‌Our second round happened in the shower half an hour later. Our hands were all over each other, our mouths were one, and then he was inside me again, my palms flat against the shower wall as he thrust into me beneath the spray of the water.‌

He pulled out and came on my back before washing me clean.

We’re in the bed again, but it’s almost three in the morning, and I know he’s going to go back to his room soon. I don’t want him to. Being with him in this way is everything I imagined it would be and, somehow, I feel okay being inside this house when I’m also wrapped in his arms. He makes me feel safe from the things he doesn’t even realize are dangerous.

He has me tucked against him, an arm wrapped around me as I lie against his chest. His fingers are tracing up and down my arm. We’ve been fighting sleep, asking each other questions. The questions have taken a more personal turn because he just asked me what my last relationship was like.

“It was shallow.” “Why?”

“I’m not sure it was even a relationship,” I say. “We defined it that way, but it only revolved around sex. We couldn’t figure out how to fit into each other’s lives outside of the bedroom.”

“How long did it last?”

“A while.” I lift up and look at him. “It was with Corey. My agent.” Jeremy’s fingers pause on my arm. “The agent I met?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s still your agent?”

“He’s a great agent.” I lay my head back down on his chest, and Jeremy’s fingers resume their movement down my arm.

“That just made me a little jealous,” he says.

I laugh because I can feel him laughing. After it’s quiet for a beat, I ask him a question I’ve been curious about. “What was your relationship like with Verity?”

Jeremy sighs, and my head moves with his chest. Then he positions us so that I’m on the pillow and he’s on his side, making eye contact with me. “I’ll answer your question, but I don’t want you to think bad of me.”

“I won’t,” I promise, shaking my head.

“I loved her. She was my wife. But sometimes I wasn’t sure we really knew each other. We lived together, but it’s as if our worlds weren’t connected.” He reaches up and touches my lips, tracing over them with the tips of his fingers. “I was insanely attracted to her, which I’m sure you don’t want to hear, but it’s true. Our sex life was great. But the rest of it… I don’t know. I felt like there was something missing in the beginning, but I stayed and I married her and we started our family because I always believed that deeper connection was within reach. I thought I’d wake up one day and look her in the eyes and then it would click, like that mythical puzzle piece had finally snapped into place.”

It’s not lost on me that he mentioned loving her in the past tense. “Did you eventually find that connection?”

“No, not like I had hoped. But I’ve felt something close to it—a fleeting intensity that proved a deeper connection can exist.”

“When was that?”

“Several weeks ago,” he says quietly. “In a random coffee shop bathroom with a woman who wasn’t my wife.”

He kisses me as soon as that sentence escapes him, like he doesn’t want me to respond. Maybe he feels guilty for saying it. For momentarily feeling a connection with me after trying to feel that connection with his wife for so many years.

Even if he doesn’t want me to react to that admission, I feel something grow inside me, like his words sink into me and expand in my chest. He pulls me against him and I close my eyes, tucking my head against his chest. We don’t speak again before we fall asleep.

I wake up about two hours later to his voice in my ear.

“Shit.” He sits up and most of the covers go with him. “Shit.” I rub my eyes as I roll onto my back. “What is it?”

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” He reaches to the floor and then begins pulling on his clothes. “I can’t be in here when Crew wakes up.” He kisses

me, twice, and then walks toward the door. He unlocks it, then pulls on it.

The door doesn’t budge.

He jiggles the handle as I sit up in bed, pulling the covers over my exposed breasts.

“Shit,” he says again. “The door is stuck.”

Something drops inside me, and I’m abruptly ripped from the pleasure of last night. I’m back in the moment, in yet another scenario where I feel desolate inside this eerie house. I shake my head, but Jeremy is facing the door so he can’t see me. “It isn’t stuck,” I say quietly. “It’s locked. From the outside.”

Jeremy turns his head and looks at me, his face giving way to concern. Then he tries pulling the door with both hands. When he realizes I’m right and that the door is latched on the outside, he starts beating on it. I remain where I am, scared of what he might find when he finally gets that door open.

He tries everything to open it, but then he resorts to calling out Crew’s name. “Crew!” Jeremy yells, beating on the bedroom door.

What if she took him?

I’m not sure she would have. She doesn’t even like her kids. But she likes Jeremy. Loves Jeremy. If she knew he was in this room with me last night, she’d probably take Crew out of spite.

Jeremy’s mind hasn’t gone there yet. In his head, Crew is playing a prank on us. Or the lock somehow accidentally latched itself when he closed the door last night. Those are the only plausible explanations to him. Right now, he merely sounds annoyed. Not at all concerned.

Jeremy glances toward the alarm clock on the nightstand and then beats on the door again. “Crew, open the door!” He presses his forehead against it. “April will be here soon,” he says quietly. “She can’t find us in here together.”

That’s where his head is?

I’m thinking his wife kidnapped his son in the middle of the night, and he’s worried he’s going to be caught fucking the houseguest.

“Jeremy.”

“What?” he says, beating against the door again.

“I know you think it isn’t plausible. But…did you lock Verity’s door last night?”

Jeremy’s fist pauses against the door. “I can’t remember,” he says quietly.

“If by some bizarre chance it was Verity who locked us in here…Crew probably isn’t here anymore.”

When he looks at me, his eyes are full of fear. Then, in one swift movement, he stalks across the bedroom and unlocks the window. He lifts it, but there are two panes of glass. The second one isn’t giving way as easily as the first. Without hesitation, he reaches to the bed and pulls a pillow case off of a pillow. He wraps his hand in the case, punches through the glass, kicks it, and then crawls out the window.

Several seconds later, I hear him unlock my bedroom door as he passes it and heads for the stairs. He’s already in Crew’s bedroom before I make it out of the master. I hear him run across the hall to Verity’s room. When he makes it back to the top of the stairs, my heart is in my throat.

He shakes his head. He bends over, clasping his knees, out of breath. “They’re asleep.”

He squats, as if his knees were about to give way, and he runs his hands through his hair. “They’re asleep,” he says again, with relief.

I’m relieved. But I’m not.

My paranoia is starting to reach Jeremy.

I’m not doing him any favors by bringing up my concerns. April walks through the front door moments later. She looks at me, then at Jeremy squatting at the top of the stairs. He glances up and sees April staring at him.

He stands and walks down the stairs, not looking at me or April as he heads to the door, pulls it open, and walks outside.

April looks from me to the front door. I shrug. “Rough night with Crew.”

I don’t know if she buys it, but she walks up the stairs like she doesn’t give a shit if I’m telling the truth or not.

I go to the office and close the door. I pull the rest of the manuscript out and begin to read. I have to finish this today. I need to know how it ends, if it even has an ending. Because I’m at the point now where I feel like I need to show this manuscript to Jeremy. He needs to know that he was right when he felt they never really connected. Because he didn’t really know her.

Things aren’t right in this house, and until he mistrusts that woman upstairs as much as I do, I have a feeling something else is going to happen. The other shoe is going to drop.

After all, this is a house full of Chronics. The next tragedy is already long overdue.

 

 

 

‌It’s easy to remember everything about the morning Harper died because it only happened a few days ago. I remember how she smelled. Like grease. She hadn’t washed her hair in two days. What she was wearing. Purple leggings, a black shirt, and a knitted sweater. What she was doing. Sitting at the table with Crew, coloring. The last thing Jeremy said to her that day. I love you, Harper.‌

Chastin had been gone six months that day. To the day. Which meant I had spent one hundred eighty-two and a half days building resentment for the child responsible.

Jeremy had slept upstairs the night before. Crew cries for him almost every night, so for the last two months, he’s been sleeping in the guest bedroom upstairs. I tried to tell him it’s not good for Crew. He’s spoiling him. But Jeremy doesn’t listen to me anymore. His primary focus are his two remaining children.

It’s strange how we have one less child for him to focus on, yet that somehow turned into requiring more of his focus.

We’ve had sex four times since Chastin died. He can’t seem to get it up anymore when I try. Not even when I suck his dick. The worst part is that it doesn’t even seem to bother him. He could take Viagra, but he refuses. He says he just needs more time to adjust to life without Chastin.

Time.

You know who didn’t need time? Harper.

She didn’t even go through an adjustment period after Chastin’s death. She never cried. Not even a single tear. It’s weird. It isn’t normal. Even I cried.

I guess it makes sense that Harper wouldn’t cry. Guilt can do that to a person.

Maybe guilt is why I’m writing it all down.

Because Jeremy needs to know the truth. Someday, somehow, he’ll find this. And then he’ll realize how much I fucking loved him.

Back to the day Harper got what was coming to her.

I was standing in the kitchen, watching her color. She was showing Crew how to color on top of another color to make a third color. They were laughing. Crew’s laugh was understandable, but Harper’s? Inexcusable. I was tired of holding in my anger.

“Are you even upset that Chastin is dead?”

Harper lifted her eyes to meet my gaze. She was pretending to be afraid of me. “Yes.”

“You haven’t even cried. Not once. Your twin sister died and you act like you don’t even care.”

I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. Funny how the kid Jeremy believes can’t express emotion can bring on the tears when she’s being called out.

“I do care,” Harper said. “I miss her.”

I laughed at her. My laughter brought on the actual tears. She scooted her chair back and ran up to her bedroom.

I looked at Crew and flicked a hand in Harper’s direction. “Now she cries.”

Figures.

Jeremy must have passed her upstairs, because I could hear him knocking on her door. “Harper? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

I mimicked him, using a squeaky child-like voice. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

Crew giggled. At least I’m funny to the four-year-old.

A minute later, Jeremy walked into the kitchen. “What’s wrong with Harper?”

“She’s mad,” I lied. “I wouldn’t let her go play by the lake.”

Jeremy kissed me on the side of my head. It felt genuine and it made me smile. “It’s a nice day out,” he said. “You should take them to the shore.”

He was behind me, so he didn’t see me roll my eyes. I should have thought of a better lie to excuse Harper’s tears, because now he wanted me to take them outside and play with them.

“I wanna go to the water,” Crew said.

Jeremy grabbed his wallet and his keys. “Go tell Harper to get her shoes on. Your mom will take you. I’ll be back before lunch.”

I turned around and faced him. “Where are you going?” “Groceries,” he said. “I told you this morning.”

He did say that.

Crew ran upstairs, and I sighed. “I’d rather do the shopping. You stay and play with them.”

Jeremy walked up to me, wrapping an arm around me. He pressed his forehead to mine, and I felt that gesture go straight to my heart. “You haven’t written in six months. You don’t go outside. You don’t play with them.” He pulls me in for a hug. “I’m getting worried about you, babe. Just take them outside for half an hour. Get some Vitamin D.”

“Do you think I’m depressed?” I said, pulling back. That was laughable.

He was the depressed one.

Jeremy set his keys on the counter so he could hold my face with both of his hands. “I think we’re both depressed. And we will be for a while. We need to look out for each other.”

I smiled at him. I liked that he thought we were in this together. Maybe we were. He kissed me then, and for the first time in a long time, he kissed me with tongue and very little grief. It felt like old times. I pulled him to me and lifted onto my toes, deepening the kiss. I felt him harden against me, without coercion this time.

“I want you to sleep in our room tonight,” I whispered.

He smiled against my lips. “Okay. But there won’t be much sleeping.” His tone of voice, his heated eyes, that grin. There you are, Jeremy

Crawford. I’ve missed you.

After Jeremy left, I took his damn children to play by the water. I also took the last book I’d written in my series. Jeremy was right, it had been six months since I’d written anything. I needed to get back in the groove. I already missed a deadline, but Pantem was lenient, thanks to the tragic “accidental” loss of Chastin.

They’d probably be even more lenient on my deadline if they knew what had really happened to her.

Crew walked out onto the dock toward the canoe. I tensed, because the dock is old and Jeremy didn’t like them being on it. But Crew didn’t weigh much, so I relaxed a little. I doubted he could fall through.

He sat down at the edge of the dock and stuck his feet in the canoe. I was surprised it hadn’t floated away yet. It was hanging by a threadbare rope.

Crew doesn’t know it, and maybe he’ll find out one day, but he was conceived in that canoe. The week I lied and told Jeremy I was pregnant was the most prolific week of sex we’d had to date. But I’m pretty sure it was the canoe that did the trick. It’s why I wanted to name him Crew. I wanted a nautical-themed name.

I missed those days.

There were a lot of things I missed, actually. Mostly I missed our lives before we had children. The twins, anyway.

Sitting on the shore that day, watching Crew, I wondered what it would be like to only have him. It would be another adjustment if Harper were to pass, but I figured we’d get through it. I wasn’t much help after Chastin died because for a while, I was grieving too. But if Harper were to pass, I could be more help to Jeremy during his recovery.

This time, there would be very little grief on my part since all my grief was reserved for Chastin.

Maybe most of Jeremy’s grief was reserved for Chastin, too. It was a possibility.

I used to assume that the individual deaths of a person’s children would be equally difficult for them. Losing a second or even third child would hurt just as much as the first experience.

But that was before Jeremy and I lost Chastin. Her death made us swell with grief. It filled every crevice inside of us, every limb.

If the canoe were to capsize with the children in it—if Harper were to drown—Jeremy might not have room for more grief. Maybe he was at full capacity.

When you’ve already lost one child, you might as well have lost them

all.

With no room for more grief and Harper no longer around, the three of

us could become the perfect family. “Harper.”

She was several feet from me, playing in the sand. I stood up and wiped the back of my jeans. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go for a ride in the canoe with your brother.”

Harper jumped up, unaware as she stepped foot onto the dock that she’d never know what the earth felt like beneath her feet again.

“I get front,” she said. I followed her to the edge of the dock. I helped Crew climb in first, then Harper. Then I sat down and carefully lowered

myself into the boat. I used the paddle to push away from the dock.

I was in the back of the boat, and Crew was in the middle. I paddled us out to the middle of the lake as they leaned over the edge, running their fingers in the water.

The lake was calm as I looked around. We lived in a cove with 2,000 feet of shoreline, so we didn’t get much of the lake traffic out here. It was a quiet day.

Harper sat up straight in the canoe and wiped her hands on her leggings.

She turned around, her back to me Crew and me.

I leaned forward, close to Crew’s ear. I covered his mouth with my hand. “Crew. Sweetie. Hold your breath.”

I gripped the edge of the canoe and leaned all my weight to the right.

I heard a small yelp. I wasn’t sure if it came from Crew or Harper, but after the yelp and the initial splash, I heard nothing. Just pressure. The silence pressed against my ears as I kicked my arms and legs until I broke through the surface.

I could hear splashing. Harper’s scream. Crew’s scream. I swam toward Crew and wrapped my arms around him. I looked toward the house, hoping I could make it back to shore with him. We were farther out than I’d realized.

I started swimming. Harper was screaming.

Splashing.

I continued to swim.

She continued to scream.

Nothing.

I heard another splash.

More nothing.

I kept swimming and refused to look back until I could feel the mud seep between my toes. I gripped at the surface of the lake like it was a life vest. Crew was gasping and coughing, bobbing up and down, clinging to me. It was harder than I thought it would be to keep him afloat.

Jeremy would thank me for this. For saving Crew. He’d be devastated, of course, but thankful, too.

I wondered if we’d sleep in the same bed that night. He would be exhausted, but he would want to sleep in the same bed as me, hold me, make sure I was okay.

“Harper!” Crew yelled as soon as he cleared his lungs of water.

I covered Crew’s mouth and dragged him to the shore, plopping him down on the sand. His eyes were wide with fear. “Mommy!” he cried, pointing behind me. “Harper can’t swim!”

Sand was all over me, stuck to my hands, my arms, my thighs. My lungs felt like fire. Crew tried to crawl back toward the water, but I pulled his hand and made him sit down. The ripples from the commotion of the water were still lapping at my toes. I looked out at the lake, but there was nothing. No screaming. No splashing.

Crew was growing more and more hysterical.

“I tried to save her,” I whispered. “Mommy tried to save her.” “Go get her!” he screamed, pointing out at the lake.

I wondered then how it would look if he told anyone I didn’t go back out into the water. Most mothers wouldn’t leave the water until they’d found their child. I needed to get back in the water.

“Crew. We need to save Harper. Do you remember how to use Mommy’s phone to call Daddy?”

He nodded, wiping tears from his cheeks.

“Go. Go to the house and call Daddy. Tell him Mommy is trying to save Harper and he needs to call the police.”

“Okay!” he said, running up to the house.

He was such a good brother.

I was cold and out of breath, but I trudged back out into the lake. “Harper?” I said her name quietly, afraid if I called too loudly, she’d get a second wind and pop up out of the water.

I took my time. I didn’t want to go too far and risk touching her, bumping into her. What if there was still life in her and she clung to my shirt? Tried to pull me under?

I was aware I needed to be out here when Jeremy showed up. I needed to be crying. Cold. On the verge of hypothermia. Bonus points if I was taken away in an ambulance.

The canoe was upside down, closer inland than when it flipped. Jeremy and I had flipped the canoe a couple of times before, so I was aware there were air pockets when it was positioned like it was. What if Harper had swam to it? What if she had clung to it and was hiding under it? Waiting to tell her daddy what I had done?

I worked my way to the canoe. I moved carefully, not wanting to touch her. When I reached the capsized boat, I held my breath and went under the

water. I popped up inside the canoe.

Oh, thank God, I thought. She wasn’t there.

Thank God.

I heard Crew calling my name from far away. I ducked under the water and popped up outside the canoe. I screamed Harper’s name, full of panic, like an actual devastated mother would.

“Harper!”

“Daddy is coming!” Crew yelled from the shore.

I started screaming Harper’s name even louder. The police would be here soon, before Jeremy.

“Harper!”

I went under several times so that I’d be out of breath. I did that, over and over, until I could barely stay afloat. I screamed her name and didn’t stop until a police officer was pulling me out of the water.

I continued to scream her name, throwing in the occasional, “My daughter!” and “My baby girl!”

One person was in the water looking for her. Then two. Then three. Then I felt someone fly past me, onto the dock. He ran to the end and jumped in head first. When he popped up, I saw that it was Jeremy.

I can’t describe the look on his face as he yelled for her. It was a look of determination mixed with horror mixed with psychosis.

I was crying real tears at that point. I was hysterical. I wanted to smile at how appropriately hysterical I was, but I didn’t because part of me knew I had messed up. I could see it in Jeremy’s face. This one would be even harder for him to recover from than Chastin.

I didn’t anticipate that.

She’d been under water for over half an hour when he finally found her. She was tangled in a fishing net. I couldn’t tell if it was green or yellow from where I sat on the beach, but I remembered Jeremy losing a yellow fishing net last year. What are the odds that I tipped the canoe in the exact spot it was tangled beneath the surface? Had the fishing net not been there, she probably would have made it to shore.

After she was untangled, the men helped Jeremy lift her onto the dock. Jeremy tried to perform CPR until the paramedic made it to the edge of the dock. And even then, he wouldn’t stop.

He wouldn’t stop until he had no choice. The dock began to cave in, and Jeremy rolled right off the edge of it, catching Harper in his arms. Three other men remained on the dock, reaching for her body.

I wondered if that moment would haunt him. Having to catch his dead daughter’s body as she fell on top of him in the water.

Jeremy wouldn’t let go of her. He found his footing in the water and carried her, all the way to the shore. When he reached the sand, he collapsed, still holding her. He pressed his face into her sopping wet hair, and I heard him whispering to her.

“I love you, Harper. I love you, Harper. I love you, Harper.”

He said it over and over as he held her. His sadness made me ache for him. I crawled to him, to her, and I wrapped my arms around them both. “I tried to save her,” I whispered. “I tried to save her.”

He wouldn’t let go of Harper. The paramedics had to pry her from his arms. He left me there, with Crew, while he climbed into the back of the ambulance.

Jeremy didn’t ask me what had happened. He didn’t tell me he was leaving. He didn’t look at me at all.

His reaction wasn’t quite what I had planned, but I realized he was in shock. He’d adjust. He just needed time.