by Kelly Rimmer
Praise for Kelly Rimmer
The Things We Cannot Say
“An intense story of survival, hardship, and heartbreak, The Things We Cannot Say is sure to evoke emotion in even the most cynical reader.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Straddling the past and the present, The Things We Cannot Say is a mesmerizing tale of family, memory, forgiveness, and unconditional love, but it is also about retrieving lost stories…a true achievement in World War II fiction.”
— Historical Novel Society
“Fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Pam Jenoff’s The Orphan’s Tale will enjoy this absorbing, emotional tale of love, heartbreak, and resilience.”
—Booklist
“Kelly Rimmer has outdone herself. I thought that Before I Let You Go was one of the best novels I had ever read…[but] if you only have time to read one book this year The Things We Cannot Say should be that book. Keep tissues handy.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Fans of The Nightingale and Lilac Girls will adore The Things We Cannot Say.”
— Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author
“Kelly Rimmer has raised the already high bar with this unforgettable novel.
Fans of Jodi Picoult and Kristin Hannah now have a new go-to author.”
— Bestselling author Sally Hepworth
Before I Let You Go
“Ripped from the headlines and from the heart, Before I Let You Go is an unforgettable novel that will amaze and startle you with its impact and insight.”
— Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author You #37377 page 1
“Kelly Rimmer writes with wisdom and compassion about the relationships
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between sisters, mother and daughter… . She captures the anguish of
addiction, the agonizing conflict between an addict’s best and worst selves.”
— Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author
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“Kelly Rimmer’s shimmering and poignant new novel broadens our current
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national conversation about seeking to combat the deadly yet curable disease of addiction while being ultimately a story of relationships.”
—Library Journal, Editor’s Pick
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Also by Kelly Rimmer
THE THINGS WE CANNOT SAY
BEFORE I LET YOU GO
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If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and
destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the
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ISBN-13: 978-1-525-80460-1
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Truths I Never Told You
Copyright © 2020 by Lantana Management Pty Ltd
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Graydon House Books, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5H 4E3.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the You #37377 page 4
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely Told
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® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its corporate affiliates.
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For the women who carry infants in their arms as
they battle illness in their minds.
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Prologue
Grace
September 14th, 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. 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 11:55p.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 Truths I N_9781525804601_ITP_txt_275977.indd 9
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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 dis-tinguish 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 unsurmountable, 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.
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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.
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Beth
1996
“What’s the place…you know…where is the place? What…
today? No? It’s now. The place.”
Dad babbles an endless stream of words that don’t quite make
sense as I push his wheelchair through his front door. My brother
Tim and I exchange a glance behind his back and then we share
a resigned sigh. Our father’s speech sounds coherent enough if
you don’t listen too closely—the rhythms of it are still right and
his tone is clear, it’s the words themselves he can’t quite grasp
these days, and the more upset he gets, the less sense he makes.
The fact that he’s all-but speaking gibberish today actually makes
a lot of sense, but it’s still all kinds of heartbreaking.
The grandfather clock in the kitchen has just chimed 5 p.m.
I’m officially late to pick my son up from my mother-in-law’s
house, and Dad was supposed to be at the nursing home two
hours ago. We were determined to give him the dignity to
leave his house on his own terms and this morning Dad made
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it very clear that he wanted to be left alone in his room to pack
for the move.
Tim and I promised one another we’d be patient, and for four
and a half hours, we were patient. He pottered around the back-
yard doing overdue yardwork—weeding the chaos around the
bases of the conifers, scooping up the pinecones, reshaping the
hedge that’s run completely amok. Dad’s house is in Bellevue,
east of Seattle. Over the last little while he’s been too ill to tend
his own yard and we’ve confirmed my long-held suspicion that
nature would entirely swallow up the manicured gardens in this
region within just a few months if humans disappeared. While
Tim tried to wrangle some order back to the gardens outside, I
vigorously mopped the polished floors, vacuumed the carpet in
the bedrooms and sorted the fresh food in Dad’s fridge to dis-
tribute among my siblings.
But every time I stuck my head through Dad’s bedroom door,
I found him sitting on his bed beside his mostly empty suitcase.
At first, he was calm and seemed to be thoughtfully processing
the change that was coming. He wears this quiet, childlike smile
a lot of the time now, and for the first few hours, that smile was
firmly fixed on his face, even as he looked around, even as he
sat in silence. As the hours passed, though, the suitcase remained
empty, save for a hat and two pairs of socks.
“I can’t…where is the…” He started looking around his room,
searching desperately for something he couldn’t name, let alone
find. He kept lifting his right hand into the air, clenched in a
fist. We couldn’t figure out what he wanted, Dad couldn’t fig-
ure out how to tell us and the more he tried, the more out of
breath he became until he was gasping for air between each con-
fused, tortured word. The innocent smile faded from his face
and his distress gradually turned to something close to panic.
Tim helped him back into his wheelchair and pushed him to the
living room, sitting him right in front of the television, playing
one of his beloved black-and-white movies on the VCR to dis-
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tract him. I stayed in the bedroom, sobbing quietly as I finished
the packing my father obviously just couldn’t manage.
This morning Dad understood that he was moving to the
nursing home, and although he’d made it clear he didn’t want
to go, he seemed to understand that he had to. This afternoon
he’s just lost, and I can’t bear much more of this. I’m starting
to rush Dad, because I’ve finally accepted that we need to get
this over and done with. I guess after a day of getting nowhere,
I’m ready to resort to the “rip the Band-Aid off” approach to
admitting him to hospice care. I push his wheelchair quickly
away from the door, down the ramp my sister Ruth built over
the concrete stairs, down to the path that cuts across the grass
on the front yard.
“Lock the wall,” Dad says, throwing the words over his shoul-
der to Tim. In the past few weeks, I’ve found myself arguing
with Dad, trying to correct him when he mixes his words up
like this. Tim’s told me not to bother—Dad can’t help it, and
correcting him won’t actually fix the problem. My brother is
definitely much better at communicating with Dad than I am.
He calls back very gently,
“I’m locking the door. Don’t worry.”
“Sorry about that,” Dad says, suddenly sounding every bit as
weary as I feel.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Tim calls as he jogs down the path to catch
up to us.
“No work today, Timmy?” Tim hasn’t been Timmy for at least twenty years, except at family functions when our brother Jeremy wants to rile him up. Forty-two and forty-one respectively
and with several graduate degrees between them, my brothers
still revert to adolescent banter whenever they’re in the same
room. Today, I can only wish Dad was teasing Tim playfully
the way Jeremy does when he slips back into that old nickname.
“I have the day off today,” Tim says quietly.
“Are we going to t
he…that thing…” Dad’s brows knit. He
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searches for the right word, waving his hand around vaguely
in the air in front of him, then his shoulders slump as he sighs
heavily. “Are we going to the green place?”
“The golf course? No, Dad. Not today. We’re going to the
nursing home, remember?”
We only realized Dad had dementia earlier this year, and at
times like this, I’m horrified all over again that it took us so long
to figure it out. He had a heart attack four years ago, and in the
aftermath, was diagnosed with heart failure. His deterioration
has been steady despite medication and cardiac rehab, and with
the changes in his physical health have come significant changes
in his personality and, we thought, cognitive function. He’d
been losing words the whole time, but his mind seemed intact
otherwise. And who doesn’t search for a word every now and
again? What exactly is the tipping point between “not as sharp
as you used to be” and “neurologically deficient”?
Tim’s an orthopedic surgeon, and given his years of extensive
medical training he could probably answer that question in ex-
cruciating detail, but his eyes are suspiciously shiny right now
as we walk Dad to the car, so I don’t ask.
Dad sighs heavily and turns his attention back to me. He’s on
permanent oxygen supplementation now, the cannula forever
nestled in his nostrils. Sometimes I forget it’s there, and then
when I look at his face, I’m startled all over again by the visual
reminders that it’s really happening—Dad is really dying. The
evidence is undeniable now…the cannula, the swelling around
his face, the sickly gray-white tone in his skin.
“Where’s Noah?” he asks me.
“He’s at Chiara’s house.” My mother-in-law worships my
son—her third grandchild, first grandson. Today, when I
dropped Noah off, she barely looked at him—instead she threw
her arms around me and hugged me for so long that eventually,
I had to disentangle myself to make a hasty exit. I like Chiara
and we have a great relationship. It just turns out that I really
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