Ethan waves to me from the garden. I love him so much. I never thought it would be possible to love again after what Cody did to me. But here I am. Married to a wonderful man. And the two of us share a secret that will bind us together for the rest of our lives. Both of us will take that secret to our graves.
At least, I will.
Sometimes I wonder about Ethan. He gets nervous when people go out into our garden. He was so anxious about the grass, I almost thought he was going to crack for a while. If somebody came around and started asking questions, I’m not sure how he would hold up.
Hopefully, that won’t ever happen. But if it does, I’m prepared to take care of the situation.
After all, my mother always said that the only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead.
THE END
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Acknowledgments
As I was finishing this final draft, I was searching through some of my previous manuscripts for general acknowledgments that I could just kind of copy, because—let’s face it—I always thank the same people. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any generic ones. I had one where I was talking about my husband trying to convince me to write about conjoined cow twins, one where I said my father was a serial killer （or wasn’t—not clear）， and one where I confessed to multiple unsolved murders as well as the locations where I buried the bodies.
（Oh wait, I think I deleted that last one. Never mind.）
Do other authors obsess so much about the acknowledgments? No? Just me? And the crazy part is the thanking section only ever ends up being like a paragraph.
On that note…
Thank you to my mother, for reading and rereading this one. Thanks to Jen, for the thorough critique as always, and in general, thanks to my entire Kickass Women Writers’ Power Group （I just made up that name right now, but I think they’ll be cool with it） including Beth and Maura. Thanks to Kate for the great suggestions. Thank you to Nelle for a thoughtful critique. Thank you to Avery for critique and cover advice. Thanks to Pam for cover advice, and also for your awesome mentorship. Thanks to Val for your eagle eye.
And thank you to my father, who for the first time ever, read a book I wrote prior to publication, so that he could give me advice from the perspective of a practicing psychiatrist, including, “Manolos are not boots!” （Yes, they can be. Stick to psychiatry, Dad.）
Did you enjoy reading Never Lie?
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Also, even though I have managed to cure the superhuman strains of mutant typos that have invaded my books, now there are all these typo variants I can’t seem to get rid of. If you find any typos and point them out to me so I can fix them, I would be paternally graceful.
And now please enjoy a short excerpt of my new book, The Inmate…
The Inmate
As the prison doors slam shut behind me, I question every decision I’ve ever made in my life.
This is not where I want to be right now. At all. Who wants to be in a maximum-security penitentiary? I’m going to wager nobody wants that. If you are within these walls, you may have made some poor life choices along the way.
I sure have.
“Name?”
A woman in a blue correctional officer’s uniform is looking up at me from behind the glass partition just inside the entrance to the prison. Her eyes are dull and glassy, and she looks like she doesn’t want to be here any more than I do.
“Brooke Sullivan.” I clear my throat. “I’m supposed to meet with Dorothy Kuntz?”
The woman looks down at a clipboard of papers in front of her. She scans the list, not acknowledging that she heard me or that she knows anything about why I’m here. I glance behind me into the small waiting area, which is empty except for a wrinkled old man sitting in one of the plastic chairs, reading a newspaper like he’s sitting on the bus. Like there isn’t a barbed wire fence surrounding us, dotted with hulking guard towers.
After what feels like several minutes, a buzzing sound echoes through the room—loud enough that I jump and take a step back. A door to my right with the red vertical bars slowly slides open, revealing a long, dimly lit hallway.
I stare down the hallway, my feet frozen to the floor. “Should… should I go in?”