“Jeremy, no.” I’m grabbing at his wrist that’s locked tightly around mine. “Don’t leave Crew up here with her.” My voice is pleading, but he can’t hear the worry. He can only see what he thinks he knows, what he walked into. When we reach the stairs, I back up, shaking my head, refusing to descend them. He needs to take Crew downstairs. He grabs me by the waist and lifts me over his shoulder and carries me down the stairs, straight to my room. He sets me down onto the bed, gently, even in the midst of his anger.
He walks to my closet. Grabs my suitcase. My things. “I want you to leave.”
I lift up onto my knees and move to the foot of the bed, where he’s shoving all my things into the suitcase. “You have to believe me.”
He doesn’t.
“Goddammit, Jeremy!” I point toward the upstairs. “She’s crazy! She’s been lying to you since the day you met her!”
I’ve never seen so much distrust and hatred pouring out of a human. The way he’s looking at me has me so terrified, I scoot away from him.
“She’s not faking it, Lowen.” He tosses his hand in the air, toward the direction of the stairs. “That woman is helpless. Practically brain-dead. You’ve been seeing things since you got here.” He shoves more clothes into my suitcase, shaking his head. “It’s impossible,” he mutters.
“It isn’t. And you know it isn’t. She killed Harper and you know it. You suspected it.” I climb off the bed and rush to the door. “I can prove it.”
He follows after me as I run to Verity’s office. I grab the manuscript, every page of it, and I turn around just as he reaches me and I shove it against his chest. “Read it.”
He catches the pages. Looks down at them. Looks back up at me. “Where did you find this?”
“It’s hers. It’s all there. From the day you met her up until her car wreck. Read it. At least read the last two chapters, I don’t care. Just, please, read it.” I’m exhausted, and I have nothing else in me but pleas. So I beg him. Quietly. “Please, Jeremy. For your girls.”
He’s still looking at me like he doesn’t trust a single word coming out of my mouth. He doesn’t have to. If he would just read those pages—see what his wife was truly thinking in the moments she was with him—he’ll know I’m not the one he needs to worry about.
I can feel the fear welling up in me. The fear of losing him. He thinks I’m crazy—that I was trying to hurt his wife. He wants me to leave his home. He wants me to walk out of here and he never wants to see me again.
My eyes sting as the tears begin to fall down my cheeks.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please. You deserve to know the truth.”
I expect it to take him a while to read the entire thing. I’m sitting on my bed, waiting. The house is quieter than it’s ever been. Unsettling, like the calm before a storm.
I stare at my suitcase, wondering if he’s still going to want me to leave after this. The entire time I’ve been here, I’ve been holding on to that manuscript, keeping it a secret from him. He may never forgive me for it.
I know he’ll never forgive Verity.
My eyes flick up to the ceiling when I hear a crash. It wasn’t loud, but it sounded like it came from the room Jeremy is in. He hasn’t been up there for very long, but it’s enough time to at least skim the manuscript and know that Verity was not at all the woman he thought she was.
I hear a cry. It’s low and quiet, but I hear him.
I fall onto my side and hug the pillow as I squeeze my eyes shut. It kills me to know how much he’s hurting right now as he reads page after page of a truth so harsh, it never should have been written.
Footsteps are above me now, moving around upstairs. He hasn’t been up there nearly long enough to read the entire thing, but I can understand that. If I were him, I would have skipped to the end to see what really happened to Harper.
I hear a door open. I run across the hall to the office and look at the monitor.
Jeremy is standing in Verity’s doorway, looking at her. I can see both of them from the monitor. “Verity.”
She doesn’t answer him, obviously. She doesn’t want him to know she’s a threat. Or maybe she’s been faking it because she’s afraid he’ll turn her into the police. Whatever her reason, I have a feeling Jeremy isn’t going to walk away from the room until he gets his answer.
“Verity,” he says, stepping closer to her. “If you don’t answer me, I’m calling the police.”
She still doesn’t answer him. He walks over to her, reaches down, and pulls one of her eyelids open. He stares at her for a moment, then walks toward the door. He doesn’t believe me.
But then he pauses, like he’s questioning himself. Questioning what he read. He turns around and walks over to her. “When I walk out of this room, I’m taking your manuscript straight to the police. They’ll put you away and you’ll never see me or Crew again if you don’t open your eyes and tell me what’s going on in this house.”
Several seconds pass. I’m holding my breath, waiting for her to move. Hoping she moves so that Jeremy will know I’m telling the truth.
A whimper escapes my throat when she opens her eyes. I slap my hand over my own mouth before it turns into a scream. I’m afraid I’ll wake Crew, and this is not something he needs to walk into.
Jeremy’s whole body tenses, and then he grabs his head in both hands as he backs away from her bed. He meets the wall. “What the fuck, Verity?”
Verity begins to shake her head adamantly. “I had to, Jeremy,” she says, sitting up on the bed. She’s getting into a defensive pose, as if she’s terrified of what he might do.
Jeremy is still in disbelief, his face full of anger and betrayal and confusion. “This entire time…you’ve been….” He’s trying to keep his voice down, but he looks like he’s about to explode into a rage. He turns and releases his anger with a fist against the door. It makes Verity flinch.
She holds up her hands. “Please, don’t hurt me. I’ll explain everything.”
“Don’t hurt you?” Jeremy spins around, taking a step forward. “You killed her, Verity.”
I can hear the anger in his voice, and it’s just over the monitor. But Verity has a front row seat to it. She tries to jump off the bed to escape him, but he doesn’t allow it. He grabs her by the leg and yanks her back onto the bed. When she starts to scream, he covers her mouth.
They struggle. She’s trying to kick him. He’s trying to hold her down.
Then his other hand forms a circle around her throat.
No, Jeremy.
I run straight up to Verity’s room and stop short when I reach the doorway. Jeremy is on top of her. Her arms are trapped beneath his knees, her legs are kicking at the bed, her feet are digging into the mattress as she wheezes.
She’s trying to fight back, but he overpowers her in every way.
“Jeremy!” I rush to him and try to pull him off of her. All I can think of is Crew and Jeremy’s future and how his anger is not worth a life. His life. “Jeremy!”
He isn’t listening. He refuses to let go of her. I try to get in his face, to calm him, to talk sense into him. “You have to stop. You’re crushing her windpipe. They’ll know you killed her.”
Tears are streaming down his cheeks. “She killed our daughter, Low.” His voice is full of devastation.
I grab his face, try to pull him to me. “Think about Crew,” I say, my voice low. “Your son will not have a father if you do this.”
I see the slow change in him as my words sink in. He eventually pulls his hands from her throat. I double over, gasping for as much breath as Verity is right now. She’s sputtering, trying to inhale. She tries to speak. Or scream. Jeremy covers her mouth and looks at me. There’s a plea in his eyes, but it’s not a plea for me to call for help. It’s a plea for me to help him figure out a better way to end her.
I don’t even argue with him. There is not a single cell in her body that deserves to live after all she’s done. I step back and try to think.
If he chokes her, they’ll know. His handprints will be on her throat. If he smothers her, particles from the pillow will be in her lungs. But we have to do something. If he doesn’t, she’ll get away with it somehow because she’s manipulative. She’ll end up hurting him or Crew. She’ll kill him just like she killed her daughter. Just like she tried to kill Harper as an infant.
Just like she tried to kill Harper as an infant.
“You have to make it look like an accident,” I say, my voice quiet, yet loud enough to be heard over the noises she’s making beneath the palm of his hand. “Make her vomit. Cover her nose and mouth until she stops breathing. It’ll look like she aspirated in her sleep.”
Jeremy’s eyes are wide as he listens to me, but there’s understanding there. He pulls his hands from her mouth and then shoves his fingers down her throat. I turn my head. I can’t watch.
I hear the gagging, and then the choking, and it feels like it goes on forever. Forever.
I sink to the floor, my whole body wracked with tremors. I press my palms against my ears and attempt to ignore the sounds of Verity’s last breaths. Of her last movements. After a while, the sound of three people’s lungs turns into two.