by Buffa, D. W.
Perhaps we're born with it, this sense of the difference between the truth and the lie, this belief that it is always better to tell the truth and always easier to lie. I had spent a year in a self-imposed exile because I had convinced someone to perjure himself, and everyone I had dealt with since had told lies of their own. Some of them had lied to conceal something they had done, and some of them had lied to protect other people. Maybe that was the difference that mattered, not whether you always told the truth but what you thought was worth lying for.
I sat down on a stone bench below the wooden porch and for a while did nothing but gaze out at the blank sky. The voices of the children had faded away, and the only sound was a slight breeze whispering through the fir trees. The same bird I had seen before flew back to the sycamore, clutching another twig in its mouth. Finally, I opened up the paper and saw the front page picture of Gwendolyn Gilliland-O'Rourke announcing her candidacy for governor. Her husband, Arthur O'Rourke, stood next to her, a slightly distracted look on his face, as if he was not quite certain why he was there.
Down below, outside the gate, the two boys had come back, and I could hear their laughter as they took turns jumping the curb. I put down the paper and leaned back against the side of the house, and wondered what might have happened if someone without lies and secrets of her own to protect had prosecuted the case against Alma Woolner.
I will never know what really happened that night between Alma and Russell Gray. I will never know for sure why she killed him, whether it was because he was ending their affair or whether she acted in self-defense. I cannot even guess how much she told Horace, and how much he knew without her saying a word. I am a stranger to what passes between husbands and wives. All I know for certain is that while Horace loved the law, he loved her more. It did not matter what she had done. He could not have lived a day without her, and by saving her, he saved himself. It was the least he deserved.
The End