The High Price of Secrets

He was gone before she could think of an appropriate rejoinder.

After she’d finished eating, Tamsyn got up and showered and dressed—grudgingly grateful that Finn had removed her suitcase from her car and brought it with them when they’d returned to his home. She needed armor, and that meant feeling good in what she was wearing, so she chose the gypsy skirt and blue tank top again. Before slipping on the skirt, she studied the label. Alexis Fabrini was embroidered in silver cursive script on a dark purple satin background.

She thumbed the silky material. Her sister—her half sister to be more precise. Was it strange that her sister’s talent had appealed to her so much or was it simply a connection they’d shared without knowing? Either way, it was strange to discover that out there, somewhere, was another sibling. Another connection, forged in blood. Another secret exposed. She’d have to tell Ethan, eventually, but right now that was low on her priorities.

How many more secrets would she have to uncover before she could find her mother? She had absolutely no idea and the prospect was more daunting than it had seemed a few weeks ago.

She’d always lived her life with purpose, careful and measured. Each step meticulously planned, each outcome virtually assured. Until she’d tried to surprise Trent, until she’d decided to find her mother and turned her back on every security she’d ever known and trusted. And look where those decisions had led her. Straight down the barrel of heartbreak and disappointment. One thing she knew for sure—unexpected and spontaneous decisions weren’t for her. Not anymore. Not ever again.

From now on, she vowed, she’d go back to her old ways. To being careful, considered and safe. She should have taken Ethan up on his suggestion to use an investigator to do the hard work first instead of racing off with no obvious plan other than to just show up. She hadn’t been thinking clearly, not since she’d been told that her mother still lived. But now everything was crystal clear. Her mother didn’t want to see her. And Tamsyn wasn’t going to go back to Australia until she did. Once she’d cleared away all the lies, all the secrets, all the evasions…then and only then would she go home.

She finished dressing, collected the tray from the bed and took it through to the kitchen. Still slightly hungry, she grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and went to find Finn. She wanted her car and she needed him to help her go and pick it up. She hoped the café was open on a Sunday because she’d be annoyed if she had to wait, at Finn’s and the café owner’s convenience, a day more than necessary for her link to independence.

The interior gallery shared a stone wall with a courtyard outside. Even so, long windows shed ample light to showcase the works Finn had spread along the wall. Local scenes mostly, by the look of them, although one in particular made her breath catch in her throat. Painted from the bottom of a valley, with its outlook stretching up a hill, it featured a looming ruin—a dark brooding stain on a clear blue sky. She knew that ruin, had viewed it virtually every single day in living memory.

Masters Rise, the original home of her family, destroyed by bushfires. Too expensive to rebuild and refurbish, the ruin remained on the ridge of the hills overlooking The Masters, her family’s vineyard estate and business, a constant reminder of how far they’d fallen and how far they’d come to fight back to where the family flourished today.

But what was the painting doing here? She peered at the artist’s signature, surprised to see the letters E and F intertwined in the corner. Ellen…Fabrini? No wonder she hadn’t been able to find her if she’d changed her name.

This was her mother’s work? Tamsyn studied the picture again, in particular how her mother had captured the old ruin. It looked menacing, forbidding even. Was that how it had felt to Ellen living there at the base of the hill? As if she was being watched and perhaps found wanting?

Tamsyn could only speculate. Without access to her mother, she certainly wasn’t going to hear it from Ellen’s point of view, was she? Maybe she was imbuing too much into Ellen’s interpretation of her home, there on the wall. Yet she couldn’t keep from feeling that the painting was helping her understand a little better why her mother had chosen to leave. Tamsyn had known from an early age that the presence of the ruins was what motivated her father every day. He’d told her that it reminded him that he wouldn’t be beaten by the elements, that he would prevail and ensure his family prevailed along with him.

Everything he’d done, every decision he’d made, had all been with the one purpose of ensuring the Masters family remained great. Granted, it had meant he was entirely driven, focused more on his work and its output than on his growing children. Had Ellen struggled with that? Was that why she’d sought a lover? Left her home, her family, her children?