They Faked Their Deaths, I Faked My Recovery Chapter 02
The room blurred behind my tears. But my son’s face, his face came clear.
Three years. He was taller now, and his face had changed.
None of the rest mattered. My son Wesley Ellison was alive. Nothing in the world could’ve meant more.
I shoved through every person standing between us and pulled my son into my arms.
“Wesley, come home with me. Please.”
He bit down on my arm. Hard. Then he kicked me right in the stomach.
I let go, gasping, and he bolted behind Sloane.
He peeked out from behind her and stuck his tongue out at me.
“You’re not my mom anymore. Sloane’s my mom now!”
“I don’t wanna go with you! All you do is make me do homework!”
“Sloane’s not like you. She plays video games with me and lets me have candy!”
“You don’t even love me! I don’t want you as my mom!”
I stared at him. Something inside my chest cracked clean open.
Wesley’s teeth had always been weak. His dentist had told us over and over: limited sugar, careful care.
Loving a child didn’t mean giving him everything he wanted. It meant protecting him from the things that would hurt him later.
Sloane pulled Wesley behind her and gave me a soft, pitying smile.
“You still don’t get it, do you? Three years ago, Wesley was the one who begged to come with us. Faking his death was his idea.”
“I was going to leave him with you. But he cried and cried and said he didn’t want to live with someone bad. He begged me to take him.”
I tried to speak. But Wesley’s eyes were full of nothing but hate, and the words died in my throat.
Graham had betrayed me. Sloane had betrayed me. My family, my friends, all of them.
And now the son I’d carried for nine months, the baby I’d almost died bringing into the world, didn’t want me either.
Graham looked at me, and for half a second, something like guilt crossed his face.
He came closer, Sloane’s daughter balanced on his hip, and his voice dropped low.
“Mara, I know I’m the one who hurt you. I won’t pretend otherwise.”
“So here’s what we can do. If you back off and leave Sloane alone, the kids can call you Aunt Mara. We’ll still be family.”
My parents traded a look and nodded, pleased.
They said it like they were doing me a kindness.
“Mara, Sloane and Graham are being more than fair.”
“Go apologize to Sloane, and we can all put this behind us.”
The man I’d loved for ten years was now my brother-in-law. The child I’d almost bled out delivering was now my nephew.
Sloane had taken everything from me, and somehow she was the victim. Somehow I was the problem. Why?
I slapped Sloane across the face.
“She’s the one who stole my husband. Why the hell should I apologize?”
I didn’t even finish the sentence before my mother slapped me.
“Don’t you dare.”
“If it weren’t for you, Sloane and Graham would’ve been together years ago!”
My vision went black. All I could smell was blood.
Graham grabbed my arm and steered me toward the door.
“Your parents have bad hearts, Mara. Are you trying to kill them over this? Stop.”
I looked up at him. His face was the same one I’d loved for a decade, and I barely recognized it. My eyes burned.
“Graham, what did I ever do to you?”
We’d been together since high school. We made a promise: Redmont University for law and criminal justice, side by side.
But Sloane bombed the SATs. She wasn’t getting into any decent school in Briarhaven. My mother’s solution? Lock me in my room.
The day before the deadline, she altered my college list, submitting applications to some nowhere college hours away, just so I’d be close enough to take care of Sloane.
Graham broke through the window to get me out. He put himself between me and my parents, shaking with rage.
“What kind of parents do this to their own kid? Mara deserves a future too!”
We got into Redmont together. And from that day on, he never left my side.
He handled everything else so I could chase the one thing I wanted: a badge.
Three years into our marriage, I got pregnant.
Graham was terrified of losing me during the delivery. He’d never been religious.
But he climbed the stone steps of St. Alder’s Chapel on his knees. Climbed until his knees were raw and bleeding. He came home with a blessed St. Gerard medal in his pocket.
I cried and told him he was an idiot. He just pulled me close and held on.
“Mara, I can handle anything. Just not losing you.”
And then he was the first one to let go.
While I was at my worst, he became another woman’s husband. He taught my son to call someone else Mom.
Their “deaths” killed my career too. They pulled me off Major Crimes and buried me in the property room, filing evidence tags.
Every night for three years, I dreamed about the explosion. Graham and Wesley, burning.
I dreamed about Sloane being dragged away. The things they did to her before she died.
I chased every lead. Every single one. Because the grief would’ve eaten me alive if I’d stopped.
And all of it, every last piece of it, had been a lie they’d planned together.