Verity

Oh, my God. I double over in my chair, clutching my stomach. “Please…please…” I say out loud. Though I don’t know why or to whom I’m saying it.

I need to get out of this house. I feel like I can’t breathe. I should go sit outside and attempt to clear my head of everything I just read.

Every time I’m reading her manuscript, my stomach cramps from all the time I spend clenching it. I skimmed several more chapters beyond chapter five, but none were as horrifying as the chapter that detailed how she tried to choke her infant daughter.

In the subsequent chapters, Verity focused mainly on Jeremy and Chastin, rarely mentioning Harper at all, which grew more disturbing with each paragraph. She talked about the day Chastin turned one, and she talked about when Chastin spent the night at Jeremy’s mother’s house for the first time at the age of two. Everything that had initially been “the twins” in her manuscript eventually dwindled down to just “Chastin.” If I didn’t know any better, I would think something had happened to Harper long before it did.

It wasn’t until the girls were three that she wrote about both of them again. But as soon as I start the chapter, there’s a sharp rapping on the office door.

I open the desk drawer and quickly shove the manuscript inside it. “Come in.”

When he opens the door, I have one hand on the mouse and the other resting casually in my lap.

“I made tacos.”

I smile at him. “Is it time to eat already?”

He laughs. “It’s after ten. It was time to eat three hours ago.”

I look at the clock on the computer. How did I lose track of time? I guess that happens when you’re reading about a psychotic woman abusing her children. “I thought it was eight.”

“You’ve been in here for twelve hours,” he says. “Take a break. There’s a meteor shower tonight, you need to eat, and I made you a margarita.”

Margaritas and tacos. Doesn’t take much.

•••

I ate on the back porch while we sat in rocking chairs and watched the meteor shower. There weren’t very many at first, but now we’re seeing one every minute, at least.

At one point, I moved from the porch to the yard. I’m on my back in the grass, staring up at the sky. Jeremy finally gives in and positions himself next to me.

“I forgot what the sky looked like,” I say quietly. “I’ve been in Manhattan for so long now.”

“That’s why I left New York,” Jeremy says. He points to the left, at the tail end of a meteor. We watch it until it disappears.

“When did you and Verity buy this house?”

“When the girls were three. Verity’s first two books had released by then and were doing really well, so we took the plunge.”

“Why Vermont? Do either of you have family here?”

“No. My father died when I was in my teens. My mother died three years ago. But I grew up in New York State, on an alpaca farm, if you can believe that.”

I laugh, turning to look at him. “Seriously? Alpacas?”

He nods.

“How, exactly, does one make money raising alpacas?”

Jeremy laughs at this question. “They don’t, really. Which is why I got a degree in business and went into real estate. I didn’t have any interest in taking over a debt-ridden farm.”

“Do you think you’ll go back to work soon?”

My question gives Jeremy pause. “I’d like to. I’ve been waiting on the right time so it won’t be a huge adjustment to Crew, but it never feels like the right time.”

If we were friends, I would do something to comfort him. Maybe grab his hand and hold it. But there’s too much inside me that wants to be more than his friend, which means we can’t be friends at all. If an attraction is present between two people, those two people can only be one of two things. Involved or not involved. There is no in-between.

And since he’s married…I keep my hand on my chest and I don’t touch him at all.

“What about Verity’s parents?” I ask, needing the conversation to keep flowing so that he doesn’t hear how exaggerated he makes my every breath.

He lifts his hands from his chest in an I-don’t-know gesture. “I barely know them. They weren’t around much before they cut Verity out of their lives.”

“They cut her out? Why?”

“It’s hard to explain them,” he says. “They’re strange. Victor and Marjorie, insanely religious to their core. When they found out Verity was writing thriller and suspense novels, they acted like she was suddenly denouncing her religion to join a satanic cult. They told her if she didn’t stop, they would never speak to her again.”

That’s unbelievable. So…cold. For a second, I empathize with Verity, wondering if her lack of maternal instinct was inherited. But my empathy evaporates when I remember what she did to Harper in her crib.

“How long did their estrangement last?”

“Let’s see,” Jeremy says. “She wrote her first book thirteen years ago. So…thirteen years.”

“They still haven’t spoken to her? Do they even know about what’s happened?”

Jeremy nods. “I called them after Chastin passed. Left them a voicemail. They never called back. Then, when Verity had her wreck, her father actually answered the phone. When I told him what had happened, to the girls and to Verity, he grew quiet. Then said, ‘God punishes the wicked, Jeremy.’ I hung up on him. Haven’t heard from them since.”

I pull a hand to my heart and stare up at the sky in disbelief. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” he whispers.

We’re quiet for a stretch. We see two meteors, one to the south and one to the east. Jeremy points at them both times, but says nothing. When there’s a lull in both the conversation and the meteors, Jeremy lifts up beside me, onto his elbow, and looks down at me.

“Do you think I should put Crew back into therapy?”

I tilt my head so that I’m staring at him. We’re only a foot apart with him positioned like this. Maybe a foot and a half. It’s so close, I can feel the heat coming from him.

“Yes.”

He seems to appreciate my honesty. “Alright,” he says, but he doesn’t lower himself back to the grass. He continues to stare at me, as if he wants to ask me something else. “Did you go to therapy?”

“Yes. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.” I look back up at the sky, not wanting to see the expression on his face after my next sentence. “After watching the footage of myself on that railing, I was worried that deep down, it meant I wanted to die. For weeks I tried to fight my sleep. I was afraid I’d hurt myself intentionally. But my therapist helped me realize that sleepwalking is unrelated to intention. And after several years of being told that, I finally believed it.”

“Did your mother go to therapy with you?”

I laugh. “No. She didn’t even want to talk to me about my own therapy. Something happened that night, when I broke my wrist, and it changed her. Our relationship, anyway. We always felt disconnected after that. My mother actually reminds me a lot of—” I stop speaking because I realize I was about to say Verity.

“Reminds you of who?”

“The main character in Verity’s series.”

“Is that bad?” he asks.

I laugh. “You really haven’t read any of them?”

He lies back down on the grass, breaking eye contact with me. “Just the first one.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“Because…it was hard for me to fathom that it all came from her imagination.”

I want to tell him he’s right to be concerned, because his wife’s thoughts are eerily similar to her character’s thoughts. But I don’t want him to have that impression of her at this point. After all he’s been through, he deserves to at least be able to preserve a positive memory of his marriage.

“She used to get so angry with me because I didn’t read her manuscripts. She needed that validation from me, even though she got it from everywhere else. Her readers, her editor, her critics. For some reason, my validation seemed to be the only validation she wanted.”

Because she was obsessed with you.

“Where do you get your validation?” he asks.

I turn my head toward him again. “I don’t, really. My books aren’t popular. When I do receive a positive review or get an email from a fan, I never feel like they’re talking to me. Probably because I’m such a recluse and never do signings. I don’t put my image out there, so even though there are readers who love what I do, I still haven’t had the experience of being told to my face that what I do matters to someone.” I sigh. “That would feel good, I imagine. For someone to look me in the eye and say, ‘Your writing matters to me, Lowen.’”Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

As soon as I finish that sentence, a meteor shoots across the sky. We both follow it and watch as it streaks across the water, reflecting in the lake. I stare at the lake, framing Jeremy’s head.

“When are you going to start on the new dock?” I ask him. He finally finished tearing the old one down completely today.

“I’m not building a new dock,” he says, matter-of-fact. “I just got sick of looking at that one.”

I would make him expand more on that, but he doesn’t seem to want to.

He’s watching me. Even though Jeremy and I have been making eye contact a lot tonight, it feels different in this moment. Heavier. I notice his eyes flicker toward my lips. I want him to kiss me. If he tried, I wouldn’t stop him. I’m not even sure I would feel guilty.

He sighs heavily and lets his head roll back in the grass until he’s looking at the stars again.

“What are you thinking?” I whisper.

“I’m thinking it’s late. And I should probably lock you in your room now.”

I laugh at his choice of words. Or maybe I laugh because I’ve had two margaritas. Whatever the reason, my laugh makes him laugh. And what almost became a moment he’d probably end up regretting turns into a moment full of relief.

I go to the office to grab the laptop so I can work in the bedroom after he goes to sleep. When he’s turning out the lights in the kitchen, I open the desk drawer and grab a small handful of the manuscript to take to my room with me. I tuck the pages between the laptop and my chest.

There’s a new lock on the outside of the bedroom door that I haven’t seen. I don’t want to examine it or figure out if it could somehow be unlocked from the inside, because I’m sure my subconscious would remember that, and I would somehow get past it.

Jeremy is behind me as I walk into the room and set my things on the bed.

“You have everything you need?” he asks from the doorway.

“Yep.” I walk back to the door so I can lock it from the inside after I shut it.

“Alright, then. Goodnight.”

“Alright,” I repeat with a smile. “Goodnight.”

I go to shut the door, but he puts his hand up, stopping me from closing it all the way. I pull it open again, and in the split second since I almost closed it, his expression has changed.

“Low,” he says, his voice quiet. He leans his head against the doorframe and looks down at me. “I lied to you.”

I try not to look too concerned, but I am. His words rush through me, and I think back to our conversation tonight, the conversations that came before it. “You lied about what?”

“Verity never read your book.”

I want to take a step back, to mask my disappointment in the darkness. But I stay put, squeezing the doorknob with my left hand. “Why would you say that if it wasn’t true?”

He closes his eyes for a brief moment while inhaling. When he opens them, he stands up straight through his exhale. He raises his arms and grips the top of the doorframe. “I’m the one who read your book. And it was good. Phenomenal. Which is why I suggested your name to her editor.” He lowers his head a little, looking me firmly in the eye. “Your writing matters to me, Lowen.”

He lowers his arms, grips the doorknob, and closes the door. I hear him latch the lock before his footsteps disappear upstairs.

I fall against the door, pressing my forehead against the wood.

And I smile, because for the first time in my career, someone outside of my agent has given me validation.

I cozy up in the bed with the chapter I brought with me. Jeremy made me feel so good just now, I don’t even mind being a little disturbed by his wife before I fall asleep.