Never Lie

by Freida McFadden

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

“Adrienne Hale,” he reads off the back cover. “Isn’t she that shrink who got murdered?”

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 stands there for a moment, waiting to see if I’ll offer her a tour or perhaps a cup of coffee. She wants to be my friend. Or at least, she wants a pretend friendship, where we gossip, do lunch at a café, and act as though we don’t dislike one another. I don’t have friends. I never have.

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.

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.

Of course, there’s one other possibility. Perhaps this house is haunted by the ghost of Adrienne Hale. Maybe her soul is restless because her murderer is still out there. Maybe she’s mad that I put on her red robe. Oh God, pregnancy is making me paranoid.

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.

People dislike when things don’t meet their expectations.”

From an evolutionary perspective, females are more reproductively valuable than males. After all, we can only carry one pregnancy at a time while men can spread their seed more freely. As a result, male mammals must “earn” female reproductive access by offering gifts. It’s certainly not unique to humans, although I would say sheep or cows rarely find themselves in this particular conundrum.