Verity

by Colleen Hoover

  Crew is wide-eyed, looking up at me. He shakes his head, probably trying to hide that he had a knife. I’m sure Jeremy wouldn’t approve of that. “Mommy said I’m not supposed to touch her knife.”

  I freeze. “Your mommy says that?”

  Crew doesn’t respond.

  “Crew,” I say, grabbing a washcloth. It feels like my heart is stuck in my throat as I speak to him, but I try to hide my fear as I wet the washcloth. “Does your mommy talk to you?”

  Crew’s body is rigid, and the only thing that moves is his head when he shakes it. I press the washcloth to his chin right before I hear Jeremy’s footsteps bounding up the stairs. He must have heard Crew scream.

  “Crew!” he yells.

  “We’re in here.”

  Jeremy’s eyes are full of worry when he reaches the door. I step out of his way while still holding the washcloth to Crew’s chin.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  Crew nods, and Jeremy takes the washcloth from me. He bends down and looks at the injury on Crew’s chin and then at me. “What happened?”

  “I think he cut himself,” I say. “He was in Verity’s bedroom. There was a knife on the floor.”

  Jeremy looks at Crew, his eyes full of more disappointment than fear now. “What were you doing with a knife?”

  Crew shakes his head, sniffling as he tries to stop crying. “I didn’t have a knife. I just fell off the bed.”

  Part of me feels bad, like I tattled on the poor kid. I try to cover for him. “He wasn’t holding it. I saw it on the floor and assumed that’s what happened.”

  I’m still shaken from what Crew said about Verity and the knife, but I remind myself that everyone talks about Verity in present tense. The nurse, Jeremy, Crew. I’m sure Verity told him not to play with knives in the past, and now my imagination is turning it into more than it is.

  Jeremy opens the medicine cabinet behind Crew and grabs a first-aid kit. When he closes the mirror, he’s staring at my reflection. “Go check,” he mouths, motioning toward the door with his head.

  I leave the bathroom, but pause in the hallway. I don’t like going in that room, no matter how helpless Verity is. But I also know Crew doesn’t need to have access to a knife, so I trudge forward.

  Verity’s door is still wide open, so I tiptoe in, not wanting to wake her. Not that I could. I round the bed, to where Crew was on the floor.

  There’s no knife.

  I turn around, wondering if maybe I kicked it somewhere when I picked him up. When I still don’t see it, I lower myself to the floor to check under the bed. It’s completely empty beneath the frame, other than a thin layer of dust. I slide my hand beneath the nightstand next to the hospital bed, but find nothing.

  I know I saw a knife. I’m not going crazy.

  Am I?

  I put my hand on the mattress to lift myself up off the floor, but immediately shift backward onto my palms when I catch Verity watching me. Her head is in a different position, turned to the right, her eyes on mine.

  Holy shit! I choke on my fear as I scoot myself backward, away from her bed. I end up several feet away from her, and even though her head is the only thing different about her from when I walked into the room, my fear is telling me to run for my life. I pull myself up, using the dresser for support, and keep my eyes fixated on her as I move back toward the door, facing her the whole time. I’m trying to suppress my terror, but I’m not convinced she isn’t about to lunge at me with the knife she picked up from the floor.

  I close her door behind me and stand there, gripping the doorknob, until I can control my panic. I breathe in and out, steadily, five times, hoping Jeremy doesn’t see the terror in my eyes when I walk back to tell him there was no knife.

  But there was a knife.

  My hands are shaking. I don’t trust her. I don’t trust this house. As much as I know I need to stay in order to do the best job, I’d much rather sleep in my rental car on the streets of Brooklyn for the next week than sleep in this house another night.

  I squeeze the tension from my neck as I return to the bathroom. Jeremy is bandaging up Crew’s chin.

  “You’re lucky you don’t need stitches,” Jeremy says to Crew. He’s helping Crew wash the blood from his hands, and then tells him to go play. Crew brushes past me and returns to Verity’s room.

  I find it odd that sitting on her bed while he plays his iPad is fun for him. But then again, I’m sure he just wants to be near his mother. Have at it, buddy. I don’t want to be near her at all.

  “Did you grab the knife?” Jeremy asks, drying his hands on a towel.

  I try to refrain from sounding as scared as I still feel. “I couldn’t find it.”

  Jeremy eyes me for a second and then says, “But you saw one?”

  “I thought I did. Maybe I didn’t. It wasn’t there.”

  Jeremy brushes past me. “I’ll look around.” He walks toward Verity’s room, but turns around and pauses as he reaches her door. “Thanks for helping him.” He smiles, but it’s a playful grin. “I know how busy you’ve been today.” He winks at me before walking into Verity’s room.

  I close my eyes and allow the embarrassment to sink in. I deserved that. He probably thinks all I do is stare out that office window.

  I should probably take two Xanax at this point.

  When I get back to Verity’s office, the sun is beginning to set, which means Crew will shower and go to bed soon. Verity will remain in her room for the night. And I’ll feel somewhat safe, because for whatever reason, I’m only scared of Verity in this house. And I don’t have to be around her at nighttime. In fact, nighttime has become my favorite time around here because it’s when I see the least of Verity and the most of Jeremy.

  I’m not sure how much longer I can try to convince myself that I don’t have a serious crush on that man. I’m also not sure how much longer I can try to convince myself that Verity is a better person than she really is. I think, after reading every book in her series, I’m beginning to understand the reason her suspense novels do so well is because of how she writes them from the villain’s point of view.

  Critics love that about her. When I listened to her first audiobook on the drive over, I loved that her narrator seemed a little psychotic. I wondered how Verity got in the mind of her antagonists like she did. But that was before I knew her.

  I still don’t technically know her, but I know the Verity who wrote the autobiography. It’s apparent that the way she wrote the rest of her novels wasn’t a unique approach for her. After all, they say write what you know. I’m beginning to think Verity writes from a villainous point of view because she’s a villain. Being evil is all she knows.

  I feel a little evil myself as I open the drawer and do exactly what I swore to myself I wouldn’t do again: read another chapter.

  So Be It

  They were determined to live, I’ll give them that.

  Nothing I tried worked. The attempted self-abortion, the random pills, the “accidental” fall down a flight of stairs. The only thing any of my attempts resulted in was a small scar on one of the baby’s cheeks. A scar I’m sure I’m responsible for. A scar Jeremy couldn’t shut up about.

  A few hours after they brought me to the room after their birth—cesarean, thank god—their pediatrician came by to check on the girls. I closed my eyes, pretending to nap, but really I was just scared to interact with their pediatrician. I feared he would see right through me and know I had no idea how to be a mother to these things.

  Jeremy asked the doctor about the scar before he left the room. The doctor brushed it off, said it’s not uncommon for identical twins to accidentally scratch each other in utero. Jeremy disagreed. “It’s too deep to be a simple scratch, though.”

  “Could be scarring from fibrous tissue,” the doctor said. “No worries. It’ll fade with time.”

  “I’m not worried about the way it looks,” Jeremy said, almost defensively. “I’m worried it could be something more serious.”
/>   “It’s not. Your daughters are perfectly healthy. Both of them.”

  Figures.

  The doctor left and the nurse was gone and it was just Jeremy, the girls, and me. One of them was asleep in the glass bed thing—I don’t know what it’s called. Jeremy was holding the other one. He was smiling down at her when he noticed my eyes were open.

  “Hey, Momma.”

  Please don’t call me that.

  I smiled at him anyway. He looked good as a dad. Happy. Never mind that his happiness had little to do with me. But even in my jealousy, I could appreciate him. He was probably going to be the type of dad to change their diapers. To help with feedings. I knew I’d appreciate that side of him even more with time. I just needed to get used to this. To being a mother.

  “Bring me the scarred one,” I said.

  Jeremy made a face, indicating he was disappointed in my choice of words. I guess that was a weird way to put it, but we hadn’t named them yet. The scar was her only identifier.

  He carried her to me and placed her in my arms. I looked down at her. I waited for the flood of emotions, but there wasn’t even a trickle. I touched her cheek, ran my finger down the scar. I guess the wire hanger wasn’t strong enough. I probably should have used something that didn’t give so easily under pressure. A knitting needle? I’m not sure it would have been long enough.

  “The doctor said the scarring could be a scratch.” Jeremy laughed. “Fighting before they were even born.”

  I smiled down at her. Not because I felt like smiling, but because it’s probably what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want Jeremy to think I wasn’t in love with her like he was. I took her hand and wrapped it around my pinky. “Chastin,” I whispered. “You can have the better name since your sister was so mean to you.”

  “Chastin,” Jeremy said. “I love it.”

  “And Harper,” I said. “Chastin and Harper.”

  They were two of the names he had sent me. I liked them okay. I chose them because he mentioned them both more than once, so I gathered they were at the top of his list. Maybe if he could see how much I was trying to love him, he wouldn’t notice the two areas in which my love lacked.

  Chastin started to cry. She was wriggling in my arms, and I wasn’t sure what to do about that. I started bouncing her, but that hurt, so I stopped. Her cries continued to grow louder.

  “She might be hungry,” Jeremy suggested.

  I was so sold on the thought of them not actually surviving their birth with all I had put them through, what I would do beyond that wasn’t given much thought. I knew breastfeeding them would be the best choice, but I had absolutely no desire to do that kind of damage to my breasts. Especially since there were two of them.

  “Sounds like someone is hungry,” a nurse said as she pranced into the room. “Are you breastfeeding?”

  “No,” I said immediately. I wanted her to prance right back out of there.

  Jeremy looked at me, concerned. “Are you sure?”

  “There are two of them,” I replied.

  I didn’t like the look on Jeremy’s face—like he was disappointed in me. I hated to think this was how it was going to be. Him taking their side. Me not mattering anymore.

  “It’s not any more difficult than bottle-feeding them,” Prancing Nurse said. “It’s actually more convenient. Do you want to try it? See how it goes?”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Jeremy as I waited for him to dismiss me of that kind of torture. It killed me to know that he wanted me to breastfeed them when there were so many other perfectly adequate alternatives. But I nodded and pulled the sleeve of my gown down because I wanted to please him. I wanted him to be happy that I was the mother of his children, even though I wasn’t happy about it.

  I removed my breast and brought Chastin toward my nipple. Jeremy was watching the whole thing. He saw her latch on to my nipple. He saw her head move back and forth, her little hand press into my skin. He watched her begin to suck.

  It felt wrong.

  This infant, sucking on something Jeremy had sucked on before. I didn’t like it. How would he find my breasts attractive after seeing babies feed from them every day?

  “Does it hurt?” Jeremy asked.

  “Not really.”

  He put a hand on my head and brushed back my hair. “You look like you’re in pain.”

  Not in pain. Just disgusted.

  I watched as Chastin continued to feed from me. My stomach clenched as I tried my hardest not to show him how repulsed I was. I’m sure some mothers found this beautiful. I found it disturbing.

  “I can’t do it,” I whispered, my head falling back against the pillow.

  Jeremy reached down and pulled Chastin from my breast. I sighed with relief when I was free of her.

  “It’s fine,” Jeremy said reassuringly. “We’ll use formula.”

  “Are you sure?” the nurse asked him. “She seemed to be taking to it.”

  “Positive. We’ll use formula.”

  The nurse conceded and said she’d grab a can of Similac as she left the room.

  I smiled because my husband still supported me. He had my back. He put me first in that moment, and I reveled in it. “Thank you,” I said to him.

  He kissed Chastin’s forehead and then sat down on the edge of my bed with her. He stared at her and shook his head in disbelief. “How can I already feel so protective over them, and I’ve only known them a couple of hours?”

  I wanted to remind him that he’s always been protective of me, but it didn’t feel like the right moment. I almost felt as if I were intruding on something I wasn’t a part of. This father-daughter bond I was never going to be included in. He already loved them more than he had ever loved me. He was eventually going to take their side, even if I wasn’t in the wrong. This was so much worse than I had imagined it would be.

  He lifted a hand to his face and wiped away a tear.

  “Are you crying?”

  Jeremy snapped his head in my direction, shocked at my words. I panicked. Recovered. “That came out weird,” I said. “I meant it in a good way. I love how much you love them.”

  His sudden tension disappeared with my quick recovery. He looked back down at Chastin and said, “I’ve never loved anything this much. Did you think you were capable of loving someone so much?”

  I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, I have loved someone this much, Jeremy. You. For four years. Thanks for noticing.

  I don’t know why I’m surprised when I set the manuscript back in the drawer. The contents of the drawer rattle as I slam it shut angrily. Why am I angry? This isn’t my life or my family. I’d trolled Verity’s reviews before coming here, and in nine out of ten of them, the reviewer referenced wanting to throw their Kindles or books across the room.

  I kind of want to do the same with her autobiography. I was hoping she’d have seen the light with the birth of the girls, but she didn’t. She only saw more darkness.

  She seems so cold and hard, but I’m not a mother. Do a lot of mothers feel this way about their children at first? If so, they certainly aren’t honest about it. It’s probably similar to when a mother claims she doesn’t have a favorite child, but they probably do. It’s an unspoken thing between mothers. One I suppose you don’t become aware of until you are one.

  Or maybe Verity just didn’t deserve to be a mother. I think about having children sometimes. I’ll be thirty-two soon and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry the opportunity might never present itself. But if I ever do find myself in a relationship with a man I’d want to father my child, it would be someone like Jeremy. Rather than appreciate the wonderful father he seemed to be, Verity resented him.

  Jeremy’s love for his girls seemed genuine from the very beginning. It still seems genuine. And it hasn’t been that long since he lost them. I keep losing sight of that. He’s still probably moving through the stages of grief, while dealing with Verity and being there for Crew and ensuring the income they’ve gotten used to a
s a family doesn’t come to a complete halt. Just a fraction of what he’s been through would be too much for some people. But he’s dealing with all of it at once.

  I found boxes of pictures in Verity’s office closet this week as I was rummaging through her things. I pulled a box down, but haven’t gone through the pictures yet. It seems like another invasion of privacy on my part. This family, at least Jeremy, has entrusted me to finish this series, and I keep getting sidetracked by my obsession with Verity.

  But if Verity is putting so much of herself into her series, I really do need to get to know her as well as possible. This really isn’t snooping. It’s research. There you go. Justification complete.

  I take the box of pictures to the kitchen table, pry open the lid, and then pull a handful of the pictures out, wondering who had them developed. People don’t really have a lot of physical pictures on hand nowadays, thanks to the invention of smartphones. But there are so many pictures of the kids in here. Someone went through the trouble of making sure every picture they took was in physical form. My bet is on Jeremy.

  I pick up a picture of Chastin. A close-up. I stare at her scar for a moment. I couldn’t stop thinking about it yesterday, so I Googled to find out if attempted abortions could actually cause damage in utero.

  That’s something I’ll never Google again. Sadly, a lot of babies survive the attempts and are born disfigured in much worse ways than just a small scar. Chastin was really lucky. She and Harper both were.

  Well...until they weren’t.

  Jeremy’s footsteps approach the stairs. I don’t try to hide the pictures, because I’m not sure he would mind that I’m down here looking at them.

  When he walks into the kitchen, I smile at him and continue sorting through them. He hesitates on his way to the refrigerator, his eyes falling to the box on the table.

  “I feel like getting to know her helps put me in her headspace,” I explain. “Helps with the writing.” I look away from him, down at a picture of Harper, the one who rarely smiles in pictures.