I wanted to say that her teacher had called, that I knew she hadn’t been attending school, and that I couldn’t understand why she had lied to me.
Instead, I remembered something my sister once told me about raising teenagers: if you make them feel cornered, they sometimes become more interested in escaping than in telling the truth.
So I asked one more question.
“Is everything okay at school?”
For a fraction of a second, something changed in her expression.
Fear.
It was there and gone so quickly that I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching closely.
“Yes,” she answered.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, Mom!”
She grabbed her backpack and marched down the hallway.
A moment later, her bedroom door slammed.
I sat alone at the kitchen table.
She had lied to me.
Not once, but repeatedly.
And whatever she was hiding, it was serious enough that she couldn’t look me in the eye while answering a simple question.
