The High Price of Secrets

“Ellen?”

She nodded. “It seems she bought it many years ago with money she’d saved from what my father had sent her. He paid her a lot to stay away and Lorenzo wouldn’t let her use it for their new life together. I think that’s why my father’s solicitors had your address for mailing—did she maybe have her mail redirected to your address?”

Realization dawned. Lorenzo and his parents had shared a letter box on the road and when Finn had built up here on the hill he hadn’t seen any point in changing what had worked for a couple of decades or more. He quickly explained it to Tamsyn.

“So that’s why my mother’s checks were coming here, except you wouldn’t have known that, would you?”

He shook his head. “We just leave each other’s mail in the box for whoever it was addressed to, to pick up. It’s always been as simple as that.”

“Ellen was determined to leave something for Ethan and me, something that had meaning to her and that she hoped would have meaning to us, as well. Ethan and I have only talked about this briefly, but we’re one hundred percent on the same page about it. We both feel it’s very important to honor her memory and in that vein, we want to gift the land to the respite center.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you know what getting that easement is going to mean to the overall development, but—”

“Finn, you misunderstand me. We’re not offering you the easement.”

Confusion muddled his already aching head. He supposed he deserved it if she wanted to deny him the easement, but then what had she been talking about?

“What do you mean, exactly?”

“We’re offering you everything, the entire acreage.”

His fingers tightened around the coffee mug. “Seriously? The whole thing? What’s the catch?”

“Just the one—well, two actually.”

He wasn’t entirely surprised. He sighed. “Okay, let’s get it over with. Give me your terms.”

“One, I want naming rights to the retreat.”

“No way. It already has a name and I’m not changing it.”

She leaned back in her chair and he watched as her face lit up, a smile pulling her lips into a gentle curve. “Oh-kay, I can live with that, but the other condition is nonnegotiable.”

“And it is?”

“That you’ll let me continue to work with you on the development.”

“Are you serious? You want to stay?”

“With you, if you’ll have me.”

He was on his feet and pulling her from her chair before his brain even fully assimilated what he was doing.

“If I’ll have you? You have to be kidding me. I thought I’d never see you again, that I’d destroyed every last chance I could have to keep you in my life.”

She lifted her hands and bracketed his face. “Finn, I know how hard it was for you, how torn you must have been toward the end. I’ve been so focused on just one thing, finding my mother, for so many months now and you were the person standing in the way. I thought that you couldn’t possibly love me because you didn’t simply hand over what I wanted. I never stopped to think, until just recently, what that was doing to you. How it pulled at your honor, at your heart. You didn’t just lose one mother, you’ve lost two, and I forgot all about that because all I wanted was mine. I couldn’t see all the ways you showed me you loved me since I was so focused on the one thing you wouldn’t do. I was single-minded and selfish and I’m sorry.”

“No,” he protested. “What Lorenzo and I did was wrong. I’m the one who’s sorry, Tamsyn, you’ll never know how sorry.”

“Shh,” she said, laying a finger across his lips. “We have to let it go now. Put it in the past where it belongs. We need to honor the women who brought us here, who brought us to this, to each other.”

“You can forgive me?”

“I already have, Finn. Sure, I wish things could have been different, but no one can change the past. The only thing we can do is move forward.”

She lifted her face to his, her lips a tender entreaty, one he accepted with every beat of his heart.

When they broke apart he shook his head. “I can’t believe I was so wrong about you right from the start. I’ve been a total idiot.”

“What do you mean?”

“From when I was about fifteen I started keeping tabs on you and your brother, on your family’s lifestyle. It used to make me mad to see you guys had so much, that your life was so easy, when Ellen had so little and worked so hard. You all seemed so happy without her. I allowed those impressions, formed when I was too young to fully understand, to color how I treated you when you arrived here.”