Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) by Stephie Smith

before I gave in and reached for one too. The instant I touched it, Mom giggled. Her giggle is the same as the smirk I’d grown up with. Mom has simply learned that a nervous giggle can be pulled off with less criticism than a self-satisfied smirk.
    “Oh my,” she said with that giggle. “You’re having dessert after eating all that food?”
    “Everyone else is on their second or third brownie and I haven’t even had one ,” I whined. There I was, on the defensive, and I hadn’t done a damned thing.
    “I know, dear, but they don’t have to watch their weight, do they?”
    Now what the hell did she mean by that? We all had to watch our weight, even Katherine, who at different times in her life had been twenty pounds too heavy. Hilary and Nicole both gained weight more quickly than I did, and Marci, who hadn’t come up with the world’s best brownie recipe for nothing, would have been an oinker long ago if she didn’t periodically have all her fat sucked out by the cosmetic surgeon.
    I‘d really been looking forward to that brownie, and Mom had spoiled it for me. I should have been used to the disappointment since Mom had been stealing my joy since I’d been old enough to have any. I looked around the table. Neither Katherine nor Nicole would meet my gaze, Hilary gave me a pitying look, and Marci smirked and made a big show of biting into another brownie. She was probably glad I’d been discouraged; it meant more brownies for her.
    “So, what are you here for anyway?” I asked a bit too sharply. I had a million things to do and if I couldn’t enjoy my dessert, I wanted to get to work.
    “Whewie, whewie, whewie!” said Mom. This is a sound she makes whenever she’s nervous. It’s sort of a cross between letting all her air out with a whistle and saying whew.
    Marci rolled her eyes at the sound and Hilary bit back a smile, but the fact that Mom had gone from giggling to whewie told me the conversation would take a nerve-racking turn.
    “Just jump on in,” I said to no one in particular though I was looking at Katherine.
    “Well, here’s the thing,” Katherine said. “We know you haven’t asked any of us for money to pay this fine, but we’d like to all go in together to take care of it for you. It wouldn’t be a loan; it would be a gift. And you—”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, bristling at the thought of Katherine fixing things for me, “but I really have to just go ahead and say no right here so we aren’t wasting time. I’m not paying the fine. Can’t you see how stupid that would be? The first fine comes up at the ninety-day mark, but after that, until the yard is cleaned up, I have to pay the same fine every thirty days. It would be ludicrous to consider paying it even one time.”
    “I know! Ten percent of the property value!” said Marci. “That’s outrageous!”
    I gave her a squinty-eyed look. “How did you know it was ten percent?”
    She made a few quick, desperate glances around the table, but everyone else seemed fascinated by my décor. “I don’t know. Isn’t it ten percent? I must have heard it somewhere. And what difference does it make? I remember David had to pay a fine once, and it never would have happened if he had only listened to me. Why, he—”
    Nicole groaned, cutting Marci off before she could finish the story. Marci managed to bring her ex-husband, David, into every family conversation. She acted as if he’d broken her heart and she couldn’t get over him when she was the one who’d done the heartbreaking. Bringing him into the conversation was a ploy to turn talk around to herself, making her the victim with David as villain. It had nothing to do with David’s actual behavior or her ill feelings toward him. It was just that we all knew him, so he was the best scapegoat.
    With narrowed eyes, I turned my gaze from one sister to the other, waiting to see if someone caved and blurted out how they knew the exact amount of my fine. No one did.
    “I have