If You Tell a Lie: A Thriller by Lucinda Berry

Author:Lucinda Berry [Berry, Lucinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2024-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

REGINA

Everyone wanted an explanation for my behavior. For me to put those thoughts—those terrible moments—into some kind of logical narrative that they could understand. All the investigators. The police. The judge. My attorneys. My own mom was the worst.

“I just don’t understand, honey. Tell me why you would do something like that. Please.” That’s what she’d beg while we waited for my trial, like I was purposefully keeping it from her.

How could you hurt your babies?

That was the other question everyone wanted to know, and I didn’t have an explanation for that one either. Anyone asking those questions has never lost touch with reality. Your thoughts aren’t linear.

And believe me. My behavior was as abhorrent to me as it was to other people.

I spent my first three years inside on suicide watch, locked in the mental health unit, because I kept trying to kill myself. I couldn’t see any way to live after what I’d done.

The next few years were just as dark as the first three, even though they moved me into the general population.

I didn’t get out of bed if I didn’t have to. I ended up in the mental health ward two other times, and I wasn’t there for a vacation. I’d ripped the tube out of my throat twice before they finally had to sedate me so they had a chance at saving me. I still didn’t know if I wanted to be alive most days.

Believe me: no one wanted an explanation for the things I’d done more than me. But I couldn’t explain why I believed killing my children would punish my husband when he was already dead, except that it made perfect sense to me at the time. Just like everything else I did.

Jared loved his boys more than life itself, and I just wanted to annihilate him for hurting those girls. I felt strong enough to rip the skin off his body with my bare hands too. That’s what I remembered the most—the white-hot fury pumping through my blood.

Finding out he’d sexually abused teenage girls unleashed the rage I’d kept buried inside me for over two decades—tucked away in the corner of my unconscious. At first, I’d been in disbelief when the police officer told me there was an official investigation opened against him. But then there was another girl. Followed quickly by another. They all said the same thing. Told the same story.

“You can’t deny this is happening, Regina.” That’s what the detective had said in the interrogation room down at the station. “Your husband is abusing these girls at camp, and we need you to think of any information that might be helpful in bringing him to justice.”

Jared became someone else in that moment. My abuser. Their abuser. And every other sick pervert who’d put their hands on a child. I knew exactly what those girls were going through. I used to be them.

My parents couldn’t afford day care, so they’d enrolled me in all the after-school programs at the Salvation Army, and staff walked us down to the YMCA every day.

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