Verity Read online

  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.

  I drop the last page of the chapter.

  It flutters to the polished wood floor and disappears under the desk, like its trying to get away from me. I immediately drop to my knees, searching for it, arranging it back into the pile of pages I’m determined to hide. I’m… I don’t even…

  I’m still on my knees in the middle of Verity’s office when the tears come. They don’t spill; I hold them off with deep breaths, focusing on the grinding pain in my knees to distract my thoughts. I don’t even know if it’s sadness or anger. I only know this was written by a very disturbed woman—a woman whose house I currently inhabit. Slowly, I lift my head until my eyes are fixed to the ceiling. She’s there right now, on the second floor, sleeping, or eating, or staring blankly into space. I can feel her lurking, disapproving of my presence.

  Suddenly, I know, without a doubt, that it’s true.

  A mother wouldn’t write that about herself—about her daughters—if it weren’t the truth. A mother who never had those feelings or thoughts would never even dream of them. I don’t care how good of a writer Verity is; she would never compromise herself as a mother by writing something so horrid if she didn’t actually experience that.

  My mind begins to spin with worry, sadness, fear. If she did that—if she actually tried to take their lives over a streak of maternal jealousy—what else was she capable of?

  What actually happened to those girls?

  After a while of processing it, I put the manuscript in a drawer, beneath a slew of other things. I don’t ever want Jeremy to come across that. And before I leave here, I will destroy it. I can’t imagine how he would feel if he read that. He’s already grieving the deaths of his daughters. Imagine if he knew what they endured at the hands of their own mother.

  I pray she was a better mother after they were born, but I’m honestly too shaken to continue reading. I’m not sure if I want to read more at all.

  I want a drink. Not water or soda or fruit juice. I walk to the kitchen and open the refrigerator, but there’s no wine. I open the cabinets above the refrigerator, but there’s no liquor. I open the cabinet below the sink and it’s bare. I open the refrigerator again, but all I see are small boxes of fruit juice for Crew and bottles of water that aren’t going to help me shake this feeling.

  “Are you okay?”

  I spin around, and Jeremy is sitting at the dining room table with papers strewn out in front of him. He looks concerned for me.

  “Do you have anything alcoholic at all in the house?” I plant my hands firmly on my hips, attempting to hide the trembling in my fingers. He has no idea what she was truly like.

  Jeremy studies me for a moment, then heads for the pantry. On the top shelf is a bottle of Crown Royal. “Sit down,” he says, concern still embedded in his expression. He watches me as I take a seat at the table and drop my head in my hands.

  I hear him open a can of soda and mix it with the liquor. A few moments later, he sets it in front of me. I bring it to my lips so fast, a few drops spill onto the table. He’s back in his chair now, watching me closely.

  “Lowen,” he says, watching as I try to swallow the Crown and Coke with a straight face. I squint because it burns. “What happened?”

  Oh, let’s see, Jeremy. Your brain-damaged wife made eye contact with me. She walked to her bedroom window and waved at your son. She tried to abort your babies while you were asleep in your bed.

  “Your wife,” I say. “Her books. I just... There was a scary part and it freaked me out.”

  He watches me for a moment, expressionless. Then he laughs. “Seriously? A book did this to you?”

  I shrug and take another sip. “She’s a great writer,” I say, setting the glass on the table. “I’m easily spooked, I guess.”

  “Yet you write in the same genre as her.”

  “Even my own books do this to me sometimes,” I lie.

  “Maybe you should switch to romance.”

  “I’m sure I will once this contract is over.”

  He laughs again, shaking his head as he begins gathering the papers in front of him. “You missed dinner. It’s still warm if you want some.”

  “I do. I need to eat.” Maybe that will help me calm down. I carry my drink to the stove, where there’s a chicken casserole covered in tinfoil. I make myself a plate and grab a water out of the refrigerator, then take a seat at the table again. “Did you make this?”

  “Yep.”

  I take a bite. “It’s really good,” I say with a mouthful.

  “Thanks.” He’s still staring at me, but now he looks more amused than concerned. I’m happy to see the amusement take over. I wish I could find this entertaining, but everything I just read makes me question Verity. Her condition. Her honesty.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  Jeremy nods.

  “Just tell me if I’m being too nosey. But is there a chance Verity could make a full recovery?”

  He shakes his head. “The doctor doesn’t believe she’ll ever walk or talk again since she hasn’t already made that kind of progress.”

  “Is she paralyzed?”

  “No, there wasn’t any damage to her spinal cord. But her mind...it’s similar to the mind of an infant now. She has basic reflexes. She can eat, drink, blink, move a little. But none of it is intentional. I’m hoping with continued therapy, she’ll be able to improve a little, but—”

  Jeremy looks away from me, toward the kitchen entryway, when he hears Crew coming down the stairs. Crew rounds the corner in his footed Spiderman pajamas and then jumps onto Jeremy’s lap.

  Crew. I forgot about Crew while I was reading. If Verity actually despised those girls after they were born as much as she despised them in utero, there’s no way she would have agreed to have another child.

  That can only mean she must have bonded with them. That’s probably why she wrote what she wrote, because in the end, she fell just as in love with them as Jeremy was. Maybe writing about her thoughts during pregnancy was like a release for Verity. Like a Catholic going to confession.

  That thought ca
lms me, along with Jeremy’s explanation of her injuries. She has the physical and mental capabilities of a newborn. My mind is making all of this more than it is.

  Crew leans his head back against Jeremy’s shoulder. He’s holding his iPad, and Jeremy is scrolling through his phone. They’re cute together.

  I’ve been so focused on the negative things that have happened in this family, I need to remember to focus more on the positive that still remains. And that is definitely Jeremy’s bond with his son. Crew loves him. Laughs around him. He’s comfortable with his dad. And Jeremy isn’t afraid to show him affection, because he just kissed the side of Crew’s head.

  “Did you brush your teeth?” Jeremy asks.

  “Yep,” Crew says.

  Jeremy stands up and lifts Crew with him, effortlessly. “That means it’s bedtime.” He throws Crew over his shoulder. “Tell Laura goodnight.”

  Crew waves at me as Jeremy rounds the corner and disappears with him upstairs.

  I take note of how he calls me by the pen name I’ll be using in front of everyone else, but he calls me Lowen when it’s just us. I also take note of how much I like it. I don’t want to like it.

  I eat the rest of my dinner and wash the dishes in the sink while Jeremy remains upstairs with Crew. When I’m finished, I feel somewhat better. I’m not sure if it was the alcohol, the food, or the realization that Verity probably wrote that horrific chapter because a much better one follows it up. One where she realizes what a blessing those girls were to her.

  I walk out of the kitchen, but my eye is drawn to several family photos that hang on the hallway wall. I pause to look at them. Most of them are of the kids, but a few of them have Verity and Jeremy in them. They bear a striking resemblance to their mother, while Crew takes after Jeremy.

  They were such a beautiful family. So much so that these photos are depressing to look at. I take them all in, noticing how easy it is to distinguish the girls from each other. One of them has a huge smile and a small scar on her cheek. One of them rarely smiles.

  I lift my hand to touch a photo of the girl with the scar on her cheek and wonder how long she’d had it. Where it came from. I move down the line of pictures to a much older photo of the girls when they were toddlers. The smiling one even has the scar in that picture, so she got it at a young age.