The High Price of Secrets

by Yvonne Lindsay

  Was she too late? Had she come this far only to fail? The awful possibility hit her in the chest with the weight of a well-aimed sledgehammer and she staggered, the movement attracting attention from the self-contained group that approached.

  Lorenzo’s dark eyes bored straight through her for a moment before he turned to Finn, anger suffusing his haggard features.

  “I thought you were keeping her away,” he said, the words sharp and clear on the air.

  “Papa!” Alexis remonstrated, tugging at his arm.

  But the words were said. Damning words that confirmed that Finn had not just been withholding information from her, he’d actively ensured she didn’t find her mother’s location. Hurt piled upon hurt.

  “I’m my own person,” Tamsyn said shakily, stepping up to the small group. “You can’t keep on pushing me away, hoping I’ll just disappear. I want to see my mother.”

  “You’re too late,” Alexis said softly. “Our mother passed away two hours ago. I’m sorry. If I’d known you were here—”

  “If you’d known, nothing!” Lorenzo spat. “She’s a Masters. You know what they did to your mother, how they broke her spirit.”

  “Enough!” Finn said firmly, stepping between Tamsyn and Lorenzo. “Now isn’t the time for recriminations. Alexis, take your father back to the hotel. I’ll look after Tamsyn.”

  Tamsyn stood there, numb and disbelieving. Her mother was dead? Every opportunity she’d had over the past four and a half weeks was irrevocably lost. Every question she’d ever want answered, every story she’d ever want told—gone. Forever.

  She couldn’t even summon a reaction as Finn took her arm and led her out toward the taxi rank. The journey to his hotel was swift and, before she knew it, she was in his room, a slug of brandy in a short tumbler thrust into her hands.

  “Drink, you’ve had a shock,” he insisted, cupping his hands over hers and lifting the glass to her lips.

  Automatically she obeyed, automatically she swallowed the burning liquid, felt its trail from her lips to her tongue and down to her stomach where it hit and spread, infusing her frozen senses with some sense of warmth.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice cold and empty. “Why did you keep me from her? I wouldn’t have hurt her. I just wanted my mother!”

  Her last words rose to a pained peak and tears brimmed in her eyes before they began to roll, one swiftly after the other, down her face.

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference, Tamsyn. Whatever you wanted from her, you wouldn’t have been able to get. I’m sorry, she was too sick.”

  “How can you say that? You never even gave me a chance.”

  Finn sighed and sat in the chair opposite her, his forearms resting on his knees, his head dropping between his shoulders for a minute before he lifted it and faced her.

  “For the last ten years Ellen has been battling early-onset dementia. It progressed dramatically in the past year. Coupled with that, she had underlying health problems created and subsequently exacerbated by her alcoholism. Her life has been a battle for a very long time. One she fought bravely.” He shoved a hand through his hair, making the ends spike in disarray. “Ellen wouldn’t have known you, Tamsyn. She didn’t even know Lorenzo or Alexis these past few weeks. She disappeared into a part of her mind where she could hide until she had to face the end.”

  “And you knew this all along?” Pain edged every word she uttered.

  “Yes.” The single word made her shudder. He started to reach for her, but his hand stopped halfway, clearly sensing his touch would not be welcome. “It wasn’t my choice to keep you in the dark. Not once I got to know you, once I understood that you hadn’t been deliberately staying away.”

  “Deliberately? What are you talking about?”

  “We always thought you knew she was still alive.”

  “But I told you the truth ages ago.”

  “I know that, and from that time forward I begged Lorenzo to let you see her—maybe not visit her, but at least see her—but he was adamant.” Finn dropped his head again.

  “Why not let me visit her?”

  “You have to understand, Tamsyn. After my father died, my mother couldn’t cope with what she saw as her failure to be a good farm wife, to be a good mother. I wasn’t allowed to see her for months, but when I did I was a reminder of all that she’d failed at. After my visit, she was so ashamed of herself that she stopped eating, stopped getting out of bed—until eventually she stopped living.

  “I did that to her. I know what it feels like to be the catalyst for something so awful it was beyond my comprehension at the time. Seeing you? Well, if Ellen had recognized you, given how traumatic her departure from Australia was—leaving you and Ethan behind—and how it’s colored her entire life since, who knows what would have happened? If she had recognized you it might have only caused her more pain, more guilt, more regret. It could have driven her to her death sooner.

  “I didn’t want you to go through what I went through. I didn’t want you to feel the same guilt, to have to live with that all your life.”

  Tamsyn pushed up from the chair and moved over to the bottle of brandy on the bureau against the opposite wall. She sloshed another generous measure into the glass and sipped it slowly before responding.

  “So that’s why you didn’t want her to see me. But you never told me that, never explained. You just kept me from being able to see her. That wasn’t your decision to make.”

  “No, it wasn’t. The decision to keep you away from Ellen was Lorenzo’s. Mine was in agreeing with him for, I believed, all the right reasons. Believe me, Tamsyn, you wouldn’t have wanted to remember Ellen the way she was before she died. She wouldn’t have wanted you to see her like that.”

  “I’ll never know now, will I? And you’ll have to forgive me,” she said, sarcasm beginning to color her voice an unpleasant shade, “if I find it difficult to believe you when you say you did any of this for me. From day one you lied to me. Tell me, was our affair a deliberate choice on your part? Did you set out to seduce me to distract me from finding her? Was everything we did together, everything we shared, all based on a lie?”

  Finn locked gazes with her and she saw the damning truth reflected back at her.

  “In the beginning, yes. But not later, Tamsyn. Definitely not later.”

  It didn’t matter to her now. His intent from the outset was clear. The lies aside, the hurt aside, he’d just confirmed to her that she was worth nothing—just as her father had done, just as Trent had done. Without another word, she carefully placed her glass back on the bureau, picked up her handbag and walked out.

  Twenty-Two

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  Finn shot a look of surprise at Alexis, pausing in his task of handling the details to bring Ellen’s body home to rest. He couldn’t lie to her, not this girl who’d grown into a beautiful young woman—one he regarded as a sister.

  “Yes,” he answered simply, then folded the papers they’d completed and pushed them back into an envelope before handing the envelope to her to return to the undertaker.

  “Then what are you still doing here?”

  “What?”

  “Go after her. I can cope with this, Finn. We’ve been expecting it a long time. I know Papa is beside himself with grief—despite the evidence in front of him he couldn’t let her go, couldn’t believe that one day she wouldn’t get well again. I did my grieving for the mother we both remember a long time ago. I’m sad now, but I know she’s finally at rest. It’s been a long time coming. Too long.”

  Finn’s throat choked up. She was right, on all counts. She didn’t need his help for this. And he had to get back to Tamsyn. He hadn’t had the heart to try to stop her when she’d left him today. He knew he’d done a number on her—had betrayed the fragile trust he’d painst
akingly rebuilt on the backbone of a very shaky start. But he owed it to her to go after her. To apologize, to convince her—

  His gut twisted. Could he convince her that his love was real? That he’d believed he was acting in her best interests as well? He wanted to believe the answer was yes…and feared that it was no. That’s why he was stalling, as if he could convince himself that she was back home waiting for him, loving him, as long as he wasn’t there to watch her pack her bags and leave. But sooner or later, he’d have to go home and see for himself.

  “I’ll head to the airport right now,” he said, throwing his meager supply of things into an overnight bag and heading for the door.

  He stopped briefly to give Alexis a kiss on the cheek.

  “Thank you,” he said simply.

  “It’s what I’m here for. To remind you sometimes that you’re not always right.”

  He gave a strangled laugh. Nothing changed between them. Even though she knew he’d been a complete ass with Tamsyn, and she’d soundly told him that not five minutes ago, they still had a connection that not even their eight-year age difference could sever. Friends, family. The lines had always been blurred, but one thing was certain. They were always there for one another and were always one hundred percent up front.

  “You’re growing cobwebs,” she said with a cocked eyebrow.

  “I’m gone. Wish me luck.”

  “You’re going to need more than that, but I’ll wish it for you anyway. Now, shoo!”

  He was gone.

  A last-minute ticket came at a premium, but Finn didn’t care. Money wasn’t the issue, he’d have paid whatever it took if the ticket could guarantee he’d be able to stop Tamsyn from leaving him. He was flooded with relief as he saw her rental car parked outside the front door to his home. The trunk was open. Clearly he was just in time.

  Her keys hung in the ignition and he pocketed them for safekeeping. If she still chose to leave after what he had to say, then he would have to watch her go, but in the meantime he wanted her to have to listen to him.

  He found her in their bedroom shoving the last of her things into her case. Her face was pale, her eyes holding a world of hurt as she looked up and saw him. She turned her attention back to her case, wrestling with the tab on the zipper and uttering a string of curses before the thing came off in her hand entirely. Defeated, she slumped onto the floor beside the case.

  “Need a hand?” he asked, stepping closer.

  “Go away,” she replied, her voice tearful, shaky.

  He had the distinct impression that if he reached out and touched her she’d shatter into a thousand pieces where she sat. She was clearly operating on her last reserve.

  “Don’t go, Tamsyn. Please?”

  “There’s nothing left for me here now. Do you hear me?” She turned her face to him, her beautiful lush mouth twisting as she repeated herself. “Nothing!”

  She’d meant the words to hurt him, and they had.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

  “Empty words,” she said, forcing her attention to trying to clip the zipper tab back on her case. “I don’t want to stay here anymore, I don’t want to see you anymore.”

  “I understand, you have every right to feel this way, but please stay. At least for Ellen’s funeral.”

  She uttered a sound, a bitter ringing laugh. “Your precious Lorenzo wouldn’t let me see her alive, what makes you think he’ll let me be around now she’s dead?”

  “He was only trying to protect the love of his life, the way I was trying to protect mine.”

  “Don’t give me that,” she said, her voice cracking under the strain of holding on to her anger, of holding back the tide of her grief. He knew how it felt. He was doing exactly the same thing himself. “The choices you made right from the beginning had nothing to do with what was best for me. You were his willing puppet all along. He must have commended you on going above and beyond the call of duty. You’re quite a guy.”

  “You deserved to see Ellen—we were both wrong to stop you. I saw that earlier on but I couldn’t convince him of that. I couldn’t go against him, not when I knew how much he loved her. He’d never have forgiven me if I let any harm come to her—just like I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to you.”

  “I don’t believe you. Why would you begin telling me the truth now?” She gave a small sound of satisfaction as she got the tab onto the zipper and managed to successfully close her case.

  “Because I love you and because I want you to stay.”

  She shook her head. “Good try, but not working.”

  Tamsyn rose fluidly to her feet and extended the handle of her bag. Finn rose to block her way.

  “Stay, at least for Alexis’s sake. She wants to meet you properly.”

  About to step around him, he was relieved to see that his words had temporarily stopped her in her tracks.

  “Alexis? She wants to talk to me?”

  “More than that, she really does want to get to know you,” he assured her.

  Tamsyn visibly sagged. All the bravado, all the fight leeching out of her before his eyes.

  “All right. For her, I’ll stay, but not in here. If I didn’t know for a fact that the whole town is booked solid, I’d get a hotel room. Instead, I’ll use the room I had before.”

  “Thank you.”

  She lifted her head, her eyes hollow and filled with sorrow. “I’m not doing it for you.”

  No, of course she wasn’t. He understood that as he’d understood nothing else before. But it was a small victory. She was here, still under his roof. As she walked from the room and down the hallway he closed his eyes and thanked his lucky stars he still had this much. And, he hoped, time enough to convince Tamsyn to stay for good.

  * * *

  Tamsyn hung on the outskirts of the throng of mourners attending Ellen’s wake at Finn’s house. She’d never felt more utterly alone in her life. Ethan and Isobel had tried to come but, this close to Christmas, they’d been unable to secure flights to get them here in time. As it was, with Christmas only three days away, she’d been lucky to get a flight out of Blenheim to Auckland for later this evening.

  The local townspeople had done Ellen proud. The hall was used for her funeral and it had been filled to the seams—with more chairs, speakers and screens outside—with those who’d come to pay their respects. Several people came up to Tamsyn, to offer their condolences, many with apologies for their own guilt at keeping the truth from her reflected in their eyes.

  Throughout the activity of the day, Tamsyn was constantly reminded that no matter how well everyone had known and loved her mother, nobody here could answer her questions. No one could explain why Ellen had abandoned her children and left them to grow up thinking she was dead. The last remaining person who could have done that was being laid to rest in the small graveyard beside the church.

  She’d sat between Finn and Alexis for the service—dry eyed, stoic—and learned for the first time how others had seen her mother. Yes, she’d been flawed and, yes, she’d struggled with alcohol abuse, but in her stronger moments she had been the kind of woman that Tamsyn knew she would have wanted to know. Ellen’s contributions to the district had varied and she was fondly remembered for the art classes she’d taught in the community. It reminded Tamsyn of the paintings she’d seen at Finn’s house in the gallery, signed with her mother’s initials. She ached to possess something of her mother’s. The closest thing she had was the new sister in her life.

  Alexis had been a surprise. Sunny-natured with not an unpleasant bone in her body, her half sister was easy to be with and even, Tamsyn knew, to begin to love. That Alexis held Finn in a state of near hero worship reminded Tamsyn very much of her relationship with her own brother growing up. And, like Tamsyn with Ethan, Alexis was clear-eyed about her foster brother’
s flaws.

  Under Alexis’s less than subtle onslaught of friendship over the past five days, Tamsyn had begun to rationalize, again, Finn’s reasons for keeping the truth from her, but that did nothing to ease the pain and emptiness that echoed inside her every day. And, rationalization aside, she was still angry with him. However valid he’d made his reasons seem, she’d deserved the opportunity to make the final judgment about trying to see her mother herself. Just one last glimpse, one final opportunity to hold her hand, to feel the connection that had been missing for most of her life. Her right to choose what to do had been stolen from her and she struggled to forgive that.

  Distance and space to think in was what she needed most right now. She was waitlisted on several flights out of Auckland, hoping to be home in time for the twenty-fifth, where she could lick her emotional wounds among her own people.

  “Miss Masters?”

  Tamsyn wheeled around at the accented sound of Lorenzo’s voice. He’d avoided her completely since his return to the cottage at the bottom of the hill and she couldn’t mask her surprise at having him approach her now. Her eyes roamed his face. He was still a handsome man, although grief clouded his eyes and aged him.

  “I would speak with you. Will you walk with me a moment?” he asked, offering her his elbow with old-fashioned courtesy.

  Every instinct within her wanted to refuse the man who’d deliberately thwarted her attempts to find her mother and she opened her mouth to do exactly that.

  “Please, Tamsyn, in your mother’s memory, I beg this of you,” he asked, his voice solemn.

  They strolled away from the house in silence, to the edge of the manicured lawns where the vineyard started, and then they strolled along one long row after another. Tamsyn began to feel uncomfortable, to wonder what it was that Lorenzo wanted to talk to her about.