Never Lie

by Freida McFadden

As I said, everybody lies.

almost too easy to spot them: Liars fidget. The tone of their voice or speech patterns changes. Liars offer too much information, babbling on with excessive detail to convince themselves or others of what they are saying.

fall in love with him. And he feels the same way about me. It’s so amazing sharing my life with him. Except for the one big secret he doesn’t know about yet.

Something terrible has happened in this house.

My mother always said not to leave the house in shoes you can’t walk a mile in.

How are you? The three most useless words in the universe of communication. Nobody who asks that question wants to know the answer. And nobody who answers ever tells the truth. “I’m fine, Paige.” She

I just hope he feels the same way about me after he finds out about my revelation. I feel ill every time I think about it. But I can’t keep it from him much longer.

Human beings don’t deal well with rejection. Back when our ancestors were hunters and gatherers, being ostracized from a tribe was akin to a death sentence. For that reason, rejection is experienced by human beings as being incredibly painful. Studies using functional MRI have shown the same areas of the brain become activated both during rejection and during real physical pain.

I ask all patients for permission prior to recording the sessions, although even when they tell me no, I still record them.

I had diagnosed EJ with narcissistic personality disorder—the characteristics of this diagnosis include a long-term pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, cravings for admiration, and impaired empathy.

And I can’t tell Ethan why because he doesn’t know that I’m pregnant.

A psychological study demonstrated that cheating or breaking rules results in an unexpectedly good mood afterward. As well as a brief sense of freedom from all rules. So perhaps we should all bend the rules sometimes.

I silently curse the fact that Gloria is privy to my home address. But I appreciate that Luke didn’t know. He may have a pointless and irritating crush on me, but he’s not a stalker—I’ll give him that much.

Luke doesn’t sound like a killer. He sounds like a decent guy, if a bit nerdy. His voice isn’t dripping with evil like EJ’s.

And it’s not like Adrienne Hale is going to come back here and want to wear the sweater, for God’s sake.

“Right. Of course, Doc. I’m not going to ask you for oxycodone again. I mean, unless I hurt my knee again.”

I believe that any human being is capable of terrible things if you push them hard enough.

“Everything is great!” Her jowls jiggle as she smiles. “I took your advice and sat down with my son, and we had a wonderful talk. It made me realize how right you were about the stupid paranoid thoughts I was having about everyone. It completely turned things around.” She beams at me. “You really helped me.”