. I administered her meds, and then, when I woke up at seven to get Crew ready for school, I found her unresponsive.”
“Okay.”
“Verity died in her sleep,” he repeats. “And we’re never going to discuss this again after tonight. After this moment…right now.”
“Alright,” I whisper.
He blows out a slow breath. “Alright.”
After he leaves the room, I can hear him moving things around, walking back and forth, first to his room, then Crew’s room, then Verity’s room, then the bathroom.
He walks to the office and then the kitchen.
Now he’s back in bed with me. Holding me. He holds me tighter now than he ever has before. We don’t sleep. We only fear what the morning will bring.
Verity died in her sleep seven months ago.
Crew took it hard. So did Jeremy, publicly. I left the morning she died and went back to Manhattan. Jeremy had a lot to deal with that week, and I’m sure it would have been even more suspicious had I stayed in his home following the death of his wife.
My outline was approved, as well as the two subsequent outlines. I turned in the first draft of the first novel two weeks ago. I’ve requested an extension on the deadline for the next two novels. It’s going to be hard working on them with a newborn.
She hasn’t arrived yet. She’s not due for another two and a half months. But I’m confident, with Jeremy’s help, I’ll be able to catch up on any work I fall behind on. He’s great with Crew, and he was great with the girls, so I know he’ll be great with our baby girl when she arrives.
We were shocked at first, although not surprised. Things like this happen when you aren’t careful. I worried how Jeremy would take it, becoming a father again after losing two children so close together. But I realized after seeing his excitement that Verity was wrong. Losing one child, or even two, doesn’t mean you’ve lost them all. Jeremy’s grief over the deaths of his daughters is separate from his joy over the impending birth of a new one.
Even after all he’s been through, he’s still the best man that has ever entered my life. He’s patient, attentive and a much better lover than Verity could have possibly described him to be. After her death, when I had to go back to Manhattan, Jeremy called me every day. I stayed away for two weeks—until everything began to settle. When he asked me to come back, I was there that same night. I’ve been with him every day since then. We both knew we were rushing things, but it was hard being apart. I think my presence brought him comfort, so we didn’t worry about the timing or if our relationship was too much, too soon. In fact, we didn’t even discuss it. The definition of our relationship was unspoken. It was organic. We were in love and that’s all that mattered.
He decided to sell the house shortly after we found out I was pregnant. He didn’t want to remain in the same town where he and Verity had lived. And honestly, I didn’t want to remain in that house with all those terrible memories.
We started fresh three months ago in North Carolina. With the advance and Verity’s life insurance, we were able to pay cash for a home right on the beach in Southport. Every evening, the three of us sit on the deck of our new home and
watch the waves crash against the shore.
We’re a family now. We aren’t made up of all the members of the family Crew was born into, but I know Jeremy is appreciative that Crew has me in his life. And he’ll be a big brother soon.
Crew seems to be adjusting well. We did put him in therapy, and Jeremy sometimes worries it’ll do more harm than good, but I reassure him of all the good therapy did for me as a child. I have faith that Crew will easily forget the bad memories if we give him enough good ones to cover them up with.
Today is the first time we’ve stepped foot in their old house in months. It’s eerie, but necessary. I’m getting too close to my due date to travel again, so we’re using this opportunity to clear out the house. Jeremy has received two offers on it already, and we don’t want to have to drive back up here during my last month of pregnancy to empty it out.
The office was the hardest room to clear out. There was so much stuff that probably could have been salvaged, but Jeremy and I spent half the day putting everything through the shredder. I think we both just want that part of our lives to be over. Gone. Forgotten.
“How are you feeling?” Jeremy asks. He walks into the office and places a hand on my stomach.
“I’m good,” I say, smiling up at him. “You almost finished?”
“Yep. A few more boxes on the porch and we’ll be done.” He kisses me, just as Crew runs into the house.
“Stop running!” Jeremy calls out over his shoulder. I push myself out of the desk chair and follow Jeremy with it as I roll it toward the door. He grabs one of about ten boxes left on the porch and begins to carry it to the car. Crew slips around me to run outside, but pauses, then comes back into the house.
“I almost forgot,” he says, rushing toward the stairs. “I have to get my stuff out of mom’s floor.”
I watch as he runs upstairs, toward Verity’s old bedroom. It was empty last time I checked. But a moment later, Crew comes walking downstairs with papers in his hand.
“What are those?” I ask him.
“Pictures I drew for my mom.” He shoves them in my hands. “I forgot she used to keep them in the floor.”
Crew runs outside again. I look down at the pictures in my hands. The old familiar feeling I carried around with me while staying in this house has returned. Fear. Everything starts flashing through my head. The knife that was on the floor in Verity’s room. The night I saw her on the monitor, on her hands and knees, like she was digging at the floor. Crew’s passing words just now.
I forgot she used to keep them in the floor.
I rush up the stairs. And even though I know she’s dead and isn’t in there, I’m still terrified as I walk down the hallway to her room. My eyes fall to the floor, to a piece of wood Crew failed to put back in place after he took out his pictures. I kneel down and pick up the loose piece of flooring.
There’s a hole in the floor.
It’s dark, so I reach my hand inside and feel around. I pull out something small. A picture of the girls. I pull out something cold. The knife. I reach in again and feel around until I find an envelope. I open it and pull out a letter, then drop the empty envelope to the floor next to me.
The first page is blank. I blow out a steady breath and lift it, revealing the second page.
It’s a handwritten letter to Jeremy. Fearfully, I begin to read.
Dear Jeremy,
I hope it’s you who finds this letter. If it isn’t you, I hope it will get to you somehow because I have a lot to say.
I want to start off with an apology. I’m sure by the time you read this, I’ll have left in the middle of the night with Crew. The thought of leaving you alone in the home where we shared so many memories together makes me ache for you. We had such a good life with our children. With each other. But we’re Chronics. We should have known our heartache wouldn’t end with Harper’s death.
After years of being the perfect wife to you, I never expected this career that I love and devote most of my time to would ultimately be what ended us.
Our lives were perfect until we somehow flipped into an alternate dimension the day Chastin died. As much as I try to forget where it all started to go wrong, I was cursed with this mind that never forgets a single thing.
We were in Manhattan having dinner with my editor Amanda. You were wearing that thin grey sweater I loved—the one your mother bought you for Christmas. My first novel had just released and I signed the new two-book deal with Pantem, which is why we were at that dinner. I was discussing my next novel with Amanda. I don’t know if you tuned this part of the conversation out, but I’m guessing you did because writer talk always bored you.
I was expressing my concerns to Amanda because I wasn’t sure which angle to take with the new book. Should I write something completely different? Or should I stick to the same formula of writing from the villain’s point of view that made my first novel so successful?
She suggested I stick to the same formula, but she also wanted me to take even more risks with the second book. I told her it was difficult for me to make a voice in my novel sound authentic when it wasn’t at all how I think in my everyday life. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to improve my craft with the next book.
That’s when she told me to try an exercise she learned in grad school called antagonistic journaling.
This would have been a great time for you to be paying attention at that dinner, but you were on your phone, probably reading an eBook that wasn’t mine. You caught me staring and you looked up at me, but I just smiled at you. I wasn’t mad. I was happy you were there with me and being patient while I received advice from my new editor. You squeezed my leg under the table, and I directed my attention back to Amanda, but my focus was on your hand as it
trailed circles around my knee. I couldn’t wait to get back to our place that night because it was our first night away from the girls together, but I was also very interested in the advice Amanda was giving me.
She said antagonistic journaling was the best way to improve my craft. She said I needed to get into the mind of an evil character by writing journal entries from my own life. . . things that really happened. . . but to make my inner dialogue in the journal entry be the opposite from what I was actually thinking at the time. She told me to start by writing about the day you and I met. She said I should write down what I was wearing, where we met and what our conversation was that night, but to make my inner dialogue more sinister than it actually was.
It sounded simple. Harmless.
I’ll give you an example from a paragraph I just wrote above.
I look over at Jeremy, hoping he’s paying attention. He isn’t.
He’s staring down at his fucking phone again. This dinner is a huge deal for me. I realize this isn’t Jeremy’s scene—these fancy dinners and meetings in Manhattan—but it’s not like I force him to do this all the time. Instead, he’s reading someone else’s eBook, being completely disrespectful to this entire conversation.
He reads all the time, yet he doesn’t feel comfortable reading MY books? It’s an insult in the highest form.
I’m so embarrassed by his audacity, but I know I need to mask my embarrassment. If Amanda notices the irritation on my face, she might notice Jeremy’s disrespect.
Jeremy looks up at me, so I force a smile. I can save my anger for later. I give my attention back to Amanda, hoping she doesn’t notice Jeremy’s behavior.
A few seconds later, Jeremy squeezes my leg, right above my knee, and I stiffen beneath his touch. Most of the time, I crave it. But in this moment the only thing I crave is a husband who supports my career.
And that’s how easy it is for a writer to pretend to be someone they aren’t.
As soon as we got back to our place, I went straight to my laptop and wrote about the first night we met. I pretended my red dress was stolen in my alternate version. I pretended I was there to hopefully fuck rich men, which was absolutely not true. You should know me better than that, Jeremy.
I wasn’t very good at making myself much of a villain the first time I tried it, so I made it a habit of writing down our milestone moments. I wrote about the
night you proposed to me, the night I found out I was pregnant, the day I gave birth to the girls. Every time I wrote about a new milestone, I got better and better at being inside the mind of a villain. It was exhilarating.
And it helped.
It helped immensely, which is why I was able to create such realistic, terrifying characters in my novels. It’s why they sold, because I was good at it.
By the time I had finished my third novel, I felt I had mastered the craft of writing from a point of view that wasn’t at all mine. The exercises had helped me so much, I decided to combine all of my journal entries into an autobiography that could be used to teach other authors how to master their craft.
I needed to tie the chapters together with an overall storyline so that the autobiography was more cohesive, so I pushed the envelope with every scene to make it more jarring. More disturbing.
I don’t regret writing it because my only intention was to eventually help other writers, but I do regret writing about Harper’s death just days after it happened. My mind was in such a dark space though, and sometimes, as a writer, the only way to clear your mind is to let the darkness spill out onto a keyboard. It was my therapy, no matter how hard that may be for you to understand.
Besides, I never thought you would read it. Beyond that first manuscript, you never read anything I wrote.
So why... why did you choose to read that one?
It was never meant for anyone to read and believe. It was an exercise. That’s it. A way to tap into the dark grief that was eating at me and eliminating it with every stroke of the keyboard. Putting all the blame onto this fictional villain I had created in that autobiography was one of the ways I coped.
I know this letter is hard for you to read, but it can’t be any harder than the manuscript was to read the night you found it. And if we’re ever going to come to a place of forgiveness, you need to keep reading so you’ll know the absolute truth about that night. Not the version you discovered days after Harper died.
When I took Harper and Crew out on the lake that day, I was trying to be good for them. That morning, you mentioned how I didn’t play with them anymore, and you were right. It was so hard because I missed Chastin so much, but I also had these two beautiful children who still needed me. And Harper really did want to go to the water that day. It’s why she ran upstairs crying, because I had told her no. I never scolded her for her lack of emotions like I stated in the manuscript. I was using artistic freedom to further the plot. It’s an insult that you believe I would speak to one of our children that way. It’s an insult that you believe any of that manuscript—or that I was capable of harming
Harper’s death was an accident. Her death was an accident, Jeremy. They wanted to go in the canoe, and it was so beautiful that day. And yes, I should have put life vests on them, I realize that. But how many times had we gone in that boat without them? The water wasn’t that deep. I had no idea the fishing net was beneath the surface. If it weren’t for that fucking fishing net, I would have found her and helped her to shore and we all would have laughed about the day the boat tipped over.
I can’t even tell you how sorry I am for not doing everything, anything differently that day. If I could go back, I would, and you know I would.
When you got there and pulled her out of the water and held her, I wanted to rip my heart out and feed it to you because I knew you no longer had one of your own. I didn’t want to live for another second after seeing your anguish. My God, Jeremy. To lose both of them. Both of them.
I watched your suspicion come to a head a few nights after Harper passed.
We were in bed when you started asking me all those questions. I couldn’t even believe you would think I would do something like that on purpose. And even if it was a fleeting thought, I saw the love you had for me leave your body and flitter away like it was never even there. Our entire past…all the great moments we shared together. It just left.
Because, yes, I did tell Crew to hold his breath. I told him to hold his breath as the canoe was tipping over. I was trying to help him. I thought Harper would be fine because we’ve played in that lake many times before, so my focus was on Crew after we fell into the water. I grabbed him and he was panicking, so I tried to make it back to the dock as fast as I could before he caused us both to drown. Not even thirty seconds had passed before I realized Harper wasn’t right behind us.
To this day, I blame myself. I was her mother. Her protector. And I assumed she’d be fine, so I focused on Crew for thirty seconds too long. I immediately tried to swim back and find her, but the canoe had shifted farther out because of the commotion of the water. I couldn’t even find where she’d gone under, and Crew was still fighting me—panicking. I knew if I didn’t get him to the shore in that exact moment, all three of us would drown.
I searched for her with everything in me, Jeremy. You have to believe me.
Every part of me drowned in that lake with her.
I didn’t blame you for suspecting me. I probably would have allowed my mind to explore every possible scenario if the roles had been reversed and she drowned under your supervision. It’s natural, to assume the worst in people, even if that assumption is only for a split second.
I thought you’d wake up the next day after our conversation in the bed and you would realize how ridiculous your indirect accusation had been. I didn’t even try to change your mind that night because I was too full of grief to care.
To argue. It had only been days since she passed, and I honestly just wanted to die. I wanted to walk out into the lake that night and join her, because her death was my fault. It was an accident, yes. But if I’d made her wear a vest, if I’d been able to grab her and Crew together, she’d still be alive.
I couldn’t sleep, so I went to my office and opened my laptop for the first time in over six months.
Imagine it for a moment. A mother, grieving the loss of both of her daughters, writing a fictional work-up that accused one of them of murdering the other.
It was beyond disturbing. I realize that, which is why I cried the entire time I typed. But I thought, maybe, if I released my guilt and my grief onto this fictional villain I had created, it would somehow help me in a twisted way.
I wrote all about Chastin’s death. I wrote all about Harper’s. I even went back to the beginning of the manuscript and added foreshadowing so the entire thing would match our new grim reality. And in a way, it did help ease a small fraction of my guilt and pain, being able to blame this fictional version of myself rather than accept the blame in real life.
I can’t explain the mind of a writer to you, Jeremy. Especially the mind of a writer who has been through more devastation than most writers combined.
We’re able to separate our reality from fiction in such a way that it feels as if we live in both worlds, but never both worlds at once. My real world had grown so dark that I didn’t want to live in it that night. It’s why I escaped from it and spent the night writing about a world darker than the one I was living in. Because every time I worked on that autobiography, I found relief in closing the laptop. I found relief in walking out of my office and being able to close the door on the evil I created.
That’s all it was. I needed for the imaginary version of my world to be darker than my real world. Otherwise, I would have wanted to leave them both.
After spending the entire night and some of the morning working on the manuscript, I finally reached the last page. I felt the manuscript was done at that point because, really, what more could I have added? It felt as though our world was over. The end.
I printed it out and stuffed it away in a box, thinking one day in the future I’d get back to it. Maybe add an epilogue. Maybe I would burn it. Whatever the plan was, I was not expecting you to somehow read it. I was not expecting you to believe it.
After being up all night writing, I slept most of the day. When I finally woke up that night, I couldn’t find you. Crew was already asleep, but you weren’t up there with him. I was standing in the hallway wondering where you had disappeared to when I heard a noise in my office.
The noise was you. I’m not sure what kind of sound you had made, but it was worse than either of the days we found out the girls had died. I walked toward my office to console you, but I stopped short before opening the door because your cries had turned into rage. Something crashed against the wall. I jumped back—wondering what was happening.
That’s when I remembered the laptop. The autobiography was the last file I had opened.
I swung open the door to explain what I knew you had just read. I’ll never forget the look on your face as you stood there and looked at me from across the room. It was complete and utter…misery.
Not like the sadness of someone who just found out one of their children died. It was a consuming sadness, like every happy memory we had ever had as a family was erased with every new word of that manuscript you had read. Gone.
There was nothing left inside you but hatred and destruction.
I shook my head, tried to speak. I wanted to say, “No. It’s not true, Jeremy.
It’s okay, it’s not true.” But all I could get out was a fearful and pathetic, “No . ”
The next thing I knew, you were dragging me by my throat to the bedroom. I was no match for your strength as you held my arms down with your knees and squeezed my throat even tighter.
If you’d given me five seconds. Just five seconds to explain, I could have saved us. I tried so hard to say, “Just let me explain,” but I couldn’t breathe.
I’m not sure what the sequence of events was after that. I know I passed out.
Maybe you panicked because you realized you had almost killed me. If I had died on that bed, you would have been arrested for my murder. Crew wouldn’t have a father.
I woke up in the passenger seat of my Range Rover and you were behind the wheel. There was tape on my mouth, and my hands and feet were bound together. Again, I just wanted to explain that what you read wasn’t true—but I couldn’t talk. I looked down and realized I didn’t have on a seatbelt. And in that moment, I knew what you were doing.
It was one simple sentence in my manuscript, about how I should turn off the passenger airbag and drive my car into a tree while Harper was unbuckled so her death would look like an accident.
You were going to kill me and make my death look like an accident. I had unknowingly written my own death in the last two sentences of my manuscript.
“So Be It. Maybe I’ll just drive my car into a tree.”
I realized in that moment, if you were ever suspected of my death, all you had to do was provide the manuscript. Had I died, it would have been the perfect suicide letter.
Of course, we both know how that part of the story ended. I’m assuming you removed the tape from my hands and feet, placed me into the driver’s side of the vehicle, and walked back home where you waited for the police to come notify you that I had died.
Your plan didn’t quite work out, though. I’m not sure I’m relieved that it failed. It would almost be easier if I had died in that wreck because pretending to be injured has been difficult. I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve been deceiving you for so long.
I have very little memory of that first month after Harper’s death. I’m assuming I was in a medically induced coma because of the swelling on my brain. But I remember the day I came out of it very clearly. I was alone in the room, thank God, which gave me time to process what needed to happen next.
How would I explain to you that every negative word you read was a lie?
You wouldn’t believe me if I tried to deny that manuscript, because I wrote it.
Those words were mine, no matter how untrue they were. Because who would believe it was a lie? Certainly not someone who didn’t understand the writing process. And if you were aware that I had recovered, you would turn me in to the police, if you hadn’t already. I’m sure an investigation would have followed Harper’s death had I not had that wreck. And with my own husband against me, I have no doubt that I would be convicted of her murder because it would be my own words used against me.
For three days I pretended to still be in a coma when anyone would enter my room. Doctors, nurses, you, Crew. But I was careless one day and you caught me with my eyes open as you walked into the hospital room. You stared at me. I stared back. I saw your fists clench, as if you were pissed that I had woken up.
As if you wanted to walk over and wrap your fingers around my throat again.
You took a few steps toward me, but I decided not to follow you with my eyes because your rage terrified me. If I pretended not to be aware of my surroundings in that moment, there was a chance you wouldn’t try to end my life again. A chance you wouldn’t go to the police and tell them I had recovered.
So I pretended for weeks because I felt it was my only means of survival. I was going to fake the extent of my brain injuries until I could figure out how to fix the situation I was in.
Don’t think it wasn’t hard. It was humiliating at times. I wanted to give up.
Kill myself. Kill you. I was so angry at where our lives had ended up, and after
all those years of marriage you could even, for one second, believe any of that manuscript to be true. I mean seriously, Jeremy. Do men really believe women are that obsessed with sex? It was fiction! Of course I loved making love to you, but most of the time it was to please you because that’s what couples do for each other. It wasn’t because I couldn’t live without it.
You were a good husband to me and whether you believe it to be true, I was a good wife to you. You’re still a good husband to me. You believe in your heart that I murdered our daughter, yet you still ensure I’m taken care of. Maybe it’s because you think I’m no longer in here—that all the evil parts of me died in that wreck and I’m merely someone you feel sorry for now. I think that’s why you brought me home because with all Crew has been through, your heart is too good to keep him away from me. You knew after losing both of his sisters, the complete loss of his mother would do even more damage to him.
Despite what my manuscript stated, your love for our children is the thing I’ve always cherished most about you.
There have been moments throughout these past few months when I’ve wanted to tell you I’m here. That it’s me. That I’m okay. But it would be a waste of breath. We can’t get past two murder attempts, Jeremy. And I know if you find out I’m faking this before I’m able to leave, your third attempt at killing me will be successful.
I’m not going through all this effort in hopes that I’ll eventually change your mind and prove to you how wrong you were. You will never fully trust me again.
Everything I’m doing is for Crew. All I can think about is my little boy.
Everything I’ve done from the day I woke up in that hospital has been for Crew.
As much as I don’t want to take Crew away from you, I have no choice. He’s my child and he needs to be with me. He’s the only one who knows I’m still in here
—that I still have thoughts and a voice and a plan. It feels safe, being myself with him, because he’s only five. I know if he told you I speak to him, you would pass it off as an active imagination, or even trauma from all he’s been through.
He’s the reason I searched so hard for that manuscript. I know, if you ever find us after I leave here, you’ll try to use it against me. You’ll want him to believe it as you believed it.
The first night after you brought me home, I snuck to the office to delete the manuscript from the laptop, but you had already deleted it. I tried to find the one I had printed, but I couldn’t remember where it was. There were blank spots in my memory after the wreck, and that was one of them. But I knew I needed to get rid of both of them so you couldn’t use it against me.
I searched everywhere, any chance I got for that manuscript, as quietly as I could. My office, the basement, the attic. I even searched around the bedroom a few times while you were asleep on your bed. I just knew I couldn’t leave with Crew until I had destroyed the proof you would use against me.
I also had to wait until I could get my hands on money but I wasn’t quite sure how to do that since I couldn’t very well drive to the bank.
When I overheard your conversation with Pantem Press about their brilliant idea of continuing the series with a new author, I knew that was my way out.
When you hired an overnight nurse and left for your meeting with them in Manhattan, I snuck into my office and opened a new checking account online.
Within days of that meeting, the new co-author was moving into the house to start on the series. Which means it will only be a matter of time before the money for the remaining three books will finally be in the account and I’ll be able to transfer the funds to my new account and get Crew out of here.
All I have to do is bide my time, but the new co-author has been making it difficult. She somehow got her hands on the printed manuscript I’ve been searching for. I’m sure you thought by deleting the file, you were ridding the house of it. But you didn’t. Now it’s two against one. I don’t even care about destroying the manuscript at this point. I only care about getting out of here.
I admit, it’s my fault she’s growing suspicious. I know it freaks her out when she catches me looking at her, but you can’t blame me. This woman has entered your life, is taking over my career, is falling in love with you. And from what I can tell, you’re falling in love with her, too.
I heard you fucking her in our bedroom a couple of hours ago. As much as I’m hurting, I’m equally as angry. However, you’re so occupied with her right now I feel it’s the safest time to write this letter. I locked the door to the master bedroom so I’ll be able to hear you trying to get out. It’ll provide me with enough time to hide this letter and get back in place before you can make it upstairs.
It’s been tough, Jeremy. Not gonna lie. All of it. Knowing you believed my words more than you believed my actions over the course of our marriage.
Knowing I’ve had to resort to this level of deceit to save myself from being convicted of one of the most atrocious things a mother could do. Knowing you’re falling in love with another woman while I spend day after day pretending to be unaware of what our lives have turned into.
But I keep pushing through because I’m confident that I’ll get out of here as soon as that money comes, which is why I’m leaving you this note.
Maybe you’ll find it, maybe you won’t.
I hope you do. I really hope you do.
Because even after you tried to choke me to death and crash my car into a tree, I can’t find it in myself to hate you. You have always been fierce in your protection of our children, which is exactly how parents should be. Even if that means eliminating the parent who has become a threat to them. You truly believe in your heart that I am a threat to Crew, and even though it kills me to know you believe that, it also gives me life knowing how much you love him.
When Crew and I finally get out of here, I’ll call you someday and I’ll tell you where to find this letter. After you read it, I hope you’ll find it in you to forgive me. I hope you’ll find it in you to forgive yourself.
I don’t blame you for what you’ve done to me. You were a wonderful husband until you couldn’t be. And you were the best father in the world. Hands down.
I love you. Even still.
Verity
I drop the letter to the floor.
I grip my stomach as a pain seers through it.
She didn’t do it?
I don’t want to believe anything I just read. I want to believe Verity is cruel and deserves what we did to her, but I’m not sure she did.
Oh, God. What if it’s true? This woman lost her daughters and then her husband tried to kill her and then...we did kill her.
I sit back, staring at the letter as if it’s a weapon that harnesses the power to destroy the life I’ve recently built with Jeremy.
So many thoughts are running through my mind, I press against my temples because my head is pounding. Jeremy already knew about the manuscript?
Had he really already read it before I gave it to him? Did he lie to me?
No. He never denied knowing it existed. In fact, now that I think back on that moment, his exact words were, “Where did you find this?”
It’s too much to take in . I can’t process everything she said and everything that’s happened. I stare at the letter for so long, I forget where I am and that Jeremy and Crew are downstairs and that any minute, he’ll come looking for me.
I crawl forward and grab the pages. I shove the knife and picture back into the floor, then cover the hole with the wood. I take the pages to the bathroom and I lock the door behind me. I kneel in front of the toilet and I start ripping each page into tiny shreds. I flush some of the paper and eat as many pieces of the letter I can find with Jeremy’s name. I want to make sure no one ever reads a word of this.
Jeremy would never forgive himself. Never. If he found out the manuscript wasn’t real and that Verity never harmed Harper, he wouldn’t be able to survive that kind of truth. The truth that he murdered his innocent wife. That we murdered his innocent wife.
If it even is the truth.
“Lowen?”
I flush the rest of the pieces of paper in the toilet. I flush again for good
measure, just as Jeremy knocks on the door.
“You okay?” he asks.
I turn on the water and try to calm my voice. “Yes.” I wash my hands, then take a sip of water to ease the dryness in my mouth. I look in the mirror and recognize the terror in my eyes. I close them, attempting to push it back. All of it. Every terrible thing I’ve witnessed in my thirty-two years.
The night I stood on the railing.
The day I saw the man being crushed beneath the tire.
The manuscript.
The night I saw Verity standing at the top of the stairs.
The night she died in her sleep.
I push it all back. I swallow it like I swallowed her letter.
I blow out a breath and then open the door and smile at Jeremy. He reaches up and runs a hand down the side of my head. “You okay?”
I swallow my fear, my guilt, my sadness. I cover it all up with a convincing nod. “I’m alright.”
Jeremy smiles. “Alright,” he says quietly, threading his fingers through mine.
“Let’s get out of here and never come back.”
He holds my hand throughout the house and doesn’t let go until he opens my door and helps me into his Jeep. As we’re driving away, I watch the house grow smaller in the rearview mirror until, finally, it disappears.
Jeremy reaches across the seat and rubs my stomach. “Ten more weeks.”
There’s an excitement in his eyes. One I know I was able to put there, even after all he’s been through. I brought light into his darkness, and I will continue to be that light so he’ll never be lost in the shadows of his past.
He will never know what I know. I’ll make certain of that. I will take this secret to my grave with me so Jeremy doesn’t have to.
I have no idea what to believe, so why put him through more anguish? Verity could have written that letter as a way to try and cover her tracks. It could have been another ploy at manipulating the situation and everyone involved.
And even if Jeremy really was the reason for her wreck, I can’t blame him.
He believed Verity maliciously murdered his child. I can’t even blame him for ultimately following through with her murder when he found out she had been deceiving him about her injuries. Any parent in his position would have done the same. Should have done the same. We both believed in our hearts that she was a threat to Crew. To us.
No matter which way I look at it, it’s clear that Verity was a master at manipulating the truth. The only question that remains is: Which truth was she manipulating?