Verity Page 5

  He laughs, pushing the bedroom door open. “Trust me. You’ll need at least two days. Maybe more.” He lays the suitcase on a chest at the foot of the bed, then opens the master closet and points to an empty area. “I made some space in case you need to hang anything.” He points toward the bathroom. “Bathroom is all yours. I’m not sure if there are toiletries, so let me know if you need anything. I’m sure we have it.”

  “Thank you.” I look around the room, and this all feels so bizarre. Especially that I’ll be sleeping in their bed. My eyes are pulled to the headboard—specifically to the teeth marks bitten into the top edge of the headboard in the center of the bed. I immediately tear my eyes away before Jeremy catches me looking. He’ll probably see all over my face that I’m wondering which one of them had to bite the headboard in order to keep quiet during sex. Have I ever had sex that intense?

  “You need a minute alone in here, or would you like to go ahead and see the rest of the house?” Jeremy asks.

  “I’m good,” I say, following him. He walks into the hallway, but I pause, eyeing the bedroom door. “Does this door lock?”

  He takes a step back inside the bedroom, looking at the door handle. “I don’t know that we’ve ever locked it.” He jiggles the handle. “I’m sure I can find a lock if it’s important to you.”

  I haven’t slept in a bedroom without a lock since I was ten. I want to beg him to find a lock, but I also don’t want to be even more intrusive than I already am.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  He lets go of the door, but before stepping back out into the hallway, he says, “Before I take you upstairs, do you know what name you’ll be writing this series under?”

  I hadn’t thought about it since finding out Pantem agreed to the demands Jeremy told me to make.

  I shrug. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “I’d like to introduce you to Verity’s nurse using your pen name, in case you never want anyone attaching you to the series.”

  Her injuries are bad enough that she needs a nurse?

  “Okay. I guess…” I’m clueless as to what name I should use.

  “What street did you grow up on?” Jeremy asks.

  “Laura Lane.”

  “What was the name of your first pet?”

  “Chase. He was a Yorkie.”

  “Laura Chase,” he says. “I like it.”

  I tilt my head, recognizing that pattern of questioning from Facebook quizzes. “Isn’t that how people figure out their pornstar name?”

  He laughs. “Pen name, pornstar name. Works across the board.” He motions for me to follow him. “Come meet Verity first, and then I’ll take you to her office.”

  Jeremy takes the stairs two at a time. There’s an elevator that looks newly installed right past the kitchen. Verity must be in a wheelchair now. God, the poor woman.

  Jeremy is waiting for me when I reach the top of the stairs. The hallway splits, with three doors on one end and two on the other. He turns left.

  “This is Crew’s bedroom,” he says, pointing toward the first room. “I sleep in that room.” He points to the door next to Crew’s.

  Across the hall from those two bedrooms is another room. The door is shut, so he taps on it gently and then pushes it open.

  I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting this.

  She’s on her back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, her blonde hair spilled over her pillow. A nurse in blue scrubs is at the foot of her bed, putting socks on her feet. Crew is lying next to Verity on the bed, holding an iPad. Verity’s eyes are vacant, uninterested in her surroundings. She’s unaware of the nurse. Unaware of me. Of Crew. Of Jeremy as he leans over and brushes hair from her forehead. She blinks, but there’s nothing else there. No recognition that the man she had three children with is trying to be affectionate with her. I try to cover the chills that have appeared on my arms.

  The nurse addresses Jeremy. “She seemed tired, so I thought I’d put her to bed early tonight.” She pulls a blanket over Verity.

  Jeremy moves to the window and closes the curtains. “Did she take her after-dinner meds?”

  The nurse lifts Verity’s feet, tucking the blanket beneath them. “Yeah, she’s good until midnight.”

  The nurse is older than Jeremy, maybe in her mid-fifties, with short red hair. She glances at me, then back at Jeremy, waiting for an introduction.

  Jeremy shakes his head like he forgot I’m even here. He waves toward me while looking at the nurse. “This is Laura Chase, the author I was telling you about. Laura, this is April, Verity’s nurse.”

  I shake April’s hand, but feel her judgment as she eyes me up and down. “I thought you’d be older,” she says.

  What do I even say to that? Coupled by the way she looks at me, her comment feels like a dig. Or an accusation. I ignore it and smile. “It’s good to meet you, April.”

  “You too.” She grabs her purse off the dresser, directing her attention to Jeremy. “I’ll see you in the morning. Should be an easy night.” She reaches down and pinches Crew’s thigh. He giggles and scoots away from her. I step aside as April exits the bedroom.

  I glance at the bed. Verity’s eyes are still open, connecting with nothing. I’m not sure she’s even aware her nurse left. Is she aware of anything? I feel terrible for Crew. For Jeremy. For Verity.

  I don’t know that I’d want to live in this condition. And knowing Jeremy is tied to this life… It’s all so depressing. This house, the tragedies in this family’s past, the struggles in their present.

  “Crew, don’t make me do it. I told you to shower.”

  Crew looks up at Jeremy and smiles, but fails to get off the bed.

  “I’m gonna count to three.”

  Crew sets his iPad beside him, but continues to defy Jeremy.

  “Three…two…” And then, at the count of one, Jeremy lunges at Crew, gripping his ankles and pulling him up in the air. “Upside down night it is!”

  Crew is laughing and squirming. “Not again!”

  Jeremy looks over at me. “Laura, how many seconds can a kid hang upside down before their brain flips over and they start talking backward?”

  I laugh at their interaction. “I heard twenty seconds. But it could be fifteen.”

  Crew says, “No, Daddy, I’ll go shower! I don’t want my brain to be upside down!”

  “And you’ll clean out your ears? Because they clearly weren’t working before when I told you to take a shower.”

  “I swear!”

  Jeremy tosses him over his shoulder, turning him right side up before placing him back on his feet. He ruffles his hair and says, “Go.”

  I watch as Crew rushes out the door and into his bedroom across the hall. Watching Jeremy interact with Crew makes the house seem a little more welcoming. “He’s cute. How old is he?”

  “Five,” Jeremy says. He reaches down to the side of Verity’s hospital bed and raises it a bit. He grabs a remote off the table next to her bed and turns on the TV.

  We both exit the bedroom, and he pulls the door slightly shut. I’m standing in the middle of the hallway when he faces me. He slides his hands into the pockets of his grey sweatpants. He acts like he wants to say more—explain more. But he doesn’t. He sighs and looks back at Verity’s bedroom.

  “Crew was scared to sleep up here by himself. He’s been a trooper, but nights are rough for him. He wanted to be closer to her, but he didn’t like sleeping downstairs. I moved us both up here to make it easier on him.” Jeremy makes his way back down the hallway. “Which means you have the run of the downstairs at night.” He flips off the hallway light. “Want to see her office?’

  “Of course.”

  I follow him downstairs, to the double doors near the stairwell landing. He pushes open one of the double doors, revealing the most intimate part of his wife.

  Her office.

  When I step inside, it feels like I’m rummaging around her underwear drawer. There are
floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with books tucked into every vacant crevice. Boxes of papers line the walls. The desk… My God, her desk. It extends from one end of the room to the other, stretching along a wall lined with huge window panes overlooking the entirety of the backyard. There isn’t an inch of desk that isn’t covered with a stack of pages or files.

  “She’s not the most organized person,” Jeremy says.

  I smile, recognizing a kinship with Verity. “Most writers aren’t.”

  “It’ll take time. I would attempt to organize it myself, but it’s all Greek to me.”

  I walk to one of the shelves closest to me and run my hand over some of the books. They’re foreign editions of her work. I pluck a German copy from the shelf and examine it.

  “She has her laptop and a desktop,” Jeremy says. “I wrote the passwords on sticky notes for you.” He picks up a notebook next to her computer. “She was constantly taking notes. Writing down thoughts. She’d write ideas down on napkins. Dialogue in the shower on a waterproof notepad.” Jeremy drops the notepad back onto the desk. “She once used a Sharpie to write down character names on the bottom of Crew’s diaper. We were at the zoo, and she didn’t have a notepad.”

  He does a full, slow circle as he looks around at her office like it’s been a while since he’s stepped foot in here. “The world was her manuscript. No surface was safe.”

  My insides warm at the way he seems to appreciate her creative process. I spin in a circle, taking it all in. “I had no idea what I was getting into.”

  “I didn’t want to laugh when you said you might not need to stay the night. But in all honesty, this might take you more than two days. If it does, you’re welcome to stay as long as you need. I’d rather you take your time and make sure you have everything you need than go back to New York unsure of how to tackle this.”

  I look at the shelves containing the series I’m taking over. There are to be nine total books in the series. Six have been published, and three are still to be delivered. The series title is The Noble Virtues, and each book is a different virtue. The three that are left up to me are Courage, Truth, and Honor.

  All six books are on her shelves, and I’m relieved to see extras. I pull a copy of the second novel off the shelf and skim through it.

  “Have you read the series yet?” Jeremy asks.

  I shake my head, not wanting to reveal I listened to the audiobook. He might ask me questions about it. “I haven’t yet. I didn’t have time between signing the contract and coming here.” I place the book back on the shelf. “Which is your favorite?”

  “I haven’t ready any of them, either. Not since her first book.”

  I spin and look at him. “Really?”

  “I didn’t like being inside her head.”

  I hold back my smile, but he sounds a little bit like Corey right now. Unable to separate the world his wife creates from the one she lives in. At least Jeremy seems to be a little more self-aware than Corey ever was.

  I look around the room, slightly overwhelmed, but I’m not sure if it’s because Jeremy is standing here or because of the chaos I’m about to have to sort through. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Yeah, I’ll let you get to that.” Jeremy points to the office door. “I should probably go check on Crew. Make yourself at home. Food…drinks…the house is yours.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jeremy closes the door, and I settle in at Verity’s desk. Her desk chair alone probably cost more than a month’s rent in my apartment. I wonder how much easier writing is for someone who has money to burn on things I’ve always dreamt of having at my disposal while I write. Comfortable furniture, enough money to have an on-call masseuse, more than one computer. I imagine it would make the writing process a lot easier and a lot less stressful. I have a laptop with a missing key and Wi-Fi when a neighbor forgets to password protect theirs. I sit on an old dining room table chair at a makeshift desk that’s really just a plastic folding table I ordered from Amazon for twenty-five bucks.

  Most of the time, I don’t even have enough money for printer ink and computer paper.

  I guess being here in her office for a few days will be one way to test my theory. The richer you are, the more creative you’re able to be.

  I take the second book of the series off the shelf. I open it, only intending to glance at it. See how she picked up from where book one left off.

  I end up reading for three hours straight.

  I haven’t moved from my spot, not even once. Chapter after chapter of intrigue and fucked up characters. Really fucked up characters. It’s going to take me time to work myself into that mindset while writing. No wonder Jeremy doesn’t read her work. All her books are from the villain’s point of view, so that’s new to me. I really should have read all these books before arriving.

  I stand up to stretch out my spine, but it doesn’t even really hurt; the desk chair I’ve been sitting in is the most comfortable piece of furniture my ass has ever pressed against.

  I look around, wondering if I should go through computer files next or printed files.

  I decide to check out her desktop. I browse several files in Microsoft Word, which seems to be the program she prefers. All the files I find are related to books she’s already written. I’m not too worried about those yet. I want to find any plans she had for the books yet to be written. Most of the files on her laptop are the same as the files on her desktop.

  Maybe Verity was the type of author who hand-wrote her outlines. I turn my attention to the stacks of boxes on the back wall, near a closet. A thin layer of dust coats the tops of them. I go through several boxes, pulling out versions of manuscripts at various stages in the writing process, but they’re all versions of books in her series that she’s already written. Nothing hinting at what she planned to write next.

  I’m on the sixth box, rummaging through the contents, when I find something with an unfamiliar title. This one is called So Be It.

  I flip through the first few pages, hoping I’ll get lucky and find that it’s an outline for the seventh book in the series. Almost immediately, I can tell that it isn’t. This seems…personal. I flip back to the first page of chapter one and read the first line.

  I sometimes think back on the night I met Jeremy and wonder, had we not made eye contact, would my life still end the same?

  As soon as I see Jeremy’s name mentioned, I scan a little more of the page. It’s an autobiography.

  It’s not at all what I’m searching for. An autobiography isn’t what the publishers are paying me to turn in, so I should just move on. But I look over my shoulder to make sure the door is shut because I’m curious. Besides, reading some of this is research. I need to see how Verity’s mind works to understand her as a writer. That’s my excuse, anyway.

  I carry the manuscript to the couch, make myself comfortable, and begin reading.

  So Be It

  by

  Verity Crawford

  Author’s note:

  The thing I abhor most about autobiographies are the counterfeit thoughts draped over every sentence. A writer should never have the audacity to write about themselves unless they’re willing to separate every layer of protection between the author’s soul and their book. The words should come directly from the center of the gut, tearing through flesh and bone as they break free. Ugly and honest and bloody and a little bit terrifying, but completely exposed. An autobiography encouraging the reader to like the author is not a true autobiography. No one is likable from the inside out. One should only walk away from an autobiography with, at best, an uncomfortable distaste for its author.

  I will deliver.

  What you read will taste so bad at times, you’ll want to spit it out, but you’ll swallow these words and they will become part of you, part of your gut, and you will hurt because of them.

  Yet…even with my generous warning…you’re going to continue to ingest my words, because here you are.

  Human.
<
br />   Curious.

  Carry on.

  “Find what you love and let it kill you.” - Charles Bukowski

  I sometimes think back on the night I met Jeremy and wonder, had we not made eye contact, would my life still end the same? Was it my destiny from the beginning to suffer such a tragic end? Or is my tragic end a result of poor choices rather than fate?

  Of course, I haven’t met a tragic end yet, or I wouldn’t be able to recount what led to it. Nevertheless, it’s coming. I can sense it, just as I sensed Chastin’s death. And just as I embraced her fate, I will embrace my own.

  I wouldn’t say I was lost before the night I met Jeremy, but I had certainly never been found until the moment he laid eyes on me from across the room.

  I’d had boyfriends before. One-night stands, even. But I’d never come close to imagining life with someone else until that moment. When I saw him, I pictured our first night together, our wedding, our honeymoon, our children.

  Until that moment, the idea of love had always felt very manufactured to me. A Hallmark ploy. A marketing scheme for greeting card companies. I had no interest in love. My only goal that night was to get drunk on free booze and find a rich investor to fuck. I was already halfway there, having downed three Moscow Mules. And judging by the look of Jeremy Crawford, I was going to leave that party an overachiever. He looked rich, and it was a charity event, after all. Poor people don’t show up to charity events unless they’re serving the rich.

  Present company not included.

  He was talking with a few other men, but every time he’d glance in my direction, I felt like we were the only two people in the room. Every now and then, he would smile at me. Of course he did. I had on my red dress that night, the one I stole from Macy’s. Don’t judge me. I was a starving artist and it was ridiculously expensive. I intended to make up for the theft when I had the money. I’d donate to a charity or save a baby or something. The good thing about sins is they don’t have to be atoned for immediately, and that red dress was too perfect for me to pass up.