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.
I look around the room, slightly overwhelmed, but I’m not sure if it’s because Jeremy is standing here or because of the chaos I’m about to have to sort through. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Yeah, I’ll let you get to that.” Jeremy points to the office door. “I should probably go check on Crew. Make yourself at home. Food…drinks…the house is yours.”
“Thank you.”
Jeremy closes the door, and I settle in at Verity’s desk. Her desk chair alone probably cost more than a month’s rent in my apartment. I wonder how much easier writing is for someone who has money to burn on things I’ve always dreamt of having at my disposal while I write. Comfortable furniture, enough money to have an on-call masseuse, more than one computer. I imagine it would make the writing process a lot easier and a lot less stressful. I have a laptop with a missing key and Wi-Fi when a neighbor forgets to password protect theirs. I sit on an old dining room table chair at a makeshift desk that’s really just a plastic folding table I ordered from Amazon for twenty-five bucks.
Most of the time, I don’t even have enough money for printer ink and computer paper.
I guess being here in her office for a few days will be one way to test my theory. The richer you are, the more creative you’re able to be.
I take the second book of the series off the shelf. I open it, only intending to glance at it. See how she picked up from where book one left off.
I end up reading for three hours straight.
I haven’t moved from my spot, not even once. Chapter after chapter of intrigue and fucked up characters. Really fucked up characters. It’s going to take me time to work myself into that mindset while writing. No wonder Jeremy doesn’t read her work. All her books are from the villain’s point of view, so that’s new to me. I really should have read all these books before arriving.
I stand up to stretch out my spine, but it doesn’t even really hurt; the desk chair I’ve been sitting in is the most comfortable piece of furniture my ass has ever pressed against.
I look around, wondering if I should go through computer files next or printed files.
I decide to check out her desktop. I browse several files in Microsoft Word, which seems to be the program she prefers. All the files I find are related to books she’s already written. I’m not too worried about those yet. I want to find any plans she had for the books yet to be written. Most of the files on her laptop are the same as the files on her desktop.
Maybe Verity was the type of author who hand-wrote her outlines. I turn my attention to the stacks of boxes on the back wall, near a closet. A thin layer of dust coats the tops of them. I go through several boxes, pulling out versions of manuscripts at various stages in the writing process, but they’re all versions of books in her series that she’s already written. Nothing hinting at what she planned to write next.
I’m on the sixth box, rummaging through the contents, when I find something with an unfamiliar title. This one is called So Be It.
I flip through the first few pages, hoping I’ll get lucky and find that it’s an outline for the seventh book in the series. Almost immediately, I can tell that it isn’t. This seems…personal. I flip back to the first page of chapter one and read the first line.
I sometimes think back on the night I met Jeremy and wonder, had we not made eye contact, would my life still end the same?
As soon as I see Jeremy’s name mentioned, I scan a little more of the page. It’s an autobiography.
It’s not at all what I’m searching for. An autobiography isn’t what the publishers are paying me to turn in, so I should just move on. But I look over my shoulder to make sure the door is shut because I’m curious. Besides, reading some of this is research. I need to see how Verity’s mind works to understand her as a writer. That’s my excuse, anyway.
I carry the manuscript to the couch, make myself comfortable, and begin reading.
So Be It
by
Verity Crawford
Author’s note:
The thing I abhor most about autobiographies are the counterfeit thoughts draped over every sentence. A writer should never have the audacity to write about themselves unless they’re willing to separate every layer of protection between the author’s soul and their book. The words should come directly from the center of the gut, tearing through flesh and bone as they break free. Ugly and honest and bloody and a little bit terrifying, but completely exposed. An autobiography encouraging the reader to like the author is not a true autobiography. No one is likable from the inside out. One should only walk away from an autobiography with, at best, an uncomfortable distaste for its author.
I will deliver.
What you read will taste so bad at times, you’ll want to spit it out, but you’ll swallow these words and they will become part of you, part of your gut, and you will hurt because of them.
Yet…even with my generous warning…you’re going to continue to ingest my words, because here you are.
Human.
Curious.
Carry on.
“Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Charles Bukowski
I sometimes think back on the night I met Jeremy and wonder, had we not made eye contact, would my life still end the same? Was it my destiny from the beginning to suffer such a tragic end? Or is my tragic end a result of poor choices rather than fate?
Of course, I haven’t met a tragic end yet, or I wouldn’t be able to recount what led to it. Nevertheless, it’s coming. I can sense it, just as I sensed Chastin’s death. And just as I embraced her fate, I will embrace my own.
I wouldn’t say I was lost before the night I met Jeremy, but I had certainly never been found until the moment he laid eyes on me from across the room.