“Frustrating,” Tamsyn commented. “What will you do if you don’t get the easement?”
“I’ll still go ahead, but it will mean a bigger investment into the road construction and less into the complex itself. We’d have to do the complex in stages. Perhaps start with the children’s camp and move on in a few years to building the chalets, or vice versa. I’m still hoping we won’t have to make that decision.”
“You mentioned personal experience…your family?” she probed carefully.
“My mother. She was—” He broke off and his lips firmed into a straight line, his eyes becoming unfocused for a moment. “Fragile, I guess you could say. She probably should never have been a farmer’s wife, but she loved my father with a passion that knew no bounds. She lived for the very moment when he’d walk through the door each evening and she died a little every time he went back out again in the morning. Dad was shifting stock one day, his last herd. It wasn’t long after he and Lorenzo had formed a partnership, converting part of Dad’s farmland into a vineyard and amalgamating it with the Fabrini land where Lorenzo had already begun growing. Dad’s quad bike rolled, and he was crushed beneath it. Lorenzo and I found him late that night, guided by one of his farm dogs barking. The dog had stayed with him the whole time. But by the time we found him, there was nothing anyone could do.”
His succinct telling of the story didn’t diminish the flash of pain in his eyes. A rush of sympathy filled her. Hard enough to lose a parent, but to be one of the people who discovered him? Grim didn’t even begin to describe it.
“Finn, I’m sorry. That must have been awful. How old were you?”
“Twelve. Mum was devastated. At first she coped, barely, but I ended up having to take on more and more of the duties around the house—on top of school, on top of doing Dad’s chores around the farm. Eventually it got to be too much and it showed. I got into some trouble at school when some kids started teasing me about falling asleep in class. My teacher came over to talk to Mum one day—they’d known each other when they were younger. When she saw how bad the situation had gotten, she called the authorities.”
Finn rubbed his eyes and got up from his chair. He opened a nearby cupboard, which turned out to be an integrated bar-fridge door. “You want water or a can of soda?”
“Water, thanks.” Tamsyn accepted the bottle he passed her and screwed off the cap. “What happened then? Did you get help around the farm?”
He ripped the tab off the soda he’d pulled from the fridge and took a long swallow before answering. “We were both put into care. Me into a foster home in town, Mum into a secure facility outside of Christchurch. I didn’t know it then but she’d begun self-harming. I couldn’t see her for a long time. Lorenzo and Ellen approached social services about providing a permanent home for me and eventually I moved in with them. With Lorenzo’s help, the farm was slowly converted to what you see today—one of the most prolific and high-yield vineyards in the district. While we’ve never produced our own wines, we get a certain satisfaction when the wineries we supply produce another gold medal winner.”
She could see now why the bond between Lorenzo Fabrini and Finn was so strong. The older man had been a father figure to him, a mentor, a savior. But it still didn’t explain his not telling her where Ellen was. If Ellen didn’t want to see her, why not simply tell her that and spare her the wild-goose chase? And for that matter, were they being honest with Ellen either? Did she even know that Tamsyn was looking for her, or had her menfolk simply circled the wagons and kept her in a state of oblivion? She couldn’t bring herself to ask.
“So, you want to establish the respite center in your mother’s memory?”