Chapter 2 of My Husband Faked My Death While I Was Saving the World

Busy building a devoted-husband persona around his "dead wife."

Busy using my money, my reputation, to pave a golden road for himself and his new lover.

Five years. I'd spent five full years at an aerospace tracking station in the Gobi Desert.

Total lockdown management. Phones were collected and stored during work hours. We got exactly thirty minutes of satellite phone time per week. One home visit per year, and I'd never taken a single one.

Not because I didn't want to.

Because every time I brought it up, Julian would say:

"Mavis, you're doing something important for the country. Something bigger than us. I can't be the one holding you back."

"I've got everything handled here. Don't worry about a thing. Just focus on your work. When you come home, we'll get a cat. We'll have our quiet little life."

I believed him.

For five years, I weathered the sandstorms of the Gobi.

Winters hit twenty below. My fingers cracked and bled, and still I sat in front of the monitors, guarding data streams through the night. Summers, the tin-roofed station hit a hundred and ten degrees, the air conditioning cutting in and out, and pulling all-nighters was just part of the job.

I came away with chronic migraines and a stomach condition that never fully healed.

I turned down three separate transfers back to the D.C. research institute. I declined every public commendation that would have put my face in front of a camera.

All I wanted was to finish the mission and get back to him.

I sent every cent of my salary home. Every last dollar. Out in the desert, I spent maybe fifty bucks a month on soap and toothpaste.

I always felt like I owed him.

I was the one who'd insisted on taking the assignment. I was the one who'd left him alone in the city for five years.

But now, all that guilt, all that consideration, had become a joke.

I stared at the little boy in the second photo.

That familiar feeling when he smiled suddenly had an answer.

I pulled up a photo I'd saved on my phone for nearly ten years. It was a childhood picture Julian had shown me back in college, taken when he was four.

The same eyes. The same parenthetical dimples at the corners of his mouth. Even the way he tilted his head when he laughed was identical, down to the last detail.

The boy didn't look like me. He looked like Julian.

This was not my child.

This was his son with another woman.

He'd told the world I was dead and registered the boy under my name. He'd used the benefits reserved for outstanding aerospace personnel to secure the child a D.C. residency.

And I, the person whose name was on all of it, was still out in the Gobi, risking my health to earn him money, naively dreaming about coming home to surprise him.

I kept scrolling. The top comment, posted three days ago, had the most likes.

The username was "Bianca's Happy Place."

"Julian, you work so hard. You have to take care of yourself. Mavis wouldn't want to see you this sad, even from heaven. I'll be right here with you. We'll raise Nolan together."

Julian had replied with a heart emoji:

"Thank you, Bianca. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Bianca.

Bianca Whitmore.

My bunkmate for all four years of college. My best friend in the world.

Before I left, I'd begged her, over and over. Look after Julian for me. Check in on the house. Keep an eye on things.

She'd kept an eye on things, all right. She'd kept such a close eye that she'd ended up in bed with him.

I closed my eyes. The tears I'd been holding back finally fell.

Five years of my youth. Everything I'd nearly killed myself to earn. All of it had become someone else's fairy tale.

I booked the earliest flight back to D.C. that night. I didn't tell a soul.

The plane touched down the next morning, just after dawn.

The sky was barely light.