VERITY

WARNING: There is strong use of language, hook-ups, and dark content.

BACKGROUND

Verity is a famous thriller writer. She’s so good at bending the truth that it’s hard to know which written account of her life is true.

“No matter which way I look at it, it’s clear that Verity was a master at manipulating the truth. The only question that remains is: Which truth was she manipulating?” (314).

VERSION 1

Verity is a psychopath who is obsessed with her husband, Jeremy. When she conceives twin girls, Verity is heartbroken over how she no longer has the #1 place in Jeremy’s heart. Before the twins are born, she undergoes abortion attempts, but they fail. 

A few months after they’re born, Verity has a dream where Harper tries to kill Chastin, and upon realizing how much emotion this stirred up, she realizes that she actually loves Chastin. Jeremy notices how she favors Chastin, and he gets angry at Verity since he doesn’t want Harper to grow up feeling unloved. Verity eases Jeremy’s rage by remembering how a daycare worker told her that Harper may have Asperger’s syndrome (which “excuses” Verity’s behavior), and she further eases his rage by telling him that she’s pregnant (even though she’s not yet). Later that week, she conceives their son, Crew. 

At a slumber party, Chastin dies from a severe allergic reaction to peanuts, and Verity convinces herself that the incident was somehow Harper’s fault. Months later, Verity takes Harper and Crew for a canoe ride. Once they are away from the dock, she whispers to Crew to hold his breath, and then she pushes against the side of the canoe until it tips over. She takes Crew to safety and then stalls while “rescuing” Harper (but she tries to not look too suspiciously slow). She does this out of revenge (and since she doesn’t think that Jeremy would mind losing another kid as much as losing the first kid). However, Jeremy’s heart completely shatters.

Crew tattles to Jeremy that Verity warned him to hold his breath, so Jeremy grows suspicious of Verity. Verity argues that she only told Crew that once the canoe was already tipping and hopes that Jeremy doesn’t believe Crew over her so that they can move on together. But she never regains Jeremy’s trust, so Verity drives her car into a tree (just as she said her back-up plan would be in the manuscript) to escape the consequences of Jeremy turning her in to the police. However, instead of killing her, this incident leaves her seemingly as a “shell”. 

Lowen gets hired to write the last three books in Verity’s series, and while Lowen looks through Verity’s office for book outlines, she finds Verity’s autobiography. She shows it to Jeremy, who upon reading it for the first time, becomes enraged that his suspicions were correct (and even more enraged that Verity has for some reason been faking the intensity of her injuries, since she she never revealed having regained the ability to walk and talk), so he kills her in a way that looks like she suffocated from vomit in her sleep before she can explain herself with manipulative lies. 

VERSION 2

Verity’s thrillers are famous for being written from the villain’s point of view, and she practiced this writing style by writing about her own life. She exaggerated her obsession of intimacy with Jeremy, and even though she admired his love for their children, she dramatically wrote as though not being Jeremy’s top priority anymore broke her heart. She does end up favoring Chastin a bit, but that’s only because Harper has Asperger’s syndrome (which inhibits her ability to express emotion), so Verity was just naturally able to connect better with Chastin.

Verity knew that Chastin’s death was a complete accident, and so was Harper’s. On the day of the canoeing adventure, Chastin was the one who tipped over the canoe. Only while the boat was already tipping did Verity warn Crew to hold his breath. Verity only had enough time and strength to save one kid before all three of them drowned, so she took Crew to safety first. She went back to save Harper as soon as she could, but by then, it was already late.

Verity’s “antagonistic journaling” helped her cope with the loss of her daughters by making reality seem not as bad as it could be.

“My real world had grown so dark that I didn’t want to live in it at night. It’s why I escaped from it and spent the night writing about a world darker than the one I was living in. Because every time I worked on that autobiography, I found relief in closing the laptop. I found relief in walking out of my office and being able to close the door on the evil I created” (303).

Verity wasn’t planning on Jeremy finding her manuscripts, but when he did, he convinced himself that it was the truth and that Verity really did kill Harper, so he placed Verity into a vehicle and rammed it into a tree. However, instead of killing her, this incident left her seemingly as a “shell”. He thought that the evil parts of her were gone and he felt sorry for her (and he wanted Crew to still feel like he had his mother now that she was no longer a threat), so he continued to care for her, and he deleted the manuscript from Verity’s computer. When Verity regains consciousness, she keeps it a secret to protect herself from another murder attempt from Jeremy and to continue to secretly spend time with her son. She figured that if Crew accidentally reveals Verity’s recovery, Jeremy will write it off as a kid’s “active imagination”.

Lowen finds a printed copy of Verity’s manuscripts, and when she shows it to Jeremy, his first question is “Where did you find this?” (since he’s read the electronic copy before). When he realizes that Verity actually can talk and walk, his rage over what he thinks she did to Harper compels him to suffocate his innocent wife.