Our Marriage License Was A Lie Chapter 05

Our Marriage License Was A Lie Chapter 05

“What? She’s she’s dead?” 

My father stood there with the phone still pressed to his ear. 

For the first time in my life, I saw that unshakable face crack. 

My mother had been fussing over Chloe’s dress. Her mind had 

been nowhere near me – only the wedding, only Chloe. 

Her head snapped toward my father. The smile fell off her face. 

Her voice came out shaking. 

“What are you talking about? What do you mean, dead?” 

“Elena was — she was just going to the hospital. Nothing 

could’ve happened that fast. You misheard. You must’ve 

misheard.” 

“The police don’t make calls like that for nothing.” 

My father’s voice had gone hollow. He wasn’t talking to her anymore – just speaking into the room. 

Real fear – the kind he couldn’t perform – settled into the 

lines around his mouth. 

I was still his daughter. Twenty–some years of raising me 

didn’t vanish overnight. 

He could favor Chloe. He could call me difficult, ungrateful, 

impossible. But blood was blood, and he couldn’t make that disappear just by deciding it didn’t matter. 

Grief hit him low and quiet – not a crash, but a slow tide 

rising from somewhere he’d kept locked away. 

Maybe he remembered me as a girl – sweet, eager to please, 

always trailing behind him. Daddy. Daddy, look. 

I used to hand Chloe everything without being asked. 

Perhaps he thought about the wreck I’d become – years of 

searching, years of falling apart. 

And the look on my face when they’d dragged me out that door – it stayed with him, lodged somewhere behind his ribs. 

My mother’s face crumpled. The tears came hard and fast. 

She pressed a hand over her mouth, rocking slightly, whispering the same words over and over. 

“No. No, my Elena isn’t she can’t be-” 

“She was just upset. She was just – how can she be gone?” 

The panic was real. So was the grief- or at least something 

close to it. 

But it was the shock of loss, not the ache of understanding 

what she’d done to me. 

She mourned the daughter who’d died. She didn’t mourn the 

daughter she’d destroyed. 

They stood side by side, stunned, looking like two people who’d just been told the ground beneath them wasn’t solid. 

Every trace of cruelty was gone. For one naked moment, they were just parents who’d lost a child. 

Chloe watched all of this from across the room. 

She crossed to them in three quick steps and took their hands, 

her grip soft, her voice softer. 

“Don’t cry. I don’t think this is what it sounds like.” 

“You know how Elena is. She’s always been dramàtic. This is 

probably just another one of her stunts.” 

Both of my parents went still. They turned to look at her. 

Chloe dropped her gaze, lashes fluttering, playing wounded. 

“Think about it. Elena hates me. She hates Julian. Someone 

that angry doesn’t just die quietly. She wouldn’t give us the 

satisfaction.” 

“She staged this. A fake accident to scare us into feeling 

guilty.” 

“She wants us on our knees begging – and she wants to ruin 

my wedding.” 

“It’s the same game she always plays, just bigger this time. She’s faking her death to blow up everything I have.” 

I watched it happen in real time – Chloe’s words moved 

through them like poison. The grief drained from their faces, 

slow and steady. 

Suspicion crept in first. 

Then anger. And then–cold. The same cold I’d known my 

entire life. 

My mother wiped her face with the back of her hand. When her 

eyes came up again, the worry was gone. 

What replaced it was irritation – the tight–lipped kind that 

said she’d been inconvenienced, not heartbroken. 

“I knew it. There’s no way she’d actually she’s faking. Of 

course she’s faking.” 

“That girl will do anything for attention. Faking her own death just to ruin Chloe’s day- I can’t believe her.” 

“And I actually cried for her. What a waste of tears.” 

My father’s expression hardened back to stone. Whatever softness had cracked through was sealed shut. 

“Chloe’s right. This is exactly the kind of stunt Elena would 

pull. Anything to sabotage her sister.” 

“She’s been nothing but trouble since the day she was born. And even now – she still can’t stop.” 

They exchanged a look, and just like that, Chloe had them 

right where she wanted them. 

In their minds, I was alive somewhere, playing dead to punish 

them. 

The grief from sixty seconds ago might as well have never 

existed. 

Chloe rubbed their arms, soothing, steady. 

“Don’t let her ruin today. She’ll get tired of the act and come 

crawling back. She always does.” 

“We’ll deal with her then. For now, let’s not let this spoil 

anything.” 

“I still need my parents to walk me down the aisle.” 

Julian didn’t buy it. 

The crash alert from her smartwatch was real. That wasn’t 

something Elena could fake. 

His thumbs hovered over the screen. Then, slowly, he typed. 

[Elena. Where are you? Cut the act.] 

[I told you I’d make it up to you after the wedding. Just answer 

me.]