Tell Me Lies Read Online Free PDF

refrigerator and hand it to Maddie. “If you’re finished barfing, you can help. Grater’s in the second drawer behind you.”
    Maddie scowled at her. “There’s something wrong here.”
    Treva dropped the spoon in the bowl again and braced herself on the butcher block. “I’m just crazy right now. I have a lot on my mind. And I hate him.” She focused on Maddie. “All right, enough stalling. What did he do this time?”
    Maddie stood and got the grater and a bowl out of Treva’s cupboard. Then she began to grate the cheese into the bowl so she wouldn’t have to meet Treva’s eyes. “I found black lace crotchless underwear under the front seat of his car. It rattled me a little.”
    “Oh.” Treva blinked. “Well, yeah. That would rattle me, too. Crotch-less underwear, huh?” She bit her lip. “Beth?”
    “I don’t know.” Maddie grated harder. “They didn’t have a name tag. I don’t think I care. I mean, Beth didn’t make me any promises, Brent did. If I was a good person, I’d feel sorry for Beth.”
    “Oh, cut me a break.” Treva went back to her manicotti. “I know you’re the original good girl, but that’s pushing it.”
    “Okay, look, I don’t like her,” Maddie said. “She slept with my husband, and I still want to spit when I see her. But it was awful for her. She thought she was doing the right thing by coming and telling me, and it just blew up in her face.” She stopped grating to remember Beth’s face, blank with incomprehension as Brent told her it was over. “I think she loved him.”
    Treva snorted and Maddie went back to grating. Grating was a pretty good anesthetic. You had to be careful of your knuckles and remember to turn the cheese, but when you were done, you had grated cheese. Not every form of distraction came with a by-product. From now on, she was grating her own cheese. “You need one of those plastic boxes with the grater in the lid,” she told Treva. “I think Rubbermaid makes it. Or Tupperware.”
    “I have so much Rubbermaid and Tupperware now that I have to buy more Rubbermaid to organize it,” Treva told her. “I’ll probably die from fluorocarbon poisoning. Forget plastic and tell me you really are going to divorce the son of a bitch this time.”
    Maddie flinched. “Maybe I’ll just kill him. Except that I’d screw that up, too. Maybe I could hire somebody to kill him. The paperboy hates him, too. Maybe we could do a deal.”
    Treva pounced. “Do you hate him?”
    Did she? She was furious with him for getting them all into this mess, but that didn’t mean she hated him. She wasn’t sure she cared enough about him to hate him. Dislike was in the picture, of course. “Only if he’s having an affair,” she told Treva. “If he isn’t having an affair, I only don’t like him. It’s the cheating part that’s going to make me want him dead in twisted wreckage on the interstate.”
    “That would be good, too,” Treva said. “If we knew a brake line from a garden hose, we could cut his.”
    “We could cut them both just to make sure,” Maddie said, grateful for any change of subject. “Except that would ruin Gloria’s life because she lives for the neighborhood grass.”
    “I heard Gloria’s getting a divorce,” Treva said. “Call your mother and find out why. If I’ve heard about it, your mother has photocopies of the complaint.”
    Maddie winced. “That’s the way it’s going to be for me, too, isn’t it? The wires will be humming, and people will be very sympathetic, and they’ll pat Em on the head, and her teachers will call and say they understand why her work has fallen off, and the kids will ask her about it on the playground.”
    “Em will survive.” Treva stuffed another manicotti.
    “I want more for her than survival,” Maddie said. “I want warmth and love and security. She loves Brent so much.”
    Treva looked at her with visible contempt. “So you’re going to stay with a cheating scum for the sake of your