The Lies We Told Read Online Free PDF

brave facade. I needed to work with Adam. Better that he saw me as a competent physician than a woman who could still be unnerved by the past.
    “Yes,” I said simply. “We are.”
    “You’re so lucky to have a sib.”
    “You don’t?” I finally got around to picking up my spoon, but I was so intent on our conversation that I didn’t even consider dipping it into the stew.
    He shook his head, swallowing a mouthful of barbecued pork. “No family,” he said. “Lost my parents when I was fifteen.”
    I drew in a breath of surprise. The urge to tell him my own story expanded in my chest, but it was a story I never told. “Both at once?” I asked. “An accident?”
    “Exactly. They were coming back from a party. Drunk driver.”
    “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Did you live with relatives then?”
    “Didn’t have any of them, either. Just grandparents who were too frail to take me. So I did the foster home thing.”
    “Was it hard?” I’d been spared foster care. I ate a spoonful of the stew. I loved Mama Dip’s Brunswick stew, but now I barely tasted it.
    “I got into a good one,” he said, blotting his lips with his napkin. “Unusual to be able to stay in one foster home for years, but I did. I’m still in touch with them. Good people.”
    “You’re so—” I smiled “— upbeat .”
    “Just born that way.” He shrugged. “Extra serotonin or something. It got me through.”
    I ate another spoonful of stew, still not tasting it. “I was fourteen,” I said.
    “Fourteen?”
    “When my parents died.”
    He set his fork down and leaned back in his chair. “You’re kidding, ” he said. “You, too? An accident?”
    I hesitated. I didn’t want to go there, much as I longed to tell him every detail of my life. “Yes,” I lied.
    “Did you end up in foster care, too?”
    “No.” I looked down at the stew. “Rebecca—my sister—was eighteen, and she wouldn’t let it happen. She took care of me. She made it work.”
    “You were lucky.”
    “Incredibly.”
    “Where does your sis—Rebecca—live when she’s not on assignment?”
    “Here. Well, in Durham. She lives with Dorothea Ludlow. Do you know who she—”
    “The DIDA founder,” he said. “Cool lady. Your sister lives with her? She’s her—” He raised his eyebrows. Clearly he did know about Dorothea.
    “No. Dorothea’s in a committed relationship with an artist named Louisa Golden. They have this beautiful Victorian, and Rebecca rents the upstairs.”
    “What’s your relationship status?”
    “You are so blunt.” I smiled. “You just…you think of a question and it pops out of your mouth.”
    “Does that bother you?”
    I thought about it. “I like it, actually,” I said, “and I’m not in a relationship.”
    “Amazing,” he said. “You’re pretty and smart and a catch. You’ve been working too hard, huh?”
    People always said I was pretty, which meant average looking, which was good enough. Rebecca was beautiful though, and a force of nature. There were pictures of her on the DIDA Web site working in the field. No makeup, her short brown hair messy and unkempt, a sick child in her arms. The image of her could take your breath away. Even though I was the blonde, blue-eyed, creamy-skinned sister, I seemed to disappear next to her. It had sometimes been hard growing up in her shadow.
    “How about you?” I asked.
    “Divorced. Two years ago. Super woman, but she changed her mind about wanting kids.”
    “You mean…changed her mind which way?”
    “We went into it—we were married four years—we went into it talking about having a couple of kids. Several, really. Had the names picked out. All that rose-colored kind of fantasizing. I crave family, for obvious reasons.”
    I nodded. I understood completely.
    “Frannie was a reporter for one of the TV stations in Boston. She got caught up in her career and just totally changed her mind. It was bad. Hard when you still love each other and get along well