If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

by Gregg Olsen

To look at her, no one would know what she’s lived through and survived.

It isn’t a mask that she wears to cover the past but an invisible badge of courage.

Enduring their mother was what bound them together. And while they might have had three different dads, they were always 100 percent sisters.

Michelle “Shelly” Lynn Watson Rivardo Long Knotek’s hometown to be known for a major conflict and a false promise.

Les had never mentioned to Lara that he’d promised to raise his children by Sharon: Shelly, Chuck, and Paul Watson.

Grandma Anna, Shelly’s paternal grandmother, was just that kind of person too.

She’d done exactly what she’d wanted to do. Making people unhappy was her way of having fun.

no one can help a troubled person who doesn’t think they need it.

“I don’t understand Shelly’s constant need to try to ruin people’s lives.”

Dying, she thought, is the only way out of what is happening to me.

“I think as a kid I depended on her, her being my mom, I don’t think I ever thought I had any other options but to live with her. As an adult I kick myself for not doing something to help myself back then. My mother could show affection and say kind words when she wanted to . . . she would abuse me, then the very next day hug me or tell me how I was her baby and she loved me blah, blah. I think it worked like any abusive relationship . . . a person feels trapped, nowhere to go . . . they are abused and then the abuser reins them back in with kindness and the person being abused settles, not quite thinking about the next time they are beat etc. just relieved the abuse is over (for now).

I loved my mother because I didn’t know I had a choice. I had to love her.”

Part of her believed, however, that despite how Shelly treated them, she was better than having no mother at all.

He wanted to please her, to keep her in his corner. He did what she wanted, when she wanted it done.

Her mom was a monster, but she was the only mom she’d ever had.

There was no arguing that their mom probably was the worst person in the world. But she’s our mom. The only mom we’ll ever have.

“She’s controlling you,” Nikki said. “Don’t you get that? She’s doing what she always did.”

The sisters text and talk all the time. They see the insanity of the things their parents did, the horror of what happened while they were growing up. While Shelly may have sought to keep them apart, to control them forever, she underestimated the strength of their bond.