The High Price of Secrets

“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.

“I am sorry for what I did to you,” he said heavily as they reached the end of a row and stopped. “I was wrong, I see that now. I was acting from a point of fear, when I should have been acting from a point of compassion. Worse, I made Finn keep his word to me even when I knew it was destroying him inside. I was a desperate, foolish old man and I hope that one day, in time, you can find it in your heart to forgive me, to forgive Finn, for what we both did. Once he got to know you, he was not a willing partner in our deception, believe me.”

“I…I don’t know if I can forgive, Mr. Fabrini. I really don’t.”

“I understand,” he said, closing his eyes and bowing his head. “I have something for you. I wanted to be sure you had this before you go home to The Masters again.”

He reached in his pocket and withdrew a fat bundle of envelopes tied with a length of faded ribbon. Lorenzo’s thumb played along the narrow band of light purple-colored satin for a moment before he drew in a deep breath and passed the packet to her.

“These are your mother’s. More correctly, they are from her to you and your brother. She wrote the letters inside over many years but never posted them. She’d promised your father she would never make contact with anyone at The Masters again, but it didn’t stop her from writing what she needed to say. Here.”

Tamsyn’s hand shook as she took the envelopes, as she saw her mother’s handwriting for the first time, scrawled in lilac-colored ink across the fine linen stationery. Tamsyn smiled a watery smile. Her childhood room had been decorated in shades of purple—that obviously had been her mother’s hand at work. Knowing that now brought a flicker of warmth to her heart that had been missing for days.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome. I hope her words can bring you some peace, show you the kind of woman she was before she became ill.”

“I’ll treasure them.”

He nodded, his eyes filling anew with tears. He sniffed loudly and turned his head, too proud to let her see his tears fall. “I’ll go sit over there in the sun. I am in no hurry to go back to that crowd up there. When you are finished, I will answer anything I can for you if you still have any questions. Take your time, eh?”

“I will,” she promised. She watched as he settled himself on a wooden bench seat that gave a view over the vineyards and down to where his and Ellen’s cottage nestled against the bottom of the hill.

She lowered herself to the ground and put the letters in her lap before carefully undoing the ribbon and lifting the first envelope to her face. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to catch the scent of her mother, to see if there was anything that still remained of who she’d been.

There it was, ever so faintly. A fragrance that reminded her of childish giggles, of summer sunshine, of the warmth of a woman’s embrace. Her mother’s embrace.

Tamsyn lowered the envelope, slid a nail under the flap and began to read.

Twenty-Three

She cried many tears over her mother’s words, words threaded with guilt that she’d failed to protect her children from her own weakness. She’d been running away from The Masters—from her marriage and the failures she’d struggled to live with—to Lorenzo, who waited for her at the airport with tickets for all of them to travel to New Zealand, when she’d crashed her car.

John, her husband, had arrived, distraught to find his children injured and furiously angry to find his wife under the influence of alcohol and sobbing on the side of the road. He’d used the weight of the Masters name to see the police suppress their evidence against her, and eventually drop all charges, on her promise that she’d leave, without her children, and never return. Plus, he’d arranged to pay her a stipend to ensure she stayed away, out of all their lives forever.

Ellen had battled with her guilt, and her drinking, for years after that, but had continued to accept the money from John Masters month after month, year after year. Lorenzo hadn’t wanted Masters money to touch the life they’d rebuilt for themselves in New Zealand, so she’d saved it in a separate account, eventually using it to buy some land, which was being held in trust for Ethan and Tamsyn. While her biggest regret in life had been not fighting harder to maintain a relationship with her children, she’d at least ensured she had something to give them, something definite and valuable to remember her by.