Verity(15)

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.