I’m so embarrassed by his audacity, but I know I need to mask my embarrassment. If Amanda notices the irritation on my face, she might notice Jeremy’s disrespect.

Jeremy looks up at me, so I force a smile. I can save my anger for later. I give my attention back to Amanda, hoping she doesn’t notice Jeremy’s behavior.

A few seconds later, Jeremy squeezes my leg, right above my knee, and I stiffen beneath his touch. Most of the time, I crave it. But in this moment the only thing I crave is a husband who supports my career.

And that’s how easy it is for a writer to pretend to be someone they aren’t.

As soon as we got back to our place, I went straight to my laptop and wrote about the first night we met. I pretended my red dress was stolen in my alternate version. I pretended I was there to hopefully fuck rich men, which was absolutely not true. You should know me better than that, Jeremy.

I wasn’t very good at making myself much of a villain the first time I tried it, so I made it a habit of writing down our milestone moments. I wrote about the night you proposed to me, the night I found out I was pregnant, the day I gave birth to the girls. Every time I wrote about a new milestone, I got better and better at being inside the mind of a villain. It was exhilarating.

And it helped.

It helped immensely, which is why I was able to create such realistic, terrifying characters in my novels. It’s why they sold, because I was good at it.

By the time I had finished my third novel, I felt I had mastered the craft of writing from a point of view that wasn’t at all mine. The exercises had helped me so much, I decided to combine all of my journal entries into an autobiography that could be used to teach other authors how to master their craft. I needed to tie the chapters together with an overall storyline so that the autobiography was more cohesive, so I pushed the envelope with every scene to make it more jarring. More disturbing.

I don’t regret writing it because my only intention was to eventually help other writers, but I do regret writing about Harper’s death just days after it happened. My mind was in such a dark space though, and sometimes, as a writer, the only way to clear your mind is to let the darkness spill out onto a keyboard. It was my therapy, no matter how hard that may be for you to understand.

Besides, I never thought you would read it. Beyond that first manuscript, you never read anything I wrote.

So why...why did you choose to read that one?

It was never meant for anyone to read and believe. It was an exercise. That’s it. A way to tap into the dark grief that was eating at me and eliminating it with every stroke of the keyboard. Putting all the blame onto this fictional villain I had created in that autobiography was one of the ways I coped.

I know this letter is hard for you to read, but it can’t be any harder than the manuscript was to read the night you found it. And if we’re ever going to come to a place of forgiveness, you need to keep reading so you’ll know the absolute truth about that night. Not the version you discovered days after Harper died.

When I took Harper and Crew out on the lake that day, I was trying to be good for them. That morning, you mentioned how I didn’t play with them anymore, and you were right. It was so hard because I missed Chastin so much, but I also had these two beautiful children who still needed me. And Harper really did want to go to the water that day. It’s why she ran upstairs crying, because I had told her no. I never scolded her for her lack of emotions like I stated in the manuscript. I was using artistic freedom to further the plot. It’s an insult that you believe I would speak to one of our children that way. It’s an insult that you believe any of that manuscript—or that I was capable of harming them.

Harper’s death was an accident. Her death was an accident, Jeremy. They wanted to go in the canoe, and it was so beautiful that day. And yes, I should have put life vests on them, I realize that. But how many times had we gone in that boat without them? The water wasn’t that deep. I had no idea the fishing net was beneath the surface. If it weren’t for that fucking fishing net, I would have found her and helped her to shore and we all would have laughed about the day the boat tipped over.

I can’t even tell you how sorry I am for not doing everything, anything differently that day. If I could go back, I would, and you know I would.

When you got there and pulled her out of the water and held her, I wanted to rip my heart out and feed it to you because I knew you no longer had one of your own. I didn’t want to live for another second after seeing your anguish. My God, Jeremy. To lose both of them. Both of them.

I watched your suspicion come to a head a few nights after Harper passed. We were in bed when you started asking me all those questions. I couldn’t even believe you would think I would do something like that on purpose. And even if it was a fleeting thought, I saw the love you had for me leave your body and flitter away like it was never even there. Our entire past…all the great moments we shared together. It just left.

Because, yes, I did tell Crew to hold his breath. I told him to hold his breath as the canoe was tipping over. I was trying to help him. I thought Harper would be fine because we’ve played in that lake many times before, so my focus was on Crew after we fell into the water. I grabbed him and he was panicking, so I tried to make it back to the dock as fast as I could before he caused us both to drown. Not even thirty seconds had passed before I realized Harper wasn’t right behind us.

To this day, I blame myself. I was her mother. Her protector. And I assumed she’d be fine, so I focused on Crew for thirty seconds too long. I immediately tried to swim back and find her, but the canoe had shifted farther out because of the commotion of the water. I couldn’t even find where she’d gone under, and Crew was still fighting me—panicking. I knew if I didn’t get him to the shore in that exact moment, all three of us would drown.

I searched for her with everything in me, Jeremy. You have to believe me. Every part of me drowned in that lake with her.

I didn’t blame you for suspecting me. I probably would have allowed my mind to explore every possible scenario if the roles had been reversed and she drowned under your supervision. It’s natural, to assume the worst in people, even if that assumption is only for a split second.

I thought you’d wake up the next day after our conversation in the bed and you would realize how ridiculous your indirect accusation had been. I didn’t even try to change your mind that night because I was too full of grief to care. To argue. It had only been days since she passed, and I honestly just wanted to die. I wanted to walk out into the lake that night and join her, because her death was my fault. It was an accident, yes. But if I’d made her wear a vest, if I’d been able to grab her and Crew together, she’d still be alive.

I couldn’t sleep, so I went to my office and opened my laptop for the first time in over six months.

Imagine it for a moment. A mother, grieving the loss of both of her daughters, writing a fictional work-up that accused one of them of murdering the other.

It was beyond disturbing. I realize that, which is why I cried the entire time I typed. But I thought, maybe, if I released my guilt and my grief onto this fictional villain I had created, it would somehow help me in a twisted way.

I wrote all about Chastin’s death. I wrote all about Harper’s. I even went back to the beginning of the manuscript and added foreshadowing so the entire thing would match our new grim reality. And in a way, it did help ease a small fraction of my guilt and pain, being able to blame this fictional version of myself rather than accept the blame in real life.

I can’t explain the mind of a writer to you, Jeremy. Especially the mind of a writer who has been through more devastation than most writers combined. We’re able to separate our reality from fiction in such a way that it feels as if we live in both worlds, but never both worlds at once. My real world had grown so dark that I didn’t want to live in it that 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.

That’s all it was. I needed for the imaginary version of my world to be darker than my real world. Otherwise, I would have wanted to leave them both.