If You Tell a Lie

by Lucinda Berry

How awful it’s been my whole life. The terrible way I’ve been treated. It started with my dad. He’s a total sociopath. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Least of all me. Never has. But everyone thinks he’s just so wonderful. This poor widowed man raising his daughter alone. How I was so lucky to have him.” She snorted. Her voice shifting from devastation to anger in an instant. “But he hated me from the moment I was born. I used to think it was because I killed my mom, but I think he hated me period. He always wanted a son. Not me. That’s why he was so different with Jonathon. Do you know they never even brought me with on the family vacations?” She eyed their faces, but they were still set in stone. She pointed to me. “Thera knows. She’s been to my house when we were kids. She saw how they treated me. Anyway, that summer we got back from camp? That’s the summer he met Phillip at a golf charity event and learned his biotech start-up was killing it. There’s nothing my daddy likes more than making money, so of course he immediately wanted in. But that was the problem—so did everybody else.