The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

“Yet the girls are always small. Inconsequential marks on a canvas that’s alarmingly wide. Their arrival heralds the second stage of a painting, after I’ve laid down a background of earth and sky in hues with appropriately dark names. Spider black. Shadow gray. Blood red. And midnight blue, of course. In my paintings, there’s always a bit of midnight.”

Here, Emma describes her painting process. It is always the same, indicating her work’s obsessive, repetitive nature. Her admission that there is “always a bit of midnight” in her paintings suggests the lasting effects of the events that transpired at Lake Midnight, establishing the theme of The Impact of Trauma and the Reliability of Memory.

“‘It’s natural to be afraid. Friends of yours died.’

‘Vanished,’ I say.

‘But they are dead, Emma. You know that, right? The worst thing that could happen has already taken place.’”

Emma’s reluctance to acknowledge the girls as dead foreshadows Vivian’s return at the end of the novel. Emma holds onto a shred of doubt concerning the girls’ fate, and she turns out to be partially correct. However, her doubt has nothing to do with actual evidence, instead stemming from her own trauma. This idea of being right for the wrong reasons recurs throughout the novel and relates to its exploration of The Blurred Lines Between Truth, Lies, and Deception.

“Although he knows the basics of what took place, there’s still plenty I haven’t told Marc. Things that happened at Camp Nightingale. Things that happened afterward. The real reason I always wear the charm bracelet, the birds clinking each time I move my left arm. To admit them out loud would mean that they’re true. And I don’t want to confront that truth.

Some would say I’ve been lying to Marc. To everyone, really. But after my time at Camp Nightingale, I vowed never to lie again.

Omission. That’s my tactic. A different sin entirely.”

Although Emma might not lie outright, she isn’t honest about her past, and much of what happened when she was a teenager remains a closely held secret. This illustrates the hazy distinctions between truth and lies that appear throughout the novel. Emma also lies to herself, trying to convince herself that “omission” is superior to lying.