The High Price of Secrets

Before she went back to the shed to see if they had any plywood and nails stored there, she moved over to the house. Thankfully, the deep eaves on the property had kept most of the rain out. Broken glass littered the windowsill and, from what Tamsyn could see by jumping repeatedly, the floor of the room inside.

She started to turn for the shed, hoping to return with a stepladder and a saw in addition to plywood and nails. As she did so, the curtain billowed out of the window. She caught a glimpse of what looked to be a framed photo on the opposite wall. Tamsyn turned over the wheelbarrow and stood on it for a better look. The woman in the photo looked familiar….

In fact, she looked very much like the face that greeted Tamsyn in the mirror each morning.

A cold trickle started at the base of her neck and ran a rivulet down her spine. She had to get into that room to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. Jumping down from the wheelbarrow, she jogged to the shed and spotted the ladder she needed hanging on the wall, together with a set of leather gardening gloves nearby that would protect her hands from the broken glass.

The rubber boots were going to be too clumsy to wear going up the ladder and through the window frame so, after lugging the ladder and a saw across the lawn to the house, she dashed inside and pulled on the runners she’d bought a couple of weeks ago. Once she was level with the window, she could see the room was stacked with boxes and the walls and the dresser top appeared to be the repository for every framed photo that had probably adorned the rest of the house before the owners went away.

Tamsyn worked determinedly at the branch with the saw until one end fell down into the garden. The other rested just inside the window frame and down onto the glass-strewn floor. Swiping away the broken glass from the sill with a gloved hand, Tamsyn pulled herself up and through the window, feeling like nothing more than a burglar. She told herself not to be so stupid. She was being a fastidious tenant, ensuring that the damage inside wasn’t severe, that’s all. Once inside, she pushed the drapes wide open, letting light flood into the room.

Ignoring the crunch of broken glass beneath her feet, she crossed the room and lifted the photo frame off the wall. It was like looking at a picture of herself in another five or ten years’ time. That chill ran down her neck again as she studied the woman in the photo more closely, mentally comparing it to the wedding photo she’d found on the internet. She and Tamsyn were a lot alike, from the shape of their face to their figures. While the photo was somewhat faded, Tamsyn could make out the color of the woman’s eyes. Dark liquid brown, just like her own, except rather than being fresh and bright, the woman’s were sad and slightly unfocused.

In the photo, a man with light brown hair and a sun-weathered face stood beside the woman, just slightly taller and bearing a look of pride that beamed out to all and sundry that he was well satisfied with his world. She had no idea who he was…but she was increasingly certain that she knew the woman. There had to be more photos, maybe even some papers that might confirm who the woman was.

She turned and ripped open one of the boxes and found it filled with albums all neatly dated on the spines. She ran her hand over the dates, choosing one from about three years after her mother had left. Sliding down onto a clear space on the floor, Tamsyn began to turn the pages. With each one she became more and more certain that the couple pictured were her mother and Ellen’s partner, who seemed very much in love with her.

There was more. Several pictures had a young girl in them, aged about two or three years old. Honey blonde but with the same dark brown eyes as her mother, she looked to be a happy child and always had a coloring pencil in one hand and paper in the other—either that or she was dressing a doll in all manner of garments.

Tamsyn turned another page and felt a wave of shock hit her fair smack in the stomach. She blinked away the black dots that began to swim before her eyes, closing them briefly—unable to believe what she saw before her. She took a steadying breath, then another, before opening her eyes again.

The picture swam before her and she blinked once more to clear her vision. Yes, it was still the same as before. The shock of it was fading, but the image’s ramifications were no less devastating. There, right in front of her, stood the woman Tamsyn believed to be her mother, with the man and an older version of the little girl…and with a young boy aged about twelve. A young boy with brown hair and gray eyes.

A young boy who looked very much like Finn Gallagher.

Sixteen

Finn Gallagher knew her mother!

He’d lied to her all this time. Confusion warred with anger inside her until, with a bubbling rising fury, anger won. How dare he? He’d known she was looking for her mother and yet he’d never given the slightest indication he knew her mother at all. In fact, he’d deliberately and calculatedly told her Ellen didn’t live there. Well, didn’t live up on the hill at his house, maybe, but that was splitting hairs.