Let Me Lie

by Clare Mackintosh

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. —Benjamin Franklin

Any pain saved from the lingering good-byes of a drawn-out illness is offset by the horror of a life stolen without notice.

motherhood is the best-kept secret: how all the books, all the films, all the advice in the world, could never prepare you for the all-consuming feeling of being everything to one tiny person. Of that person being everything to you.

You reach a point where the pain you feel inside is simply sadness. And there’s no cure for that.

Pretend you’re okay, and you’ll feel okay. Before too long you really will be okay.

You don’t know what kind of father someone will be, do you? They say we instinctively search out the characteristics we need in a mate: honesty, strength, love. But you don’t know whether they’ll go out at three A.M. for the black currant jelly you crave, or do their fair share of the night feeds, and by the time you do it’s too late to back out.

“We can’t change the past,” Mark says gently. “We can only change the way we feel about it, and the way it affects our future.”

But then I think of the way she is carefully tending roses she won’t see bloom. We are programmed to care long after we need to.

It is easier to fight a stranger. It is easier to hate a stranger than your own flesh and blood.