Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie Page A

ground. She got out, and the world looped around her. Slow here. Everything seemed at once brighter and less clear. With meticulous care, she picked her way back to the other car. Broken glass scrunched underfoot as she went. The radio blared out something obscene, and Maddie wished she could, too, but it wasn’t a possibility because it would hurt too much.
    The driver sat there, holding his head and moaning, and she bent to see if he was all right. He was a kid from the high school, a pale, weedy blond she recognized without putting a name to him, not one of the kids she’d had in class.
    “Are you all right?” she said. “Did you hit your head? Was your seat belt on?”
    “My car. I hit you hard. My car. ”
    “Your radio works.” You moron. All the anger she’d been repressing came flooding back, and she almost screamed at him before she remembered that he’d been in an accident, too, and there was no point in making him even more miserable even if he was a reckless degenerate. At least C.L.‘s accidents had always involved guardrails and ditches, not other people. The kid moaned again and refused to meet her eyes. She straightened and went back to look at her car.
    It was dead. The hatchback was mashed up into the backseat, both taillights crushed into powder. Knowing nothing about cars, she knew that no one would fix this one. It was too old.
    She should have screamed at the kid after all. Three times he’d come at her.
    Em got out. “Boy.”
    My car.
    “Does this mean we get a new car?” Em asked.
    The kid joined them. “Do you think your insurance will cover this?”
    Maddie turned to look at him. I could kill you where you stand. She began to walk back to her car, taking careful, measured steps.
    The boy followed her, and then the police pulled up.
    She sank back into her car and rested her head on the steering wheel. The officer, a boy who’d failed her senior art class five years ago, asked for her driver’s license, and Em fished it out of her bag for him. He was polite, but he asked too many questions, and she got confused, and he asked if she was all right.
    “I was going to be buried in this car,” she said, and he radioed for an ambulance for a possible concussion.

    Brent met her at the emergency room, tall, dark, rough-hewn, and in control. I was looking for you, she wanted to tell him, but he spoke first.
    “I’ll take care of everything.” Then he turned away from her to talk in deep, serious tones to the young doctor and the even younger nurse. I hate you, Maddie thought, but it didn’t seem like the time to mention it with Em right there. The room reeked of disinfectant and alcohol, and she tasted metal from the medication they’d given her. She was cold and the examining table was too high, and she wanted to go home, but Brent was still talking to the doctor.
    She watched her husband. Would another woman want him? He was getting a little pudgy, but he was still good-looking in a big, boyish, beefy sort of way. That dark lock of hair that always fell in his eyes. That endearing cowlick at the crown of his head. Those dimples. That cocky smile. That bastard. He walked toward her with his shoulders back, and the nurse appreciated it. Maddie pulled away as he came near.
    He was saying something to her, and she focused in on him from very far away.
    “Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault,” he was saying, his arm around Em, who leaned on him lovingly.
    “I know.”
    “The kid wasn’t insured, but our insurance will cover it.”
    “I know.”
    His hand tightened on Em. “And Emily’s all right, thank God.”
    “I know.”
    “You don’t even have a concussion. Just pulled muscles in your neck. Tylenol Three is all you need.”
    “I know.”
    Brent sighed, his solicitude morphing into exasperation before her eyes. “We can go now.”
    “I know.”
    The nurse gave him a glowing smile and Maddie’s painkillers, and he walked them out to the Cadillac, putting Em in the