Excerpt from The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She had tried to tell him so many times—during their Netflix binges, on the way to Firestone to get an oil change, or in bed when they recapped their days before falling asleep at night. Those times when they lay side by side, the quiet of the dark would sometimes give her permission to speak, and she rehearsed what she might say. Remember when we saw that cute kid at the mall? Well, I have one of those. Or You wouldn't judge me if you found out I had a kid out there somewhere but didn't know where, would you? All of it sounded ridiculous and impossibly wrong when she played it out in her head.

A man took pride in his seed, a flag in the ground that said he'd been there. A Black man trying to find his way needed something to call his own, a part of him that would endure beyond anything the world threw at him. Ruth's son didn't grow from Xavier's seed.

"Not now. Not tonight," Ruth said, peeling his hand from her thigh.

"Okay, you've had a long day. Just let me hold you." They repositioned themselves until they were spooning, her back pressed against his chest with his arms folded around her.

Xavier had always been a patient man, proposing three times before she was finally convinced that happily ever after could be hers, too.

"You'd be the perfect mother," he'd whisper to her on the street as they watched grimy kids with potato chip crumbs at the corners of their mouths being cursed and dragged by baby-faced mothers.

Ruth couldn't tell her husband that she was no better than those young women and, actually, probably even worse, since she'd walked away from the life she'd created, leaving some other, nameless, faceless woman to mother her child.

Excerpted from The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson. Copyright © 2021 by Nancy Johnson. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.