Verity(49)

He didn’t even care that she had puked on me. He didn’t even look up at me. He was full of concern, his eyebrows drawn together, his forehead wrinkled as he inspected her. But out of all that concern he held, none of it was for me. It was only pointed in Harper’s direction.

I held my breath and walked straight to the bathroom, afraid to breathe in the smell. It was the one thing I hated most about being a mother. All the fucking vomit.

While I was in the bathroom, Jeremy made Harper a bottle. By the time I got out of the shower, she’d already fallen back to sleep. He was in our bed, plugging the video monitor back in.

I froze as I was climbing into bed. I stared at the video monitor, at the perfect view right into Harper and Chastin’s cribs.

How did I forget the fucking monitor?

If he had seen what I was doing to Harper, he would have ended it with me.

How could I have been so careless?

I slept very little that night, wondering what Jeremy would have done to me had he caught me trying to save Chastin from her sister.





Oh, my God. I double over in my chair, clutching my stomach. “Please…please…” I say out loud. Though I don’t know why or to whom I’m saying it.

I need to get out of this house. I feel like I can’t breathe. I should go sit outside and attempt to clear my head of everything I just read.

Every time I’m reading her manuscript, my stomach cramps from all the time I spend clenching it. I skimmed several more chapters beyond chapter five, but none were as horrifying as the chapter that detailed how she tried to choke her infant daughter.

In the subsequent chapters, Verity focused mainly on Jeremy and Chastin, rarely mentioning Harper at all, which grew more disturbing with each paragraph. She talked about the day Chastin turned one, and she talked about when Chastin spent the night at Jeremy’s mother’s house for the first time at the age of two. Everything that had initially been “the twins” in her manuscript eventually dwindled down to just “Chastin.” If I didn’t know any better, I would think something had happened to Harper long before it did.

It wasn’t until the girls were three that she wrote about both of them again. But as soon as I start the chapter, there’s a sharp rapping on the office door.

I open the desk drawer and quickly shove the manuscript inside it. “Come in.”

When he opens the door, I have one hand on the mouse and the other resting casually in my lap.

“I made tacos.”

I smile at him. “Is it time to eat already?”

He laughs. “It’s after ten. It was time to eat three hours ago.”

I look at the clock on the computer. How did I lose track of time? I guess that happens when you’re reading about a psychotic woman abusing her children. “I thought it was eight.”

“You’ve been in here for twelve hours,” he says. “Take a break. There’s a meteor shower tonight, you need to eat, and I made you a margarita.”

Margaritas and tacos. Doesn’t take much.

???

I ate on the back porch while we sat in rocking chairs and watched the meteor shower. There weren’t very many at first, but now we’re seeing one every minute, at least.

At one point, I moved from the porch to the yard. I’m on my back in the grass, staring up at the sky. Jeremy finally gives in and positions himself next to me.

“I forgot what the sky looked like,” I say quietly. “I’ve been in Manhattan for so long now.”

“That’s why I left New York,” Jeremy says. He points to the left, at the tail end of a meteor. We watch it until it disappears.

“When did you and Verity buy this house?”

“When the girls were three. Verity’s first two books had released by then and were doing really well, so we took the plunge.”

“Why Vermont? Do either of you have family here?”

“No. My father died when I was in my teens. My mother died three years ago. But I grew up in New York State, on an alpaca farm, if you can believe that.”

I laugh, turning to look at him. “Seriously? Alpacas?”

He nods.

“How, exactly, does one make money raising alpacas?”

Jeremy laughs at this question. “They don’t, really. Which is why I got a degree in business and went into real estate. I didn’t have any interest in taking over a debt-ridden farm.”

“Do you think you’ll go back to work soon?”

My question gives Jeremy pause. “I’d like to. I’ve been waiting on the right time so it won’t be a huge adjustment to Crew, but it never feels like the right time.”

If we were friends, I would do something to comfort him. Maybe grab his hand and hold it. But there’s too much inside me that wants to be more than his friend, which means we can’t be friends at all. If an attraction is present between two people, those two people can only be one of two things. Involved or not involved. There is no in-between.

And since he’s married…I keep my hand on my chest and I don’t touch him at all.

“What about Verity’s parents?” I ask, needing the conversation to keep flowing so that he doesn’t hear how exaggerated he makes my every breath.

He lifts his hands from his chest in an I-don’t-know gesture. “I barely know them. They weren’t around much before they cut Verity out of their lives.”