“It had been a false spring, a lie like all the other lies, and I found myself wondering it it would ever really come.”

“I wondered whether Mrs. Shears had told the police that I had killed Wellington and whether, when the police found out that she had lied, she would go to prison. Because telling lies about people is called slander.”

“I couldn’t help but feel as if everyone had lied about everything. We all had secrets. We all had a dark side to our innocent cover. I wondered what we would be like, if we had been completely honest with each other in the first place. Maybe more people would be alive, but then again, more people could be dead.”

“I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug.”

“Even though it had only been two weeks since I’d seen him last, it felt like months, and sometimes I found myself wondering if our brief time together had been real at all. Yeah, it had been real. I had a heart that was cracked in two as a souvenir of just how real it all was.”

“But in the same token, I wondered how I was still standing. Why wasn’t I six feet under from the shock of what had happened? How was I living, breathing, and lying like nothing had happened? Part of me might have been living, but the other part of me wished I was dead. I shuddered at the thought. I closed my eyes and pressed myself closer to Will. For the first time all morning, I felt safe.”