Caught in a Lie

The look on my sister’s face was unmistakable. She knew I was lying to her and she was both furious and disappointed in me.

Mom and Dad may have been away or out for the evening when the phone rang the evening before. Karen picked up and answered the ring.

“Hi! Is Carolyn there?”

“No, she’s spending the night with a friend. May I take a message?” Karen politely asked.

“Just tell her Kim called.”

Kim? Karen thought. “Kim who?” she asked.

“Kim Martin.”

With an edge now in her voice, Karen said, “Sure. I’ll tell her.”

The problem was that I had told Karen I was spending the night at Kim’s house. In our household, it went without saying that when I said Kim, I meant Kim Martin even though I rarely said her last name.

At first my sister must have been a bit worried. I know I would have been if confronted with a circumstance I wasn’t expecting. Could I have misunderstood? Has something happened that I should be concerned about? are questions I would have asked myself.

Karen greeted me the morning after Kim’s phone call with fire in her eyes. The look was mixed with a pinch of suspicion. “Where have you been?” my fourteen-year-old sister interrogated. I was amazed that she should ask me this and I couldn’t understand the tone in her voice at all.

“At Kim’s,” I answered, looking a bit down my nose at her.

“No you weren’t,” she accused. “Kim called last night asking for you.”

Without missing a beat I countered with incredulity, “Kim Lawrence called here?” 

For a moment, Susan’s expression changed from confidently knowing she’d caught the rat in a trap to cautiously unsure. “No,” she responded, “Kim Martin.” 

I was fairly certain I’d won this round as I tossed off the coup de gras. “Well, I spent the night at Kim Lawrence’s, silly.” 

I probably shouldn’t have added the silly. It was unnecessary and a mean. Even so, I’m pretty sure Karen didn’t believe me. She wasn’t sophisticated enough yet to have it completely figured out. The pieces didn’t quite all add up but she wasn’t sure why. If Mom had been in charge of getting to the bottom of the discrepancy, things would have turned out quite differently because the truth was, I had spent the night with my boyfriend. 

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2023