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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.
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 them.
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
