Verity

She enabled Jeremy to work on the property every day. I had new windows installed in my office so I could watch him from almost every angle.

Life was good for a while. I did all the easy parts of mothering and Jeremy and the nanny did all the hard parts. And I traveled a lot. I had book tours and interviews, which I didn’t really like leaving Jeremy for, but he preferred to stay home with the kids. I grew to appreciate those breaks, though. I noticed when I was gone for a week, the attention Jeremy gave me when I returned home was like the attention he used to pay me before the kids came along.

Sometimes I would lie and say I was needed in New York, but I would hole up in an Airbnb in Chelsea and watch television for a week. Then I’d go home, and Jeremy would fuck me like I was his virgin. Life was great.

Until it wasn’t.

It happened in an instant. It was like the sun froze and darkened on our lives, and no matter how hard we tried, the rays couldn’t reach us after that.

I was standing at the sink, washing a chicken. A fucking raw chicken. I could have been doing anything else…watering the lawn, writing, knitting, anything else. But I will forever think of that fucking disgusting raw chicken when I think about the moment we were told we lost Chastin.

The phone rang. I was washing the chicken.

Jeremy answered it. I was washing the chicken.

He raised his voice. Still washing the fucking chicken.

And then the sound…that guttural, painful sound. I heard him say no and how and where is she and we’ll be right there. When he ended the call, I could see him in the reflection of the window. He was in the hallway, gripping the doorframe like he was going to fall to his knees if he didn’t. I was still washing the chicken. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, my knees were weak. My stomach began to lurch.

I vomited on the chicken.

That’s how I’ll always remember one of the worst moments of my life.

On our entire drive to the hospital, I was wondering how Harper had done it. Had she smothered her like in my dream? Or had she come up with a more clever way to murder her sister?

They had been at a sleepover at their friend Maria’s house. They’d been there several times before. And Maria’s mother, Kitty—what a silly name—knew all about Chastin’s allergies. Chastin never traveled without her EpiPen, but Kitty had found her unresponsive that morning. She dialed 9-1-1, and then called Jeremy as soon as the ambulance took her.

When we arrived at the hospital, Jeremy still had that faint hope that they were wrong and that Chastin was okay. Kitty met us in the hallway and kept saying, “I’m sorry. She wouldn’t wake up.”

That’s all she told us. She wouldn’t wake up. She didn’t say, She’s dead. Just, She wouldn’t wake up, like Chastin was some kind of spoiled brat who wanted to sleep in.

Jeremy ran down the hall, into the patient hallway of the E.R. They escorted him out and told us we needed to wait in the family room. Everyone knows that’s the room where they put the surviving members after someone has died. That’s when Jeremy knew she was gone.

I’d never heard him scream like that. A grown man, on his knees, sobbing like a child. I’d have been embarrassed for him if I wasn’t right there with him.

When we finally got to see her, she’d been dead less than a day, but she didn’t smell like Chastin. She already smelled like death.

Jeremy asked so many questions. All the questions. How did it happen? Did they have peanuts in the house? What time did they go to sleep? Was her EpiPen taken out of her bag at all?

All the right questions, all the devastatingly right answers. It was over a week before her cause of death was confirmed. Anaphylaxis.

We were hyper vigilant about her peanut allergy. No matter where they went or who they were left with, Jeremy spent half an hour telling the mother their routine, explaining how to use the EpiPen. I always thought it was overkill since we’d literally only had to use it once in her entire life.

Kitty was well aware of her allergy and kept nuts out of their reach when the girls were there. What she wasn’t aware of was that the girls had snuck into the pantry and grabbed a handful of snacks to take back to their room in the middle of the night. Chastin was only eight; it was late at night and dark when the girls decided they wanted a snack. Harper said they didn’t realize anything they were eating contained peanuts. But when they woke up the next morning, Chastin wouldn’t wake up.

Jeremy went through a period of denial, but he never questioned that Chastin unknowingly ate the nuts. But I did. I knew. I knew.

Every time I looked at Harper, I could see her guilt. I had been waiting on this to happen for years. Years. I knew, from when they were six months old, that Harper would find a way to kill her. And what a perfect murder she committed. Even her own father would never suspect her.

Her mother, though. I was a little harder to convince.

I missed Chastin, obviously, and I was saddened by her death. But there was something unpleasant in how hard Jeremy took it. He was devastated. Numb. After she’d been dead for three months, I was growing impatient. We’d only had sex twice since her death, and he hadn’t even kissed me with tongue either time. It’s like he was disconnected from me, using me to get off, to feel better, to get a quick rush of something other than agony. I wanted more than that. I wanted the old Jeremy back.

I tried one night. I rolled over and put my hand on his dick while he was asleep. I rubbed my hand up and down, waiting for it to grow hard. It didn’t. Instead, he brushed my hand away and said, “It’s okay, Verity. You don’t have to.”

He said it like he was doing me a favor. Like he was turning me down for my reassurance.

I didn’t need reassurance.

I didn’t.

I’ve had over eight years to accept it. I knew it was coming—I had dreamt about it. I gave Chastin all the love I had every minute she was alive because I knew it would happen. I knew Harper would do something like that to her. Not that it could ever be proven that Harper had any involvement. Even if I had tried to prove it to him, Jeremy would never believe me. He loves her too much. He’d never believe such an atrocious thing—that a twin could do that to her own sister.

Part of me felt responsible. Had I just tried choking her again as an infant, or leaving an open bottle of bleach near her as a toddler, or ramming the passenger side of my car into a tree while she was unbuckled with the airbag turned off, all of it could have been avoided. So many potential accidents I could have staged. Should have staged.

Had I stopped Harper before she acted, we would still have Chastin.

And then maybe Jeremy wouldn’t be so fucking sad all the time.

Verity is in the living room. April brought her down in the elevator right before she left for the evening. An unusual change in their routine that I’m not sure I like.

April said, “She’s wide awake this evening. I thought I’d let Jeremy put her to bed tonight.” She left her in front of the television, her wheelchair parked near the sofa.

Verity is watching Wheel of Fortune.

Or…staring in that direction, anyway.

I’m standing in the doorway to the living room, looking at her. Jeremy is upstairs with Crew. It’s dark outside, and the living room light isn’t on, but there’s enough light from the television that I can see Verity’s expressionless face.

I can’t imagine anyone going to such great lengths to fake an injury for this long. I’m not even sure how someone could pull it off. Would she startle at a loud noise?

Next to me, near the entryway to the living room, is a bowl full of decorative glass balls mixed in with wooden ones. I look around, then pluck one of the wooden ones out of the bowl. I toss it in her direction. When it hits the floor in front of her, she doesn’t flinch.

I know she’s not paralyzed, so how does she not even flinch? Even if her brain damage is too severe to understand the English language, she’d still be alarmed by noise, right? Have some kind of reaction?

Unless she’s trained herself to not react.

I watch her for a little longer before I start to creep myself out with my own thoughts again.

I return to the kitchen, leaving her alone with Pat Sajak and Vanna White.

There are only two chapters left of Verity’s manuscript. I’m praying I don’t find a part two anywhere before I leave here because I can’t take the ups and downs of it all. The anxiety I get after every chapter is worse than the anxiety I get after I sleepwalk.

I’m relieved she had nothing to do with Chastin’s death, but disturbed by her thought process during all of it. She seemed so detached. Two-dimensional. She’d lost her fucking daughter, yet all she thought about was how she should have killed Harper, and she was fed up with waiting for Jeremy to get over his grief.

Disturbing is putting it mildly. Luckily, it’s coming to an end soon. Most of the manuscript details things that happened years ago, but this last chapter was more recent. Less than a year ago. Months before Harper’s death.

Harper’s death.

It’s the thing I plan to get to next. Maybe tonight. I don’t know. I haven’t slept well the last few days, and I’m worried after I finish the manuscript, I won’t be able to sleep at all.

I’m making spaghetti for Jeremy and Crew tonight. I try to focus on dinner and not at all on Verity’s lack of a soul. I purposely timed this meal so that April would be gone before dinner was ready. And I’m hoping Jeremy takes Verity up to bed before it’s time to eat. My birthday is almost over, and I’ll be damned if I eat my birthday meal seated next to Verity Crawford.