I am the girl who sees lies

The bees hold the space, rise and fall in a cloud, their steady hum soothing.
There’s a flurry and one of them separates itself from the mass,
drifts onto my face, brushes my cheek with tiny pollen-coated legs.
I hold my breath. Hold my finger near the curve of my jaw.
   Listen.
   The bee walks across my finger, slow as anything
and I can see through the gauzy wing,
to the detail of my skin.
   You aren’t looking in the right place.

May Harper is the girl who see lies. If you look her in the eye and tell a lie, May will see it. It’s a gift. Or is it? There are times when knowing other people secrets is a burden.
Her kind mother and her free-spirited aunt have learned to choose their words with care. Her beloved invalid father lives in a world of his own, lost in another time – the war he cannot forget. May believes she can see the deceits in everyone. Until, on her seventeenth birthday, a casual evasion hints at a secret hiding at the heart of her family. Determined to discover the truth, she starts listening at doors. And begins watching the faces of the people she loves best in all the world, but who she knows are hiding the biggest lie of all.