Page 33 - TruthAboutLyingFinal

Nicholas Boothman
“I’m not asking it to.”
“And you definitely don’t get to build some truth machine because you’re suddenly ashamed of yourself.”
He almost argued.
Then he didn’t.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.
“That’s obvious.”
“I mean it. I don’t know how to be honest without turning it into another performance.”
Claire wiped her face.
For the first time since he arrived, her anger shifted into something sadder.
“The truth doesn’t fix things, Henry. It just shows you what’s broken.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t. Not yet.” She came back to the table. “Honesty can be cruel. It can be lazy. It can be used like a weapon. People say ‘I’m just being honest’ when what they mean is ‘I want permission to hurt you.’”
He nodded.
“And lies aren’t all the same,” she said. “Some lies hide crimes. Some lies keep children alive until they’re old enough to leave. Some lies get people through the night.”
“I’m not trying to punish those people.”
“But you might.”
The sentence sat between them.
There it was. The thing he had not wanted to see.
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