Title: Tear Me Apart by J.T. Ellison
Publisher: MIRA
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 496 pages
Summary:
The follow-up to her critically acclaimed Lie to Me, J.T. Ellison’s Tear Me Apart is the powerful story of a mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter even as their carefully constructed world unravels around them.
One moment will change their lives forever…
Competitive skier Mindy Wright is a superstar in the making until a spectacular downhill crash threatens not just her racing career but her life. During surgery, doctors discover she’s suffering from a severe form of leukemia, and a stem cell transplant is her only hope. But when her parents are tested, a frightening truth emerges. Mindy is not their daughter.
Who knows the answers?
The race to save Mindy’s life means unraveling years of lies. Was she accidentally switched at birth or is there something more sinister at play? The search for the truth will tear a family apart…and someone is going to deadly extremes to protect the family’s deepest secrets.
With vivid movement through time, Tear Me Apart examines the impact layer after layer of lies and betrayal has on two families, the secrets they guard, and the desperate fight to hide the darkness within.
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Excerpt #6
The surgery is estimated to take just under an hour. They are in an impersonal, yellow-walled room with brown couches covered in industrial-strength faux leather, the kind that looks like it will withstand a knife attack or a pack of rabid dogs.
Lauren can’t sit. How can she sit? Her daughter is anesthetized, effectively dead, having a metal rod screwed into the fragile bones of her leg. Jasper doesn’t seem nearly as concerned. After looking up the doctor and seeing that he is the number one orthopod for local skiers and sanctioned by the Vail Ski Club, he’s settled in, drinking coffee and making phone calls, updating friends to Mindy’s status, talking to her coach, Steve Hakuri, who is stuck on the mountain in the blizzard, waiting to find out if they are going to keep running the race when the storm clears. The speaker is on so Lauren can hear both ends of Jasper’s conversation—Steve seems to think they are going to call the whole event, which means Mindy will still have the overall lead, and almost more importantly, enough World Cup points to qualify for the Olympic team.
Lauren doesn’t know if they’ll get that lucky. Jasper gives her a chin-up motion from five feet away. The room—the disgusting yellow-and-brown room—is small, but she doesn’t think she’s ever felt farther away from him than she does right now.
There is a chasm. It has been widening all day. As if this is her fault. As if Lauren is the one who’s flung her child down the mountain and slammed her into a flag, snapping her leg in two.
He might say that. It is true, in a sense. Lauren has pushed Mindy. But she wanted to be pushed. She is naturally driven. Naturally talented. She likes the workouts, the running, the weights, the yoga to keep her young body supple and mind clear, the ultra-clean food. And she loves the mountain. It is her favorite place to be, leaning into that hill, feeling the wind whip past, defying gravity, space, time. Truly, Mindy loves it more than she loves them.
Lauren does her best not to be jealous. She doesn’t want to lose Mindy to her life’s joy. She wants to be a part of it, to participate, to support and help. To push, when needed.
The way Mindy describes skiing, it is holy, sacred. A sacrament between her and the gods who created the mountain in the first place. Lauren and Jasper love to ski, but the connection Mindy has with the snow and ice is corporeal. Anyone who watches her knows this. She’s meant to be a skier.
Lauren can’t help the thought: What are we going to do if this ends her career?
She watches Jasper, wondering how he can be so cheerful. She knows he’s trying to keep her spirits up—he’s naturally a happy kind of guy—an eternal optimist. They’ve been married for a long time now, almost eighteen years of ups and downs, of Mindy’s crazy training schedules, late nights and early mornings, homeschooling, tutors, days spent cold and frozen at the bottom of mountains, sleeping rough on transatlantic flights, and through it all, he has been a wonderful father and husband.
She resents his forced cheer, which is completely unfair. The stress of the day is catching up to her. There’s only so much coffee can do. They need real food, real rest.
Her Apple watch shows she’s paced two miles before the doctor finally comes out, his face drawn and tired. He is a large man, balding, with small round glasses like a schoolteacher of old. He radiates intelligence and warmth. She trusts him immediately.
But when he says, “Mom, Dad,” Lauren can’t help being annoyed. Why won’t they use their names? Why must they be reduced to the roles of parents instead of being acknowledged as people, living, breathing, human beings?
Regardless, they gather at his feet, supplicants.
“We’ve put her back together, and she’s going to be just fine. We’ll have to watch carefully for infection, but we’ve loaded her up with all the best antibiotics. One concern is I don’t know that she’s done growing, so there may be some surgeries in the future to lengthen this bone to match her right side, but that’s something we’ll know more about later on.”
“This is good though, right? She’ll heal and be able to ski again?” Jasper’s face lights up with hope. Lauren still feels no relief. There is something else. Something is coming.
“Sure thing. It looked pretty bad, but once I got in there and cleaned things up, turns out it was a good break, no splintering, no leftover shards of bone. Her leg’s in a halo, which looks pretty gruesome, but that’s only to keep things stable while the wound heals. Crutches for six weeks, minimum, and lots of rehab, but she’ll come out of it okay.” The frown deepens, the lines of his forehead collapsing in on themselves so he looks like a Shar-Pei puppy. “There’s something else, though.”
When he says this, another doctor enters the room, as if he’s been waiting in the wings for his cue. Spotlight, stage right, please, and follow.
Lauren resists that urge to say, I told you so. Instead, her muscles tighten.
“This is Dr. Oliver. He’s with oncology.”
“Oncology? What?” Jasper grabs Lauren’s hand. He is crushing her bones, and she wants to pull away, but she clings as hard as he, and at the doctor’s next words, the world bottoms out around them.
Author Bio
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.T. Ellison writes standalone domestic noir and psychological thriller series, the latter starring Nashville Homicide Lt. Taylor Jackson and medical examiner Dr. Samantha Owens, and pens the international thriller series “A Brit in the FBI” with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. Cohost of the Emmy Award-winning show, A Word on Words, Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband.
Author Links: Website * Facebook * Twitter * Goodreads
Giveaway
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