The Lies That Bind Us All

 

The Lies That Bind Us All

Lies are the cartilage of relationships. They bend, cushion, and hold everything together—until they don’t.

I spend a lot of time talking about lies—mostly because I write about people who kill and the people who investigate them. In fiction, like in life, the truth is often inconvenient, and lies keep everything moving forward. Not grand deceptions—just the small, habitual falsehoods that make it easier to stay in relationships, keep a job, or go one more day without imploding.

It's the truths that stop things cold.

Lies come up in my teaching, too. According to my students, people lie about 40% of the time. We're not talking about deception so much as conveying falsehoods. And there's no way to discern intent; the best liars beat detectors all the time. This is why the engine running in the background of the latest Keegan book runs on lies. Heck, it's in the title.

As a fan of House, I've adopted a little bit of the 'everybody lies' mantra. And, although I am often cynical outwardly, I do hope that most lies we tell come from misinformation, misremembering, or plain ignorance. Couple that with a fascination for how experts rarely take their own advice, I wanted to put a detective into a situation where he faces lies he didn't catch. From his wife—and she’s navigating the same minefield of half-truths and omissions from him 

Are detectives always detecting or do they get blindsided in their own personal lives? The answer is yes.

Keegan's been my character for twenty years. As I've grown, he has...sorta grown. I think I keep him the same for nostalgia. He has developed an ability to doubt himself and I wanted to see what would happen when the truth catches him off guard. 

By the time the events of The Lies That Bind Us come, Keegan's got a pretty good life. He and Pauline have done it all. He's got a new baby, two great daughters, an advancing career and a television show. His protective outer shell shrinks as he believes he's  made it. When you've rebuilt your house and you stand back to admire it, you look up, not down at the foundation. That, you take for granted.

And that's when things start to crumble.

He saw cracks in between Never Look Back and The Lies That Bind Us. Pauline suffered an identity crisis after an undercover case. But he thought they navigated that. Instead, he lied to himself, thinking the danger never really seeped in. They dodged a bullet and everything would be okay. They were strong, they had a good foundation. He was there for Pauline and things would go back to normal.

All lies.

Because there is no normal. And someone who goes so far for independence (no spoilers) doesn't just snap back into conformity. A surface read makes Keegan look right for most of the book. Pauline quickly agrees. And there's evidence to back this up. Only relationships are not that black and white. We swim in the gray, act on nuance, and lie through our teeth to get through the day.

Our lives rest on a foundation of lies we tell ourselves.

The biggest lie is Pauline's. Apologizing as a means of de-escalation only delays the inevitable and blocks progress. Unlike Keegan, Pauline does not get an easy separation between work and home life. What they consider a gift, Keegan's lucrative television contract, zooms in on the difference between them. He gets what he wants while Pauline needs to consider the impact of her choices on her family. She conspires against herself until the part that felt alive at her darkest moment roars back to the surface.

And then, it's too late.

At the heart of the book’s backstory is a question: Can we ever face the real truths about our relationships? Many of us can diagnose others if we just look close enough. This couple is co-dependent, those siblings compete too much. Few of us do it with our own friendships, family connections, or home lives. It's a defense mechanism. It's better to think everything is fine and plod forward than to find out. That takes work and does damage. You're digging up bodies in the dark. You can't know when the shovel hits bone or exhumes a zombie. And Pauline hits the wrong kind of pay dirt. 

Truth often serves us better when it stays underground.

The Lies That Bind Us focuses on how the untruths we tell, consciously or not, serve as connective tissue for our relationships. They keep us together far more than any truths we tell. Because we don't want truths; we want comfort. 

And what truth brings comfort? Assumed truths do You don't want someone to tell you how your new haircut really looks. If you did, you'd show a picture of it before you got the cut. You ask afterward  to feel better about a bad choice. We don't want criticism, we want reinforcement. And our closest relationships survive on those somewhat fabricated reinforcements. And that's okay.

As long as we keep it out of sight.

That person in your life that tells stone cold truths? You respect the heck out of them but rarely seek their counsel for the hard stuff. People don't go to psychics for advice, they go to hear what they want to believe. We don't want our significant others dropping truth bombs too often. We want to know that everything's okay. We want to hear that most when we suspect otherwise. That's not why we chose them. They showed the right balance between truth and lies.

What happens with the Keegans in Lies is that their falsehoods come to the surface. The connective tissue lies they've told get severed by a form of betrayal (again, no spoilers). That's where things get dicey. We believe our loved ones' beneficial lies until we catch them in a bad one.  We can no longer believe them. All their truths become lies and the bond dissolves.

But what do you do when this happens?

It's nice to think that we sit down and talk it through. That doesn't work when you doubt everything the other says. And it's tough when you've got a family and a job and that job includes investigating the murder of the mayor. Keegan tells himself he can't investigate his marriage and the death of the mayor at the same time. And dammit if we don't choose work over home nine out of ten times, mostly because it's clearer.

Ninety percent of my students said they would choose a career that invades on their home life. They actually expect this, understanding that it would impact their family. They found it noble for someone to give their life to their career. Maybe they are an aberration. I expected a 70/30 split going the other way.

Work gives Keegan something to hold onto. A case can be solved. There’s evidence, logic, closure. But marriage? That’s murky. No chain of custody. He thought it was fixed, permanent, stable. Turns out it flexes and bends when you’re not looking. Turns out it’s not concrete. It’s quicksand. When it works, one offers the rope to the other sinking. When it fails, they sink together but alone.

I got a unique chance to explore Pauline's side of things by having a dual narrative in Lies. It was necessary to see her thought process, her differing interpretations of their life. The funny thing is it came out with little deviation between them. That's because they lied to themselves and, subsequently to each other. 

And this is good. It's love in raw form.

Their relationship works because their foundation of lies came from true places within each other. That connective tissue is hard to dissolve. It can weaken but it can also repair itself. That's the work they have to do. That's the work we all have to do but few actually try.

We want our relationships, after the foundational period, to operate on autopilot. That's a recipe for disaster.

You'll have to read The Lies That Bind Us, to find out what happens. There are a few bombshells within it and I am happy with the overall message it sends. Lies get a bad rap. They are the sustenance of our social existence, part of the contract we sign with others. And we all tell our fair share of them. Me? Heck, I write fiction.

Unfortunately, like seeing how a magic trick is done, everything changes when the lies get exposed.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Drop a comment about lies, relationships, or whatever. I don't profess to be an expert in anything other than Keegan and Pauline, but I suspect I've touched on something we all know but just rarely pay attention to.