Shortly after my return from Last Run Shelter, Rebecca and I shared the truth about the night of our parents’ murders with each other, twenty years too late to save ourselves from the guilt of our separate secrets. I’d been afraid she would blame me if she knew the role I’d played, and she’d been afraid I’d blame her for the same reason.
“We were both to blame,” she said, when we’d each revealed the truth.
I’d shaken my head, remembering Simmee’s words to me when I’d told her the story. “Neither of us was to blame,” I said. “We weren’t the ones who pulled the trigger.”
Last week, Rebecca and Adam told me they’re expecting a baby in May. I know they were nervous about telling me, just as they were nervous in February, when they told me how close they’d become while I was missing, and just as they were nervous in April, when they told me they were getting married. By the time they’d told me about their relationship, Adam and I had been separated for two months, a parting that had been as amicable as that sort of thing can be. Simmee had worried that she was the cause of our breakup, but I assured her it would have happened whether she’d been living with us or not. Adam and I wanted different things. It was both that simple and that complex. I’m glad for him and Rebecca, and now that I’ve started the process to adopt a little girl from Ethiopia on my own, I think they finally believe me. For the first time since my parents died, I feel as though I’m part of a real family.
So, for a short time, there had been a triangle between the three of us, of which I’d been completely unaware. My sister, my husband and me. Now the triangle has become a circle, and a circle can encompass so much more. It can hold not only the three of us, but a young woman and her baby, as well, and it will expand to take in whatever children will follow, and whatever men might wander into our midst. Whatever friends.
Every family has a story, and I love that those stories are etched in sand rather than granite. That way we can change them. We can bury the lies and embrace the truth.
And we can move forward.
Acknowledgments
As usual, I owe the biggest thank-you to my significant other, John Pagliuca. I don’t think John’s ever said, “Can we talk about it later?” when I’ve needed to think out loud about my story. Thank you, John, for all you do to help me write.
While researching The Lies We Told, I stumbled across an article by emergency room physician, Hemant Vankawala, in which he described his experiences working with evacuees in the New Orleans airport after Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Vankawala became my gracious expert on medical relief work, and I don’t know how I would have written about the fictional DIDA organization without him. Other medical advisors were Marti Porter, R.N., and paramedic Cass Topinka. Thank you all for being so generous with your time and information, as well as for the work you do.
For helping me learn about my setting, thank you Glen Pierce, Sterling Bryson, Tori Jones, Kim Hennes, Dave and Elizabeth Samuels, Bland Simpson, Dixie Browning and Brooks Preik of Two Sisters’ Bookery in Wilmington, NC.
For coming up with the name Last Run Shelter, thank you faithful reader and blog commenter, Margo Petrus. Gina Wys helped me understand what life is like after a hurricane. Dave Samuels taught me all I needed to know about helicopters. And Vivian I. Vanove gave me the inside skinny on the Wilmington airport.
For their various contributions, thank you Nellie Mae Batson, Gabe Bowne, Lynnette Jahr, Julie Kibler, Mary Kilchenstein, Ann Longrie, Melinda Smith, Betty Sullivan, Kathy Williamson, and Julia Burney-Witherspoon and her organization, www.cops-n-kids.org.
For brainstorming help and all-around support and friendship, I’m grateful to the six other members of the “Weymouth Seven”: Mary Kay Andrews, Margaret Maron, Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Alexandra Sokoloff and Brenda Witchger.
For their invaluable feedback and for always being there for me, my editor Susan Swinwood and my agent Susan Ginsburg.
And finally, thank you Denise Gibbs, who helped in too many ways to count. You rock!
Reader’s Guide
What do you think originally attracted Maya and Adam to each other? When the book opens, Maya hopes that the baby she’s expecting will change her marriage for the better. Do you think she really believes that? Do you think Adam feels the same way?
How do you feel about Maya keeping her abortion a secret from Adam? Is there room for secrets in a marriage? Where do you draw the line?
Why do you think Maya was slow to reveal her marital problems to Rebecca?
If Rebecca had never been in the picture, do you think Maya and Adam’s marriage could have worked out? Why or why not?
What role did Maya and Rebecca’s relationships with their parents play in their adult lives?
Discuss Rebecca’s love/hate feelings toward Maya. What were the roots of Rebecca’s resentment? What hints did you have into the true nature of Rebecca’s feelings for Maya? How do you think she felt when she learned Maya was alive? Which emotion was stronger?
Relationships between sisters—indeed, between siblings—are often complex. Could you relate to the relationship between Maya and Rebecca?
Maya is described at one point as having been a happy-go-lucky child who changed dramatically after the murder of her parents. Do you think it’s possible for one event to have such a strong influence on the rest of someone’s life?
Rebecca is drawn as an athlete, while Maya is the brain in the family. Yet Rebecca was first to enter medical school. What do you think prompted her to become a doctor? Rebecca begins to question her motivation for joining DIDA, wondering if it was altruism, a need for excitement, or something else. What do you think was her motivation?
At one point in the story, Rebecca thinks that Maya is a better person than she is despite Rebecca’s work with DIDA. Why do you think she feels that way and what sort of impact does that belief have on her?
One of the strongest themes in the book is that of self-forgiveness. What does each sister have to forgive herself for in order to move on? Do you think either of them is able to do that successfully?
A yearning for a child is another central theme in the story. Adam, the last in his family line, longs for a biological child. Maya longs for any child to nurture. And Rebecca, who never wanted a child to begin with, suddenly finds herself experiencing a baby hunger of her own. i) Can you understand Adam’s longing for a biological child and the extent he’s willing to go to have one? Do you think he’s being fair to Maya in his quest?
ii) Discuss Maya’s decision to end her fight for a biologi cal child. What is the push/pull that went into that decision? How did her time at Last Run Shelter help her make that decision?
iii) Rebecca’s baby hunger is perhaps most striking, since her true feelings seemed to creep up on her. She is a classic example of having made a decision about something important when she was younger and not acknowledging the change in herself over the years until it suddenly hits her in the face. Can you relate to that? How and why do people hide their true yearnings from themselves?
Few things are as horrific as not knowing what has become of someone you love. Rebecca wonders if Maya is dead or alive, if her death came quickly, if she’s wandering in the woods alone. What impact does this not knowing have on her? Does it change the core of who she is and if so, in what way?
Families can get comfortable with the status quo, with each person carrying out the role they have played since they were young. When one person changes, it can throw the entire family into turmoil and the family may subconsciously try to keep that person from changing. This is sometimes true, for example, in families in which one parent is an alcoholic. It’s the devil the family knows, and members of the family may subconsciously sabotage the alcoholic’s recovery. How does this concept come into play with Rebecca and Maya? Do you think Rebecca wanted Maya to succeed in her DIDA work at the airport? What did Rebecca have to gain by Maya remaining fearful? Does this also hold true for Maya? If Rebecca changes, how might that change impact Ma
ya?
Were you hoping Maya and Adam would end up back together? Discuss any tension you felt as you read about Rebecca and Adam’s growing closeness. In chapter 41, Rebecca and Adam come close to making love. Would your feelings about either or both of them have changed if they’d given in to that desire?
Simmee came to represent certain things for Maya. Maya talks about Simmee as sister, daughter and friend. Describe the evolution of their relationship from Maya’s perspective.
Why do you think neither Tully nor Lady Alice told Larry that Maya needed to leave Last Run Shelter? Did they have the same motivation or were they each operating from a different need to keep her there? What do you believe were Tully’s true feelings for Simmee?
The sisters ultimately reverse their roles, in sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic ways, with Rebecca becoming weaker and Maya becoming stronger. Where do you see this happening? What is the cause of this change in each of them and what impact does it have on them?
The word “lies” in the title is used both literally and figuratively. Discuss all the lies referred to in the title.
In the opening of the book, Maya says that every family has a story. The author implies that not only does every family have a story, but each individual in that family does as well. How does this fit for you and your family? Do you think a person can ever truly change his or her family story?
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5606-8
THE LIES WE TOLD
Copyright © 2010 by Diane Chamberlain.
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Diane Chamberlain, The Lies We Told
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