A Whole Lie by Kim Hutchinson

A half-truth is a whole lie.                                                    Yiddish proverb   Just Another Word For So, I saw a car just like yours, she says, parked behind that nurse’s house. On the corner. Must be a coincidence, he says, turning away. The car just looked like mine. Rage and danger bubble under his words. So did the license plate, she thinks, but she dare not say. She dare not. An Everyday Story A boy rounds a corner on his way to work and stands waiting for a light. Across the street, he sees a pretty girl. Later that day, she’s in the elevator. He says hello. She smiles. A few years later, now a harried married man, he leaves for work every day at 8:14. Today, he leaves at 8:05. He stops for coffee at the same place as always. He bumps into an old girlfriend; he hasn’t seen her in years. They chat, and he finds out that she’s divorced and lonely. A decade later, he’s a middle-aged man. His youngest daughter, ten years from her sisters, the apple of his eye, brings home a new friend, a little boy. He knows the friend’s mother. We dated in high school, he tells the boy. But he’s startled. The boy looks a lot like he did at that age. What a coincidence, says his wife, avoiding his eye.

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