Once Upon a Lie Read Online Free PDF Page A

the cheek in a way that almost made her imagine that she had dreamed everything. A kiss between cousins. Family affection.
    She watched him slide past Heather, a hand lingering on her back just long enough to make his point, but not long enough to arouse suspicion in anyone else. If it rested much longer, she might have snapped, but as always with Sean, she was never entirely sure of what she had seen or what had just happened. The end result of being in Sean’s sights? An inability to discern truth from fiction.
    She texted Rebecca in the library and Heather, still lingering by the bar, to meet her at the car. She found Jack and dragged him away from the clutch of men who were enthralled by his semi-true stories. She had been sleepwalking, she decided, and now, for some reason that she couldn’t figure out, she was wide awake. They had left the party earlier than Jack wanted—just an hour after they had arrived—long after the girls wanted, and right when Maeve wanted.
    Jack had always said what a good girl she was; Margie had told her she was a good daughter. Stupid and manipulated was more like it. As she drove down the highway, away from the party and her cousins, all she could think was that good, stupid, or manipulated, all of that ends today.
    She was still at the sink, lost in thought when she heard Rebecca speak.
    “Kind of cute, too.”
    Maeve looked up, not realizing that her daughter had been talking the whole time. Her hands were still in the water, red and waterlogged after her extended mental trip down memory lane. “Cute?”
    “Yeah. Sean.”
    Maeve didn’t see it.
    “Like an older Ryan Gosling.”
    “Really?” In her mind’s eye, Sean looked like pure evil. To this day, she couldn’t describe one characteristic of his face beyond his eyes, which were blue, mean, and devoid of any emotion beyond hostility and menace.
    “Do the police know who did it?” Rebecca asked.
    Maeve flashed on Jack and his disappearing act. “No. I don’t think so.”
    “Probably a robbery, right?” Rebecca said, probing more, suspecting that she had hit on a topic her mother didn’t want to discuss. Usually, Maeve was chatty, bringing up things that she liked to talk about but that made her daughters sick to their stomachs. Topics like safe sex, responsible drinking, and a host of other things that she probably read were good topics to have conversations with her teens about but in which they were loath to participate. If she really wanted to get them talking, she made vague references to getting an eyebrow ring or a tattoo with their names on her forearm, anything to start a conversation. “Or something else?”
    The glass slid out of Maeve’s hand and clattered to the floor, breaking into more pieces than she would have imagined. Months later, she’d still find a shard, like a memory long forgotten, sticking up from the floor, waiting to pierce a bare foot or slice a toe. No, they’d reappear when she least expected them to, hopefully not doing any damage. She gripped the edge of the sink. “Probably a robbery. Right.” She bent down and picked up the largest piece of glass, the stem, and held it in her hands. “If I asked you to stay with me and never leave, what would you say?” she asked, intending for it to sound like one of her regular pleading jokes about missing Rebecca when she left for school. But this time even her daughter picked up on the hint of desperation in her voice. When Maeve took in Rebecca’s worried expression, she quickly added, “You can’t leave me here alone with Heather. You know that, right?”
    Bonded in their mutual fear and trepidation for the younger Callahan, a girl who could push her mother’s buttons with the greatest of ease, they managed to get back on track. “You are so screwed,” Rebecca said, laughing.
    Maeve hated that she couldn’t leave well enough alone, but that was an ingrained part of her nature. That and a feeling that if she failed to protect her