Title: Truths I Never Told You
Author: Kelly Rimmer
Publisher: Graydon House,
Harpercollins/Harlequin Books
Genre: Historical
Release Date: 14th April 2020
BLURB supplied by Harpercollins/Harlequin Books
After finding
disturbing journal pages that suggest her late mother didn't die in a car
accident as her father had always maintained, Beth Walsh begins a search for
answers to the question -- what really happened to their mother? With the power
and relevance of Jodi Picoult and Lisa Jewell, Rimmer pens a provocative novel
told by two women a generation apart, the struggles they unwittingly shared,
and a family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.
With her father
recently moved to a care facility because of worsening signs of dementia, Beth
Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home to prepare it for sale. Why
shouldn’t she be the one, after all? Her three siblings are all busy with their
families and successful careers, and Beth is on maternity leave after giving
birth to Noah, their miracle baby. It took her and her husband Hunter years to
get pregnant, but now that they have Noah, Beth can only feel panic. And
leaving Noah with her in-laws while she pokes about in their father’s house
gives her a perfect excuse not to have to deal with motherhood.
Beth is
surprised to discover the door to their old attic playroom padlocked, and even
more shocked to see what’s behind it – a hoarder’s mess of her father’s
paintings, mounds of discarded papers, and miscellaneous junk. Her father was
the most fastidious, everything-in-its-place man, and this chaos makes no
sense. As she picks through the clutter, she finds a handwritten note attached
to one of the paintings, in what appears to be in her late mother’s
handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing Grace Walsh died in a car
accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests
something much darker may be true. A frantic search uncovers more notes,
seemingly a series of loose journal entries that paint a very disturbing
portrait of a woman in profound distress, and of a husband that bears very
little resemblance to the father Beth and her siblings know.
A fast-paced,
harrowing look at the fault in memories and the lies that can bond families
together - or tear them apart.
PURCHASE LINKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide and USA TODAY bestselling author of Before I Let You Go, Me Without You, and The Secret Daughter. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Please visit her at www.Kelly.Rimmer.com
AUTHOR LINKS
Facebook: @Kellymrimmer
Twitter: @KelRimmerWrites
Instagram: @kelrimmerwrites
EXCERPT
PROLOGUE
Grace
September
14, 1957
I
am alone in a crowded family these days, and that’s the worst feeling I’ve ever
experienced. Until these past few years, I had no idea that loneliness is
worse than sadness. I’ve come to realize that’s because loneliness, by its very
definition, cannot be shared.
Tonight
there are four other souls in this house, but I am unreachably far from any of
them, even as I’m far too close to guarantee their safety. Patrick said he’d be
home by nine tonight, and I clung on to that promise all day.
He’ll
be home at nine, I tell myself. You won’t do anything crazy if Patrick is here,
so just hold on until nine.
I
should have known better than to rely on that man by now. It’s 11:55 p.m., and
I have no idea where he is.
Beth
will be wanting a feed soon and I’m just so tired, I’m already bracing
myself—as if the sound of her cry will be the thing that undoes me, instead of
something I should be used to after four children. I feel the fear of that cry
in my very bones—a kind of whole-body tension I can’t quite make sense of. When
was the last time I had more than a few hours’ sleep? Twenty-four hours a day I
am fixated on the terror that I will snap and hurt someone: Tim, Ruth, Jeremy,
Beth…or myself. I am a threat to my children’s safety, but at the same time,
their only protection from that very same threat.
I
have learned a hard lesson these past few years; the more difficult life is,
the louder your feelings become. On an ordinary day, I trust facts more than
feelings, but when the world feels like it’s ending, it’s hard to distinguish
where my thoughts are even coming from. Is this fear grounded in reality, or is
my mind playing tricks on me again? There’s no way for me to be sure. Even the
line between imagination and reality has worn down and it’s now too thin to
delineate.
Sometimes
I think I will walk away before something bad happens, as if removing myself
from the equation would keep them all safe. But then Tim will skin his knee and
come running to me, as if a simple hug could take all the world’s pain away. Or
Jeremy will plant one of those sloppy kisses on my cheek, and I am reminded
that for better or worse, I am his world. Ruth will slip my handbag over her
shoulder as she follows me around the house, trying to walk in my footsteps,
because to her, I seem like someone worth imitating. Or Beth will look up at me
with that gummy grin when I try to feed her, and my heart contracts with a love
that really does know no bounds.
Those
moments remind me that everything changes, and that this cloud has come and
gone twice now, so if I just hang on, it will pass again. I don’t feel hope
yet, but I should know hope, because I’ve walked this path before and even when
the mountains and valleys seemed insurmountable, I survived them.
I’m
constantly trying to talk myself around to calm, and sometimes, for brief and
beautiful moments, I do. But the hard, cold truth is that every time the night
comes, it seems blacker than it did before.
Tonight
I’m teetering on the edge of something horrific.
Tonight
the sound of my baby’s cry might just be the thing that breaks me altogether.
I’m
scared of so many things these days, but most of all now, I fear myself.
Excerpted from Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer, Copyright © 2020 by Lantana Management Pty Ltd. Published by Graydon House Books.
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