The upside to Verity’s office is the view from these windows. The glass starts at the floor and rises all the way up to the ceiling. And there aren’t any obstructions. Just huge panes of solid glass, so I can see everything. Who cleans these? I study the panes of glass for a spot, a smudge— anything.
The downside to Verity’s office is also the view from these windows. The nurse has parked Verity’s wheelchair on the back porch, right in front of the office. I can see her entire profile as she faces west of the back porch. It’s a nice day out, so the nurse is sitting in front of Verity, reading her a book. Verity is staring off into space, and I wonder, does she comprehend anything? And if so, how much?
Her fine hair lifts in the breeze, like the fingers of a ghost are playing with the strands.
When I look at her, my empathy magnifies. Which is why I don’t want to look at her, but these windows make it impossible. I can’t hear the nurse reading to her, presumably because these windows are as soundproof as the rest of this office. But I know they’re there, so it’s hard to concentrate on work without glancing up every few minutes.
I’ve had issues finding any notes so far for the series, but I’ve only been able to wade through a portion of the stuff in here. I decided my time would be better spent this morning skimming the first and second books, making notes about every character. I’m creating a filing system for myself because I need to know these characters as well as Verity knows them. I need to know what motivates them, what moves them, what sets them off.
I see movement outside the window. When I look up, the nurse is walking away, toward the back door. I stare at Verity for a moment, wondering if she’ll react now that the nurse has stopped reading to her. There’s no movement at all. Her hands are in her lap, and her head is tilted
to the side, as if her brain can’t even send a signal to let her know she needs to straighten up her posture before it causes her neck to ache.
The clever and talented Verity is no longer in there. Was her body the only thing that survived that wreck? It’s as if she were an egg, cracked open and poured out, and all that’s left are the tiny fragments of hard shell.
I glance back down at the desk and try to focus. I can’t help but wonder how Jeremy is handling all this. He’s a concrete pillar on the outside, but the inside has to be hollow. It’s disappointing, knowing this is his life now. Caring for an egg shell with no yolk.
That was harsh.
I’m not trying to be harsh. I’m just… I don’t know. I feel like it would have been better for everyone if she hadn’t survived the wreck. I immediately feel guilty for thinking that, but it reminds me of the last few months I spent caring for my mother. I know my mother would have preferred death over being as severely incapacitated as the cancer made her. But that was just a few months of her life…of my life. This is Jeremy’s whole life now. Caring for a wife who is no longer his wife. Tied to a home that’s no longer a home. And I can’t imagine this is how Verity would want him to live. I can’t imagine this is how she would want to live. She can’t even play with or speak to her own child.
I pray she isn’t in there, for her own sake. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be if her mind were still there, but the brain damage had left her with no physical way to express herself, robbing her of any ability to react or interact or verbalize what she’s thinking.
I lift my head again.
She’s staring straight at me.
I jump up, and the desk chair moves backward across the wood floor. Verity is looking right at me through the window, her head turned toward me, her eyes locked on mine. I bring my hand up to my mouth and step back; I feel threatened.
I want out of her line of sight, so I creep to my left, toward the office door. For a moment, I can’t escape her gaze. She’s the Mona Lisa, following me as I move across the room. But when I reach her office door, we’re no longer making eye contact.
Her eyes didn’t follow me.
I drop my hand and lean against the wall, watching as April walks back outside with a towel. She wipes Verity’s chin and then takes a small pillow
from Verity’s lap and lifts her head, placing it between her shoulder and her cheek. With her head adjusted, she’s no longer staring into the window.
“Shit,” I whisper to no one.
I’m scared of a woman who can barely move and can’t even speak. A woman who can’t willingly turn her head to look at someone, much less make intentional eye contact.
I need water.
I open the office door, but let out a yelp when my cell phone rings behind me on the desk.
Dammit. I hate adrenaline. My pulse is racing, but I blow out a breath and try to calm down as I answer the phone. It’s an unknown number.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Ashleigh?” “This is she.”
“This is Donovan Baker from Creekwood apartments. You put in an application a few days ago?”
I’m relieved to have a distraction. I walk back over to the window, and the nurse has moved Verity’s chair so that I’m only looking at the back of her head now. “Yes, how can I help you?”
“I’m calling because the application you submitted was processed today. Unfortunately, there was a recent eviction that showed up in your name, so we can’t approve you for the apartment.”
Already? I just moved out a couple of days ago. “But my application was already approved with you guys. I’m supposed to move in next week.”
“Actually, you were only pre-approved. Your application wasn’t fully processed until today. We can’t approve applications with recent evictions. I hope you understand.”
I squeeze the back of my neck. I won’t get my money for another two weeks. “Please,” I say to him, trying not to sound as pathetic as I feel right now. “I’ve never been late on my rent until now. I was just hired for another job, and in two weeks, if you let me move in now, I can pay you an entire year’s rent. I swear.”
“You can always appeal the decision,” he says. “It might take a few weeks, but I’ve seen applications get approved due to extenuating circumstances.”
“I don’t have a few weeks. I already moved out of my last apartment.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll email you our decision, and at the bottom of the email, contact that number for an appeal. Have a good day, Ms. Ashleigh.”
He ends the call, but I still have the phone pressed to my ear as I squeeze my neck. I’m hoping I’ll wake up from this nightmare any second now. Thank you, Mother. What the hell am I going to do now?
There’s a soft knock on the office door. I spin around, startled again. I can’t deal with today. Jeremy is standing in the office entryway, looking at me with a face full of empathy.
I left the door open when my phone rang. He probably heard that entire conversation. I can tack mortified onto the list of adjectives that describe today.
I set my phone on Verity’s desk, then fall into her desk chair. “My life wasn’t always this much of a hot mess.”
He laughs a little, stepping into the room. “Neither was mine.”
I appreciate that comment. I look down at my phone. “It’s fine,” I say, spinning my phone around in a circle. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I can loan you money until your advance is processed through your agent. I’ll have to pull it from our mutual fund, but it can be here in three days.”
I have never been this embarrassed, and I know he can see it because I practically curl into myself as I lean forward on the desk and drop my face into my hands.
“That’s really sweet, but I’m not taking a loan from you.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then chooses to take a seat on the couch. He sits casually, leaning forward, clasping his hands in front of him. “Then stay here until your advance hits your account. It’ll only be a week or two.” He looks around the office, seeing how much progress I haven’t made since I arrived yesterday. “We don’t mind. You aren’t in the way at all.”
I shake my head, but he interrupts.
“Lowen. This job you’ve taken on is not easy. I’d rather you spend too much time in here prepping for it than get back to New York tomorrow and realize you should have stayed longer.”
I do need more time. But two weeks in this house? With a woman who scares me, a manuscript I shouldn’t be reading, and a man I know way too many intimate details about?
It’s not a good idea. None of it is good.
I start to shake my head again, but he holds up a hand. “Stop being considerate. Stop being embarrassed. Just say alright.”
I look past him, at all the boxes lining the walls behind him. The things I haven’t even touched yet. And then I think about how, with two weeks in here, I would have time to read every book in her backlist, make notes on each of them, and possibly outline the three new ones.
I sigh, conceding with a little bit of relief. “Alright.”
He smiles a little, then stands up and walks toward the door. “Thank you,” I say.
Jeremy turns back around and faces me. I wish I had let him walk out the door, because I swear I can see a trace of regret in his expression. He opens his mouth, like he wants to say, “You’re welcome,” or “No problem.” But he just closes his mouth and forces a smile, and then shuts the door behind him when he leaves.
•••
Jeremy told me earlier this afternoon that I needed to be outside before the sun disappeared behind the mountains. “You’ll see why Verity wanted an unobstructed view from her office.”
I brought one of her books with me to read on the back porch. There are about ten chairs to choose from, so I take a seat at a patio table. Jeremy and Crew are down by the water, tearing old pieces of wood out of their fishing dock. It’s cute, watching Crew grab the pieces of wood Jeremy’s handing to him. He carries them to a huge pile, then grabs another from his dad. Jeremy has to wait for him each time, because it takes Crew longer to dispose of the wood than it does for Jeremy to rip it out of the wooden frame. It proves how much patience he has as a father.
He reminds me a little of my father. He died when I was nine, but I’m not sure I ever saw him angry. Not even at my mother, with her prickly comments and frequent hot temper. I grew to resent that about him, though. Sometimes I perceived his patience as weakness when it came to her.
I watch Crew and Jeremy a little longer, in between attempts at finishing my chapter. But I’m finding it hard to comprehend anything because Jeremy took his shirt off a few minutes ago and, while I’ve seen him take his shirt off before, I’ve never seen him without an undershirt. His skin is slick from the sweat he’s worked up over the past two hours of being down
at the dock. When he yanks at the wood with the hammer, his muscles stretch across his back, and I immediately recall the last chapter Verity wrote. There were so many intimate details about their sex life, and from what I read, it was very active. More so than any of my relationships have been.
It’s hard looking at him and not thinking about sex now. Not that I want to have sex with him. And not that I don’t. It’s just that, as a writer, I know he was her inspiration for several of the men in her books. And it makes me wonder if I need to view him as my inspiration as I tackle the rest of this series. I mean…it’s not the worst thing. Being forced to step into Verity’s shoes and visualize Jeremy for the next twenty-four months as I write.
The back door slams shut, and I tear my eyes away from Jeremy. April is standing on the patio, staring at me. Her gaze follows the path of mine, and then she cuts her eyes back to me. She saw. She saw me eyeing my new boss. Pathetic.
How long was she watching me stare at him? I want to cover my face with this book, but instead, I smile like I was doing nothing wrong. I mean, I wasn’t.
“I’m heading out,” April says. “I put Verity in bed and turned on her television. She’s had dinner and her meds, in case he asks.”
I don’t know why she’s telling me this, since I’m not in charge. “Okay.
Have a good night.”
She doesn’t tell me to have a good night in return. She walks back into the house and lets the door fall shut again. A minute later, I hear the hum of her engine as her car pulls out of the driveway, disappearing between the trees. I glance back at Jeremy and Crew, and Jeremy is ripping up another piece of wood.
Crew is staring at me, standing near the pile of discarded fishing dock. He smiles and waves. I lift my hand to wave back, but curl my fingers into a soft fist when I realize Crew isn’t waving at me. He’s looking above me, to the right.
He’s looking up at Verity’s bedroom window.
I spin around and look up, just as her bedroom curtain falls shut. I drop her book onto the patio table, knocking over my bottle of water in the process. I stand up and take three steps farther back to get a better look at the window, but there’s no one there. My mouth falls open. I look back at
Crew, but he’s retreating back to the dock to grab another piece of wood from Jeremy.
I’m seeing things.
But why was he waving at her window? If she wasn’t there, why was he waving?
It doesn’t make sense. If she was looking out her window, Crew would have had a much bigger reaction, considering she hasn’t been able to speak or walk on her own since her wreck.
Or maybe he doesn’t understand that his mother walking to her window would be a miracle. He’s only five.
I look down at the book, now covered in water, and pick it up and shake the liquid from it. I blow out an unsteady breath because it feels like I’ve been on edge all day. I’m sure I’m still a little shaken from thinking she was staring at me earlier, and that’s why I assumed I saw the curtain move.
Part of me wants to forget it and lock myself in the office and work the rest of the night. But I know I won’t be able to if I don’t check on her. Make sure I didn’t see what I thought I saw.
I lay the book open on the patio table to dry and make my way into the house, toward the stairs. I’m quiet. I’m not sure why I feel the need to be quiet as I work to sneak a peek at her. I know she probably can’t process much, so what would it matter if I made my approach known? Even still, I remain quiet as I make my way up the stairs, down the hallway, and to her bedroom door.
It’s slightly ajar, and I can see the window that overlooks the backyard. I press my palm to the door and begin to open it. I’m biting my bottom lip as I peek my head in.
Verity is in her bed, eyes closed, hands to her sides on top of the blanket.
I breathe a quiet sigh of relief, and then feel even more relief when I open the door a little wider, revealing an oscillating fan moving back and forth from Verity’s bed to the window overlooking the backyard. Every time the fan points toward the window, the curtain moves.
My sigh is louder this time. It was the damn fan. Get a grip, Lowen.
I turn off the fan because it’s a little too chilly in here for it. I’m surprised April left it on to begin with. I cut my eyes toward Verity again, but she’s still asleep. When I get to the door, I pause. I look at the dresser— at the remote sitting on top of it. I look up at the TV mounted to the wall.
It isn’t on.
April said she turned on the TV before she left, but the TV is not on.
I don’t even look back at Verity. I pull the door shut and rush down the stairs.
I’m not going back up there again. I’m scaring myself. The most helpless person in this house is the one I’m the most afraid of. It doesn’t even make sense. She wasn’t staring at me through the office window. She wasn’t standing at her window, looking at Crew. And she didn’t turn off her own TV. It’s probably on a timer, or April accidentally hit the power button twice and assumed she turned it on.
Regardless of the fact that I’m aware this is all in my head, I still walk back to Verity’s office, close the door, and pick up another chapter of her autobiography. Maybe reading more from her point of view will reassure me that she’s harmless and I need to chill the fuck out.
 |
 |
I knew I was pregnant because my breasts looked better than they had ever looked.
I’m very aware of my body, what goes into it, how to nourish it, how to keep it toned. Growing up watching my mother’s waistline expand with her laziness, I work out daily, sometimes twice a day.
I learned very early on that a human is not merely comprised of only one thing. We are two parts that make up the whole.
We have our conscious, which includes our mind, our soul, and all the intangible parts.
And we have our physical being, which is the machine that our conscious relies on for survival.
If you fuck with the machine, you will die. If you neglect the machine, you will die. If you assume your conscious can outlive the machine, you will die shortly after learning you were wrong.
It’s very simple, really. Take care of your physical being. Feed it what it needs, not what the conscience tells you it wants. Giving in to cravings of the mind that ultimately hurt the body is like a weak parent giving in to her child. “Oh, you had a bad day? Do you want an entire box of cookies? Okay, sweetie. Eat it. And drink this soda while you’re at it.”
Caring for your body is no different from caring for a child. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it sucks, sometimes you just want to give in, but if you do, you’ll pay for the consequences eighteen years down the road.
It’s fitting when it comes to my mother. She cared for me like she cared for her body. Very little. Sometimes I wonder if she’s still fat—if she’s still neglecting that machine. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t spoken to her in years.
But I’m not interested in speaking about a woman who chose never to speak of me again. I’m here to discuss the first thing my baby ever stole from me.
Jeremy.
I didn’t notice the theft at first.
At first, after we found out that the night we got engaged became the night we conceived, I was actually happy. I was happy because Jeremy was happy. And at that point, other than my breasts looking better than ever, I didn’t realize how detrimental the pregnancy was going to be to the machine I had worked so hard to maintain.
It was around the third month, a few weeks after I found out I was pregnant, that I started to notice the difference. It was a small little pooch, but it was there. I had just gotten out of the shower, and I was standing in front of the mirror, looking at my profile. My hand was flat on my stomach and I felt something foreign, and my stomach was slightly protruding.
I was disgusted. I vowed to start working out three times a day. I’d seen what pregnancy could do to women, but I also knew most of the damage was done in that last trimester. If I could somehow figure out how to deliver early…maybe around thirty-three or thirty-four weeks, I could avoid the most detrimental part of pregnancy. There have been so many advances in medical care, babies born that early are almost always fine.
“Wow.”
I dropped my hand and looked at the doorway. Jeremy was leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded over his chest. He was smiling at me. “You’re starting to show.”
“I am not.” I sucked in.
He laughed and closed the distance between us, wrapping his arms around me from behind. He placed both hands on my stomach and looked at me in the mirror. He kissed my shoulder. “You’ve never looked more beautiful.”
It was a lie to make me feel better, but I was grateful. Even his lies meant something to me. I squeezed his hands and he spun me around to face him, then he kissed me, walking me backward until I reached the bathroom counter. He lifted me onto it, then stood between my legs.
He was fully clothed, just returning from work. I was completely naked, fresh from the shower. The only thing between us were his pants and the pooch I was still trying to suck in.
He started fucking me on the counter, but we finished in bed.
His head was on my chest, and he was tracing circles over my stomach when it rumbled loudly. I tried to clear my throat to hide the noise, but he laughed. “Someone’s hungry.”
I started to shake my head, but he lifted off my chest to look at me. “What’s she craving?”
“Nothing. I’m not hungry.”
He laughed again. “Not you. Her,” he said, patting my stomach. “Aren’t pregnant women supposed to get weird cravings and eat all the time because of the babies? You barely eat. And your stomach is growling.” He sits up on the bed. “I need to feed my girls.”
His girls.
“You don’t even know if it’s a girl yet.”
He smiled at me. “It’s a girl. I have a feeling.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, because technically, it was nothing. Not a boy, not a girl. It was a blob. I wasn’t that far along yet, so assuming the thing growing inside me was actually hungry or craving any particular type of food was absurd. But it was hard for me to state my case because Jeremy was so ecstatic about the baby, I didn’t really care if he treated it like it was more than it was.
Sometimes his excitement excited me.
For the next few weeks, his excitement helped me cope. The more my stomach grew, the more attentive he became. The more he would kiss it when we were in bed together at night.
In the mornings, he would hold my hair while I puked. When he was at work, he would text me potential baby names. He became as obsessed with my pregnancy as I was with him. He went to my first doctor’s visit with me.
I’m thankful he was at the second doctor’s visit, too, because that was the day my world shifted.
Twins.
Two of them.
I was quiet when we left the doctor’s office that day. I had already feared becoming the mother of one baby. Being forced to love the one thing Jeremy loved more than me. But when I found out there were two, and that they were girls, I was suddenly not okay with being the third most important thing in Jeremy’s life.
I tried to force my smile when he’d talk about them. I would act like it filled me with joy when he rubbed my stomach, but it repulsed me, knowing he was only doing it because they were in there. Even if I delivered early, it didn’t matter. Now that there were two of them, my body would suffer even more damage. I shuddered daily at the thought of them
both growing inside me, stretching my skin, ruining my breasts, my stomach, and god forbid the temple between my legs where Jeremy worshipped nightly.
How could Jeremy still want me after this?
During the fourth month of my pregnancy, I started hoping for a miscarriage. I prayed for blood when I went to the bathroom. I imagined how, after losing the twins, Jeremy would make me his priority again. He would dote on me, worship me, care for me, worry for me, and not because of what was growing inside me.
I took sleeping pills when he wasn’t looking. I drank wine when he wasn’t around. I did anything I could to destroy the things that were going to push him away from me, but nothing worked. They kept growing. My stomach continued to stretch.
In my fifth month, we were lying on our sides in the bed. Jeremy was fucking me from behind. His left hand gripped my breast, and his right hand was against my stomach. I didn’t like it when he touched my stomach during sex. It made me think of the babies and ruined my mood.
I thought maybe he had reached orgasm when he stopped moving, but I realized he’d stopped moving because he’d felt them move. He pulled out of me and then rolled me onto my back, pressing his palm against my stomach.
“Did you feel that?” he asked. His eyes were dancing with excitement. He wasn’t hard anymore. He was excited for reasons that had nothing to do with me. He pressed his ear to my stomach and waited for one of them to move again.
“Jeremy?” I whispered.
He kissed my stomach and looked up at me.
I reached down and teased at strands of his hair with my fingers. “Do you love them?”
He smiled because he thought I wanted him to say yes. “I love them more than anything.”
“More than me?”
He stopped smiling. He kept his hand on my stomach, but he scooted up, sliding an arm under my neck. “Different from you,” he said, kissing my cheek.
“Different, yes. But more? Is your love for them more intense than your love for me?”
His eyes scanned mine, and I was hoping he would laugh and say, “Absolutely not.” But he didn’t laugh. He looked at me with nothing but honesty and said, “Yes.”
Really? His reply crushed me. Suffocated me. Killed me.
“But that’s how it should be,” he said. “Why? Do you feel guilty because you love them more than me?”
I didn’t answer. Did he really think I loved them more than I loved him?
I don’t even know them.
“Don’t feel guilty,” he said. “I want you to love them more than you love me. Our love for each other is conditional. Our love for them isn’t.”
“My love for you is unconditional,” I said.
He smiled. “No, it isn’t. I could do things you would never forgive me for. But you’ll always forgive your children.”
He was wrong. I didn’t forgive them for existing. I didn’t forgive them for forcing him to put me third. I didn’t forgive them for taking the night we got engaged from us.
They weren’t even born yet, but they were already taking things that had once belonged to me.
“Verity,” Jeremy whispered. He wiped a tear that had fallen from my eye. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head. “I just can’t believe how much you already love them and they aren’t even born yet.”
“I know,” he said, smiling.
I didn’t mean it as a compliment, but he took it that way. He laid his head back on my chest and touched my stomach again. “I’ll be a fucking mess when they’re born.”
He’s going to cry?
He had never cried for me. Over me. About me.
Maybe we haven’t fought enough.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I whispered. I didn’t have to go, I just needed to get away from him and all the love he was aiming in every direction but mine.
He kissed me, and when I climbed off the bed, he rolled over, his back to me, and forgot we’d never even finished fucking.
He fell asleep while I was in the bathroom, attempting to abort his daughters with a wire hanger. I tried for half an hour, until my stomach
started to cramp and blood was running down my leg. I was certain more would follow.
I climbed into bed, waiting for the miscarriage. My arms were shaking. My legs were numb from the squatting. My stomach hurt and I wanted to puke, but I didn’t move because I wanted to be in the bed with him when it happened. I wanted to wake him up, frantic, and show him the blood. I wanted him to panic, to worry, to feel bad for me, to cry for me.
To cry for me.
