by Kelly Rimmer
My initial interest in frontotemporal dementia was piqued by a particularly brilliant episode of the podcast Radiolab (www.wnycstudios.org/story/unraveling-bolero). Radiolab is an amazing podcast! I’ve learned so much from it over the years. Thanks also to Dr. Melissa Madera of The Abortion Diary (www.theabortiondiary.com). Dr. Madera has captured hundreds of women’s firsthand accounts of abortion across the decades in her podcast. There is nothing more useful in understanding a topic than hearing someone explain their own experiences of it, and this unique oral-history repository was key to my research as I sought to understand not only the social and political climate Grace would have faced, but also the thoughts and emotions she might have experienced. I also found Leslie J. Reagan’s When Abortion Was a Crime and Jo Wainer’s Lost invaluable as I was planning this book.
Thanks to all of my author friends for their support and encouragement as I was writing this story, particularly Lisa Ireland and Sally Hepworth for talking me down from the creative ledge several times when doubt struck.
Thanks to my agent, Amy Tannenbaum of the Jane Rotrosen Agency, and to Susan Swinwood and the team at Graydon House and Harlequin Books. I’m eternally grateful for everything you’ve done to polish my stories and to get them into the hands of readers. Likewise, I’m grateful to Sherise Hobbs and the team at Headline UK, and Alex Craig and the team at Hachette Australia.
A huge thanks must go to my parents for all of their help and support as I wrote this book, and always, to my husband, Daniel, and my children for putting up with the madness that is my writing process.
To readers—thank you, thank you, thank you for investing your money and your time in reading my stories. This book covers a few really challenging topics, but they are subjects I am so glad to have explored, and I so hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. If you did, I’d be grateful if you could take the time to write a review online. Your review really does make a difference; it helps other readers find my books.
I love hearing from readers. If you’d like to get in touch with me, you can find all of my contact details on my website at kellyrimmer.com. You can also sign up for my mailing list at kellyrimmer.com/email—I hate spammy newsletters as much as you do, so I’ll only contact you when I have a new book coming out.
TRUTHS
I NEVER
TOLD YOU
KELLY RIMMER
Reader’s Guide
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
This book is narrated by Beth, Grace and Maryanne. Did you prefer one narrative over the others, or did you enjoy them all?
Grace, her mother and Beth all suffer from postpartum depression. How have attitudes and approaches toward this disorder changed over the last few generations? Do you have any personal anecdotes to share about postpartum depression, perhaps in your own family history?
Beth is a psychologist, but despite her training and expertise, it takes her some time to come to terms with her own condition. Did this seem realistic to you?
What do you think life was like for women before contraception was easily accessible and socially acceptable? Would the course of your own life have been altered by the accessibility or inaccessibility you had to contraception?
Abortion is a highly contentious and emotive topic. Do you think the author intended to take a side in the way she told this story? Did the story challenge your own thoughts on the subject?
Did you learn anything new as you read this book, and if so, what was it?
Early in his marriage to Grace, Patrick is selfish and entitled. The dynamic in their home is blatantly unequal, as was the norm in most households at the time, and he was unable to understand how desperately Grace was struggling. Do you think societal norms during that era excuse such behavior, or should Patrick have behaved differently?
Patrick eventually grows into the father Grace always hoped he would be. Do you think this same growth would have happened if she had survived? Why or why not?
Maryanne makes significant sacrifices to help with Patrick and the children after Grace’s death. Was she motivated to stay by love, guilt or fear of the consequences to herself if Patrick found Grace’s notes? Had she and Patrick not ended their relationship, do you think she would have come to resent the choices she’d made?
Which scene in Truths I Never Told You affected you the most, and why? What emotions did that scene elicit?
Were you satisfied with the ending? Did the various narratives come together the way you anticipated?
What will you remember most about Truths I Never Told You?
Keep reading to get a sneak peek at The Things We Cannot Say, the unforgettable new novel from USA TODAY bestselling author Kelly Rimmer!
The Things We Cannot Say
by Kelly Rimmer
PROLOGUE
Soviet Union—1942
The priest presiding over my wedding was half-starved, half-frozen and wearing rags but he was resourceful; he’d blessed a chunk of moldy bread from breakfast to serve as a communion wafer.
“Repeat the vows after me,” he smiled. My vision blurred, but I spoke the traditional vows through lips numb from cold.
“I take you, Tomasz Slaski, to be my husband, and I promise to love, honor, and respect, to be faithful to you, and not to forsake you until we are parted by death, in fear of God, One in the Holy Trinity and all the Saints.”
I’d looked to my wedding to Tomasz as a beacon, the same way a sailor on rough seas might fix his gaze upon a lighthouse at the distant shore. Our love had been my reason to live and to carry on and to fight for so many years, but our wedding day was supposed to be a brief reprieve from all of the hardship and suffering. The reality of that day was so very different, and my disappointment in those moments seemed bigger than the world itself.
We were supposed to marry in the regal church in our hometown—not there, standing just beyond the tent city of the Buzuluk refugee and military camp, just far enough from the tents that the squalid stench of eighty thousand desperate souls was slightly less thick in the air. That reprieve from the crowds and the smell came at cost; we were outside, sheltered only by the branches of a sparse fir tree. It was an unseasonably cold day for fall, and every now and again, fat snowflakes would fall from the heavy gray skies to melt into our hair or our clothing or to make still more mud in the ground around our feet.
I’d known my “friends” in the assembled crowd of well-wishers for only a few weeks. Every other person who’d once been important to me was in a concentration camp or dead or just plain lost. My groom awkwardly declined to take communion—a gesture which bewildered that poor, kindly priest, but didn’t surprise me one bit. Even as the bride, I wore the only set of clothes I owned, and by then once-simple routines like bathing had become luxuries long forgotten. The lice infestation that had overrun the entire camp had not spared me, nor my groom, nor the priest—nor even a single individual in the small crowd of well-wishers. Our entire assembly shifted and twitched constantly, desperate to soothe that endless itch.
I was dull with shock, which was almost a blessing, because it was probably all that saved me from weeping my way through the ceremony.
Mrs. Konczal was yet another new friend to me, but she was fast becoming a dear one. She was in charge of the orphans, and I’d been working alongside her on compulsory work duties since my arrival at the camp. When the ceremony was done, she ushered a group of children out from the small crowd of onlookers and she flashed me a radiant smile. Then she raised her arms to conduct, and together, she and the makeshift choir began to sing Serdecnza Matko—a hymn to the Beloved Mother. Those orphans were filthy and skinny and alone, just as I was, but they weren’t sad at all in that moment. Instead, their hopeful gazes were focused on me, and they were eager to see me pleased. I wanted nothing more than to wallow in the awfulness of my situation—but the hope in those innocent eyes took priority over my self-pity. I f
orced myself to share with them all a bright, proud smile, and then I made myself a promise.
There would be no more tears from me that day. If those orphans could be generous and brave in the face of their situation, then so could I.
After that I focused only on the music, and the sound of Mrs. Konczal’s magnificent voice as it rose high above and around us in a soaring solo. Her tone was sweet and true, and she scaled the melody like it was a game—bringing me something close to joy in a moment that should have been joyful, offering me peace in a moment that should have been peaceful and dragging me back once more to a faith I kept wishing I could lose.
And as that song wound on, I closed my eyes and I forced down my fear and my doubt, until I could once again trust that the broken pieces of my life would fall into place one day.
War had taken almost everything from me; but I refused to let it shake my confidence in the man I loved.
CHAPTER ONE
Alice
I’m having a very bad day, but however bad I feel right now, I know my son is feeling worse. We’re at the grocery store a few blocks away from our house in Winter Park, Florida. Eddie is on the floor, his legs flailing as he screams at the top of his lungs. He’s pinching his upper arms compulsively; ugly purple and red bruises are already starting to form. Eddie is also covered in yogurt, because when all of this started twenty minutes ago, he emptied the refrigerator shelves onto the floor and there are now packages of various shapes and sizes on the tiles around him—an increasingly messy landing pad for his limbs as they thrash. The skin on his face has mottled from the exertion, and there are beads of sweat on his forehead.
Eddie’s medication has made him gain a lot of weight in the last few years, and now he weighs sixty-eight pounds—that’s more than half my body weight. I can’t pick him up and carry him out to the car as I would have done in his early years. It didn’t feel easy at the time, but back then, this kind of public breakdown was much simpler because we could just evacuate.
Today’s disaster happened twenty minutes ago when Eddie reached the yogurt aisle. He has a relatively broad palate for yogurt compared to his peers at the special school he attends—Eddie will at least eat strawberry and vanilla Go-Gurt. There can be no substitutions on brand or container—and no point trying to refill old tubes, either, because Eddie sees right through it.
It has to be Go-Gurt. It has to be strawberry or vanilla. It has to be in the tube.
At some point recently, someone at Go-Gurt decided to improve the design of the graphics on the tubes—the logo has shifted and the colors are more vibrant. I’m sure no one at Go-Gurt realized that such a tiny change would one day lead to a seven-year-old boy smashing up a supermarket aisle in a bewildered rage.
To Eddie, Go-Gurt has the old-style label, and this new label only means that Eddie no longer recognizes Go-Gurt as food he can tolerate. He knew we were going to the store to get yogurt, then we came to the store, and Eddie looked at the long yogurt aisle, and he saw a lot of things, all of which he now identifies as “not-yogurt.”
I try to avoid this kind of incident, so we always have a whole shelfful of Go-Gurt in the fridge at home. If not for my grandmother’s recent hospitalization, I’d have done this trip alone yesterday when Eddie was at school, before he ate the last two tubes and “we are running a little low on yogurt and soup” became “holy crap, the only thing we have left in the house that Eddie can eat is a single tin of soup and he won’t eat soup for breakfast.”
I don’t actually know what I’m going to do about that now. All I know is that if Campbell’s ever changes the label of their pumpkin soup tins, I’m going to curl up into a little ball and give up on life.
Maybe I’m more like Eddie than I know, because this one small thing today has me feeling like I might melt down too. Besides Eddie and his sister, Pascale, my grandmother Hanna is the most important person in my world. My husband, Wade, and mother, Julita, would probably take exception to that statement, but I’m frustrated with them both, so right now that’s just how I feel. My grandmother, or Babcia as I’ve always called her, is currently in the hospital, because two days ago she was sitting at the dining table at her retirement home when she had what we now know was a minor stroke. And today, I spent the entire morning rushing—rushing around the house, rushing in the car, rushing to the yogurt aisle—all so Eddie and I could get to Babcia to spend time with her. I don’t even want to acknowledge to myself that maybe I’m rushing even more than usual because I’m trying to make the most of the time we have left with her. In the background to all of this hurriedness, I’m increasingly aware that her time is running out.
Eddie has virtually no expressive language—basically he can’t speak. He can hear just fine, but his receptive language skills are weak too, so to warn him that today instead of going to the train station to watch trains as we usually do on a Thursday, I had to come up with a visual symbol he’d understand. I got up at 5 a.m. I printed out some photos I took yesterday at the hospital, then trimmed them and I stuck them onto his timetable, right after the symbol for eat and the symbol for Publix and yogurt. I wrote a social script that explained that today we had to go to the hospital and we would see Babcia, but that she would be in bed and she would not be able to talk with us, and that Babcia was okay and Eddie is okay and everything is going to be okay.
I’m aware that much of the reassurance in that script is a lie. I’m not naive—Babcia is ninety-five years old, the chances of her walking out of the hospital this time are slim—she’s probably not okay at all. But that’s what Eddie needed to hear, so that’s what I told him. I sat him down with the schedule and the script and I ran through both until Eddie opened his iPad and the communications program he uses—an Augmentative and Alternative Communication app, AAC for short. It’s a simple but life-changing concept—each screen displays a series of images that represent the words Eddie can’t say. By pressing on those images, Eddie is able to find a voice. This morning, he looked down at the screen for a moment, then he pressed on the Yes button, so I knew he understood what he’d read, at least to some degree.
Everything was fine until we arrived here, and the packaging had changed. In the time that’s passed since, concerned staff and shoppers have come and gone.
“Can we help, ma’am?” they asked at first, and I shook my head, explained his autism diagnosis and let them go on their merry way. Then the offers of help became more insistent. “Can we carry him out to your car for you, ma’am?” So then I explained that he doesn’t really like to be touched at the best of times, but if a bunch of strangers touched him, the situation would get worse. I could see from the expression on their faces that they doubted things could get any worse, but not so much that they dared risk it.
Then a woman came past with an identically dressed set of perfectly behaved, no doubt neurotypical children sitting up high in her cart. As she navigated her cart around my out-of-control son, I heard one of the children ask her what was wrong with him, and she muttered, “he just needs a good spankin’, darlin’.”
Sure, I thought. He just needs a spankin’. That’ll teach him how to deal with sensory overload and learn to speak. Maybe if I spank him, he’ll use the toilet spontaneously and I can ditch the obsessively regimented routine I use to prevent his incontinence. Such an easy solution... Why didn’t I think of spanking him seven years ago? But just as my temper started to simmer she glanced at me, and I met her gaze before she looked away. I caught a hint of pity in her eyes, and there was no mistaking the fear. The woman blushed, averted her gaze, and that leisurely journey with her children in the cart became a veritable sprint to the next aisle.
People say things like that because it makes them feel better in what is undoubtedly a very awkward situation. I don’t blame her—I kind of envy her. I wish I could be that self-righteous, but seven years of parenting Edison Michaels has taught me nothing if not humility. I’m doing the bes
t I can, it’s usually not good enough and that’s just the way it is.
The manager came by a few minutes ago.
“Ma’am, we have to do something. He’s done hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage to my stock and now the other shoppers are getting upset.”
“I’m all ears,” I said, and I shrugged. “What do you propose?”
“Can we call the paramedics? It’s a medical crisis, right?”
“What do you think they’re going to do? Sedate him?”
His eyes brightened.
“Can they do that?”
I scowled at him, and his face fell again. We sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment, then I sighed as if he’d convinced me.
“You call the paramedics, then,” I said, but the knowing smile I gave him must have scared him just a bit, because he stepped away from me. “Let’s just see how Eddie copes with a paramedic visit. I’m sure the blaring sirens and the uniforms and more strangers can’t make things much worse.” I paused, then I looked at him innocently. “Right?”
The manager walked away muttering to himself, but he must have thought twice about the paramedics because I’ve yet to hear sirens. Instead, there are visibly uncomfortable store assistants standing at either end of the aisle quietly explaining the situation to shoppers and offering to pick out any products they require to save them walking near my noisy, awkward son.
As for me, I’m sitting on the floor beside him now. I want to be stoic and I want to be calm, but I’m sobbing intermittently, because no matter how many times this happens, it’s utterly humiliating. I’ve tried everything I can to defuse this situation and my every attempt has failed. This will only end when Eddie tires himself out.
