Truth Stays Buried by Alexia Boland Herrick

Author:Alexia Boland Herrick [Herrick, Alexia Boland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gladiator Media
Published: 2024-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Tasman had been driving for almost four hours when he reached the freeway exit that would lead him to Hideaway Beach. He looked at the setting sun, he was quickly losing daylight.

Tasman had known where to look for Cressida, only because he had been there before. Driving through the quaint touristy seaside town brought back a flood of memories. He passed the same landmarks that he had marvelled at as a child on camping holidays with his mother down at the coast. The area had changed since then, but only slightly. It was still the charming beachside village built around a historic old, decommissioned lighthouse. The same lighthouse in the background of Harrison and Cressida’s photograph that now lay on the front passenger seat of the old news van.

There were only a handful of houses that the stunning lighthouse view could have been from - and they were all from old money – holiday homes that never went up for sale and were instead passed down to each generation. No one wanted to give up the view of the Hideaway Beach lighthouse.

Tasman avoided staring at the lighthouse as he drove within its view. The memories of it stung him. He recalled spending hours sitting on its steps as a young boy just watching the waves, passing the time after his father had left. Being in its orbit again felt bittersweet. The past was always catching up with him like that, forcing him to deal with his pain, with his feelings.

His mother had never let Tasman see how much being abandoned by the man she loved hurt her. After all, she didn’t see it coming either. One minute Eric Gleeson was there. The next, he was gone. He had disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving behind only a note explaining that he had met someone else, a younger woman, and was never coming back. Less than a year later, he had a fatal heart attack. Tasman and his mother had sat in the front row at his funeral, with his mistress sobbing behind them. It was a memory Tasman did all he could to avoid. It still made his jaw clench.

‘Your father’s getaway car seemed to run out of gas, right before he hit the highway,’ his mother had tried to joke to a young Tasman as they walked from the cemetery after the burial. ‘Although, the spare tyre didn’t go the miles he expected, honey, he should’ve stuck with us, right?’ she continued, rhetorically, embracing Tasman’s small shoulders. ‘Sometimes it’s better just to be alone, isn’t it honey. Avoid all the trouble. But at least we’ve got each other, don’t we? We can stick together, just you and me,’ she said as she kissed him on the head. Tasman never said a word in response. And they never spoke of that day again.

The scars of abandonment never truly left Tasman, even as a grown man. And now his mother had found yet another new husband, another new life and even a new family, albeit with older children.

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