Verity

I drop the letter to the floor.

I grip my stomach as a pain seers through it.

She didn’t do it?

I don’t want to believe anything I just read. I want to believe Verity is cruel and deserves what we did to her, but I’m not sure she did.

Oh, God. What if it’s true? This woman lost her daughters and then her husband tried to kill her and then…we did kill her.

I sit back, staring at the letter as if it’s a weapon that harnesses the power to destroy the life I’ve recently built with Jeremy.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

So many thoughts are running through my mind, I press against my temples because my head is pounding. Jeremy already knew about the manuscript?

Had he really already read it before I gave it to him? Did he lie to me?

No. He never denied knowing it existed. In fact, now that I think back on that moment, his exact words were, “Where did you find this?”

It’s too much to take in. I can’t process everything she said and everything that’s happened. I stare at the letter for so long, I forget where I am and that Jeremy and Crew are downstairs and that any minute, he’ll come looking for me.

I crawl forward and grab the pages. I shove the knife and picture back into the floor, then cover the hole with the wood. I take the pages to the bathroom and I lock the door behind me. I kneel in front of the toilet and I start ripping each page into tiny shreds. I flush some of the paper and eat as many pieces of the letter I can find with Jeremy’s name. I want to make sure no one ever reads a word of this.

Jeremy would never forgive himself. Never. If he found out the manuscript wasn’t real and that Verity never harmed Harper, he wouldn’t be able to survive that kind of truth. The truth that he murdered his innocent wife. That we murdered his innocent wife.

If it even is the truth.

“Lowen?”

I flush the rest of the pieces of paper in the toilet. I flush again for good measure, just as Jeremy knocks on the door.

“You okay?” he asks.

I turn on the water and try to calm my voice. “Yes.” I wash my hands, then take a sip of water to ease the dryness in my mouth. I look in the mirror and recognize the terror in my eyes. I close them, attempting to push it back. All of it. Every terrible thing I’ve witnessed in my thirty-two years.

The night I stood on the railing.

The day I saw the man being crushed beneath the tire.

The manuscript.

The night I saw Verity standing at the top of the stairs.

The night she died in her sleep.

I push it all back. I swallow it like I swallowed her letter.

I blow out a breath and then open the door and smile at Jeremy. He reaches up and runs a hand down the side of my head. “You okay?”

I swallow my fear, my guilt, my sadness. I cover it all up with a convincing nod. “I’m alright.”

Jeremy smiles. “Alright,” he says quietly, threading his fingers through mine. “Let’s get out of here and never come back.”

He holds my hand throughout the house and doesn’t let go until he opens my door and helps me into his Jeep. As we’re driving away, I watch the house grow smaller in the rearview mirror until, finally, it disappears.

Jeremy reaches across the seat and rubs my stomach. “Ten more weeks.”

There’s an excitement in his eyes. One I know I was able to put there, even after all he’s been through. I brought light into his darkness, and I will continue to be that light so he’ll never be lost in the shadows of his past.

He will never know what I know. I’ll make certain of that. I will take this secret to my grave with me so Jeremy doesn’t have to.

I have no idea what to believe, so why put him through more anguish? Verity could have written that letter as a way to try and cover her tracks. It could have been another ploy at manipulating the situation and everyone involved.

And even if Jeremy really was the reason for her wreck, I can’t blame him. He believed Verity maliciously murdered his child. I can’t even blame him for ultimately following through with her murder when he found out she had been deceiving him about her injuries. Any parent in his position would have done the same. Should have done the same. We both believed in our hearts that she was a threat to Crew. To us.

No matter which way I look at it, it’s clear that Verity was a master at manipulating the truth. The only question that remains is: Which truth was she manipulating?

The End