In a letter addressed to Jeremy, Verity apologizes for leaving with Crew and says the manuscript Jeremy found was never a true confession. Verity explains that years earlier, during a dinner with her editor Amanda, Amanda suggested an exercise called antagonistic journaling, in which a writer retells real events while giving the narrator sinister thoughts that were never actually felt. Verity says she began by rewriting personal milestones in a darker voice, discovered the exercise improved her fiction, and eventually combined those entries into a disturbing autobiographical manuscript meant as a craft experiment.

Verity says the project became darker as her life grew darker. After Chastin died and later after Harper died, Verity used the manuscript as a way to pour out grief, guilt, and rage by making a fictionalized version of herself into a monster. She insists that Harper’s death was an accident: Harper and Crew wanted to take the canoe out, the boat tipped, a hidden fishing net trapped Harper, and Verity focused first on getting panicked Crew to safety before realizing Harper had vanished underwater.

Verity says Jeremy’s suspicion after Harper’s death devastated her, and that same night she returned to the manuscript and wrote a far more horrifying version of events, adding incriminating details and foreshadowing. She claims Jeremy later found and read those pages, believed them, and responded with violence. According to Verity, Jeremy dragged her by the throat, nearly strangled her, then bound and gagged her, put her in her car, and tried to stage her death as an accident using the same scenario described in the manuscript.

Verity says she survived the crash and woke in the hospital understanding that the manuscript could be used against her and that Jeremy might try again to kill her. Because she believed no one would accept her explanation that the manuscript was fictional, she pretended to remain severely impaired after coming out of her coma. When Jeremy caught her briefly alert, Verity says his rage confirmed her fear, so she continued the deception for weeks and then months as a way to stay alive.

Back at home, Verity says everything she has done has been for Crew. She searched for both copies of the manuscript, secretly opened a new bank account after learning Jeremy had hired a new co-author to continue her series, and planned to leave once the book money arrived. Verity says the co-author found the printed manuscript and grew suspicious, and she also realized Jeremy was falling in love with that woman after hearing them together in the bedroom. Even so, Verity ends the letter by saying she still loves Jeremy, hopes he will someday forgive both her and himself, and intends to escape with Crew before Jeremy can stop her.