He Faked His Death to Leave Me

On our wedding day, Caspian died on his way to pick me up.

I became a widow before I became a bride. The baby in my belly became fatherless.

At the funeral, Caspian's older brother, Julian, flew in from West Africa with his wife.

I stared at that face — Caspian's face — and felt the world tilt.

It tilted all the way over three weeks later, outside his mother's bedroom door.

"You faked your death for that woman? Elowen is carrying your child, Caspian. You staged all of this just so you could bring some foreign girl into this house?"

Then his voice.

"Zora is sick, Mom. The doctors gave her six months. When it's over, Elowen will have had the baby, and everything goes back to the way it was."

I stopped breathing.

My husband wasn't dead. There was no older brother. There was only Caspian.

I held the wall so my legs wouldn't give out.

Then I took out my phone and wrote to my brother, Rhys, who worked in federal security.

[Rhys. Help me stage an accident. If Caspian can fake his death, so can I.]

...

My hands kept shaking. The conversation in the room hadn't stopped.

"Is this really fair to her?" Marnie's voice again, softer now, aching.

"If it weren't for that baby, she'd have gone after you already, you know that. I watch her not eating, not sleeping — it breaks my heart."

Caspian exhaled, long and heavy.

"Zora only has half a year, Mom. This is the one thing she's asked of me. I can't take it from her."

"And Elowen and I have the rest of our lives," he went on. "I'll make it up to her. Every day, for the rest of our lives. You don't need to worry."

Something closed around my ribs like a fist. I couldn't get a full breath.

I made it to my room on legs that didn't feel like mine, and my knees gave out the second the door shut behind me.

My phone rang. Rhys.

"Elowen. What happened? Talk to me. Caspian's dead — isn't he?"

I opened my mouth to answer and nothing came out but tears.

Dead. To the entire world, Caspian Hale was dead.

I understood Rhys's confusion. I hadn't believed it myself, not until I'd heard it in his own voice: he had faked his death for another woman.

I said nothing. I didn't have to. Rhys went quiet on the other end, the particular quiet of a man recalculating everything.

"Two nights from now," he said finally. "I'll have a plane ready for you after dark. Leave the rest to me."

The line went dead. I sat there, phone still pressed to my ear, long after the call ended.

A knock at the door. I hadn't even heard him cross the hall.

Caspian stood there — his brother stood there, I corrected myself, though the correction felt like a lie even in my own head — holding a glass of warm milk.

For three weeks, he'd played the devoted brother-in-law without a crack in the performance.

Grief-stricken widow, grieving family, a mother-in-law who blamed every strange look I gave him on how much I missed her dead son.

I locked my phone screen and forced my face into something steady.

"Elowen? Why are you on the floor? Were you crying?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Just a dizzy spell. The baby."

He set the glass down fast, worry flooding his face. He helped me up like I was made of glass.

"This kid's going to be trouble," he murmured, "mark my words. Little guy keeps scaring his mom half to death."

"Come on. Milk's still warm. Drink it, get some rest — don't think so hard. Caspian wouldn't want to see you like this, wherever he is."

Hearing that name in his mouth was the last straw. I lifted my chin and looked him dead in the eye.

"You're really not Caspian?"