“Dayne’s been to Bloomington at least twice. The second time was when he was here to film his movie.”
Elaine appeared mesmerized, the truth starting to seep into her consciousness. “We were at the farmers’ market, and we walked up, stood along the rope for a few minutes, and watched him.”
“Yes.” John uttered a frustrated sound. “I was twenty feet from my firstborn son, and I didn’t know it.”
Elaine took another sip. “But he was here before that? For what? To scout locations?”
“I don’t think so.” John’s heart seemed to double in weight. “The investigator thinks he hired a PI of his own, and he was here in Bloomington because he had figured out who we were—who his birth parents were.” He narrowed his eyes. “His first visit took place the day before Elizabeth died.”
A soft gasp slipped from Elaine’s lips. “Elizabeth thought she’d met your son, that he’d been into the hospital room and talked with her for an hour, right?”
“Exactly.” John brought his drink to his lips and took a long swig. “I can’t prove it really happened, but if Dayne was here . . .”
Elaine sat up straighter. “Then Elizabeth’s prayer was answered.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
“Okay, so what’s so complicated about that?” She angled her head. “He’s famous, but he’s still your son. If he went out of his way to be with Elizabeth before she died, then he can’t be that bad.”
“Elaine . . .” John’s tone grew as heavy as his heart. “He was here in Bloomington twice. But not once did he call or try to make contact with any of us other than Elizabeth. If he did indeed meet her.”
“Oh.” Elaine’s expression fell. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“I’ve left three messages with his agent and heard nothing back.” He lifted his hands and let them fall to the table. “What am I supposed to think except that Dayne isn’t interested in meeting us? that maybe he can’t be bothered or he’s afraid we’ll want something from him because of his fame?”
“I see.” Elaine put her elbows on the table and thought for a moment. “It is complicated.”
“Last night we were planning the Baxter reunion, and Ashley starts out the evening—before anyone else arrived—by asking me about her older brother, what I’ve found out and how come the private investigator isn’t working harder or faster.” He shook his head. “I lied to her, Elaine. What am I going to say, ‘Your older brother is Dayne Matthews, but don’t think about it too long because he doesn’t want to meet us’?”
“That would come across wrong.”
“Which is why I lied to her. I told her I didn’t know anything yet, because I’m waiting. I need to hear for myself whether Dayne wants contact with us.” He took another long drink of his coffee. The frustration felt good, better than the sorrow that usually came over him when he thought about Dayne. He exhaled hard. “What should I do?”
Elaine didn’t answer fast. Her patience was one of the many things John liked about her. She was thoughtful, careful, allowing a lifetime of experience and faith to lend credibility to her answers.
Finally she reached out and patted his hand. “We need to pray. Here—” she looked around—“now. Before another minute goes by. We need to beg God for contact of some kind so you’ll know. And in the meantime, you have to keep calling.”
The sorrow was back, pushing his frustration aside. He let his eyes linger on Elaine’s a few moments longer. Then he bowed his head and prayed. Quietly but with a sincerity that came from the depths of his soul, he asked God to allow him contact with either Dayne or his agent and to allow it soon.
“I can’t make this happen on my own, Lord. But I believe You’ve brought me this far for a reason. So please . . . please let me know if I can pursue this further.” He swallowed and felt his chin quiver. His voice was shakier than before. “If Dayne doesn’t want to know us, God, then could You maybe change his mind? Even just once? There’s so much . . .” His voice cracked. He waited until he had his composure back. “There’s so much I want to talk to him about. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
The memory of his prayer from earlier today faded. John dumped the wheelbarrow full of pebbles, then stared into the pond. But before he could whisper another prayer, before he could ask God to open the lines of communication between him and his older son, the phone in his back pocket rang.
Probably Ashley, wondering when his project would be finished so she could bring Cole by. Of his daughters she was the best at keeping contact, staying close, and he appreciated her for it. If Landon was at work, Ashley and Cole visited often. He had no hard feelings about what she’d done last fall when she found the letter marked Firstborn in his bedroom and took it home with the intention of giving it to Brooke. He had been hurt by her decision to open it and read it, thereby learning the secret about her older brother. But things between his daughter and him were long since patched up.
He pulled the phone from his pocket, flipped it open, and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hello . . . is this John Baxter?” The connection wasn’t great, but the man’s hesitation was clear.
“Yes.” John straightened and winced at the way his back hurt from bending over. “This is he.”
The man sounded anxious. “Uh . . . I’m Chris Kane, agent for Dayne Matthews. I believe you’ve left me a few messages.”
John’s heart flipped into double time. An airplane was passing overhead, and he covered his other ear so he could hear. “Yes.” John’s mind raced. Where could he start? The details were so sensitive that he hadn’t explained the situation in his message. He’d only mentioned that he was a relative looking to get in touch with Dayne.
He walked slowly back toward the house, begging God for the right words. “Has Dayne told you that he was adopted? that the missionaries who raised him weren’t his biological parents?”
“Yes.” Something in the agent’s tone changed. “I was aware that Dayne hired a private investigator nearly two years ago, and he had some family issues he wanted to look into. Since then, yes. He told me that he was adopted.”
John reached the front porch. “Well, recently I hired a PI of my own, so I could find the identity of my firstborn son, a son my wife and I were forced to give up for adoption.” He climbed the stairs and sat down on the swing. “I guess there’s really no other way to say this.” He paused. “I’m Dayne’s biological father.”
For a moment, the man on the other end said nothing. “Dayne knows about you, Mr. Baxter.”
“He does?” John couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but listen to every detail, every syllable.
“Yes.” The agent sighed, and it sounded mixed with frustration or irritation. “He knows about all of you. In fact, against my wishes, he took a trip to Bloomington the summer before last.”
“That’s what my PI told me.” John didn’t want to ask if Dayne had seen Elizabeth. But he had to know. He blinked back tears. “He was here the day before my wife died. Her name was Elizabeth. She was . . . Dayne’s biological mother.”
“Yes, I know that too.” Again the man sounded tired, as if this entire situation was a mess bigger than he had strength to deal with. “My understanding is that he rented a car, drove to the Bloomington hospital with intentions of meeting his birth mother, but then something happened. Something changed his mind.”
Changed his mind? John bent over his knees and forced himself to draw a breath. How was that possible when Elizabeth’s story seemed to line up with an actual meeting? He closed his eyes. “So . . . he never met her?”
“Not to my understanding.” The agent sounded even more frustrated now. “Look, Mr. Baxter, I don’t know how to tell you this.” The connection was worse than before. “Dayne is a celebrity. He would be wrong to open the door to a biological family at this point in his career. From everything he’s told me, he’s reached an understanding. An internal understanding. Though he’s curious about you and your fa
mily, he knows that nearly everyone wants something from him. A brush with fame, money, connections. Something.”
John felt sick to his stomach. Each word coming from the agent was like a battering ram, doing solid and permanent damage to his heart and mind, his soul and strength. John didn’t have time to respond; the agent was still firing.
“You and your wife gave him up. Another couple raised him. End of story. Any connection at this time would be pointless at best and would raise suspicion in the minds of Dayne and the rest of his team as to your motives.” The agent stopped for a moment. “I hope that doesn’t sound too harsh, Mr. Baxter. It’s simply the reality of Dayne Matthews and the life he lives. It’s not like he needs his biological family to accept who he is. Can you understand that?”
For the first time in decades, John felt like saying something he would regret. How dare this pompous man light into him, questioning his motives and assuming the only reason he was making contact was to gain something from Dayne’s celebrity status? He gritted his teeth and remained silent.
“You there?” The connection crackled.
John opened his eyes. He stood and supported himself against one of the porch pillars. “I’m here.”
“Okay, so what I’m saying is that Dayne’s one of the most famous men in the world. This is no time for a reunion with people he doesn’t know.” The agent tried to soften his tone. “He has too much at stake, too much to lose.” Another pause. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Oh, and one more thing.” The crackling on the line was bad, but the man’s words were clear. “You must keep this news to yourself. This story is the last thing Dayne needs splashed over the tabloids.”
John could feel the heat in his face, feel his heart thudding against his chest. “Fine, then. Thank you for returning my call.” His words seethed with anger. “Neither you nor Dayne will hear from us again.” He flipped the phone closed before the agent could say another word.
For a few seconds John held his breath, certain that he would explode from the fury building inside him. But then he emptied his lungs in a rush and stormed into the house. There was only one place he wanted to be, one place where he could sort through the feelings storming across his soul.
He grabbed his car keys from the hook on the kitchen wall, and ten minutes later he was where he needed to be. At the cemetery. He knew the path well, knew how many steps lay between the place where he always parked and the unassuming headstone that marked Elizabeth’s grave.
From the moment he’d hung up, he’d refused to process the conversation, refused to even acknowledge it for fear it would paralyze him. Now, as he reached the place where Elizabeth was buried, the pain was more than he could stand. He fell to his knees and took hold of her tombstone with both hands, the way he would’ve placed his hands on her shoulders if only she were here.
“It’s over.” He hung his head, and the sobs blindsided him. “Darling Elizabeth, I t-t-tried . . . but it’s over.”
That was all he could say, all that was left. Every day John and Elizabeth had prayed for their firstborn son, longed for him, and wondered about him. Twice during Elizabeth’s life they had staged a search that had led them nowhere. Her dying prayer—that she might meet their son—hadn’t panned out after all. Everything she had said that evening had been a hallucination, just as he had originally assumed.
Whatever had happened to Dayne in his early years, the experience had left him cold and heartless, driven to excel in a career that placed him on center stage and without care enough even to meet his biological mother before she died.
The cemetery was empty this February afternoon, so John let the tears come, let the sorrow have its way with him. His tears spilled onto the grass, over the place where Elizabeth’s body was buried. “Why, God?” He moved a little closer, his hands still on the stone, as if by holding it he could somehow hold the woman he had spent decades loving. He rested his forehead against the cool marble. This was the end of the road. The end of the search that John had been willing to spend a lifetime on. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. S-s-so sorry.”
He would have to tell Ashley now, tell all of the children. They deserved to know that their parents had a terrible secret. They had messed up as young lovers, and they had lived with the pain of their mistake to this day.
John leaned back on his heels and stared at the marker. Above the two dates—her birth date and death date—it read only Elizabeth Baxter, devoted wife and mother. That summed it up, really. He reached out once more and took hold of the stone. Tears still streamed down his face, tears for everything they’d lost by giving up their oldest son and tears for the fact that Dayne had come so close to connecting with them and then had changed his mind.
“I’m sorry, honey. I tried.” Finally, tears for the most painful part of all, the part that was left now that Elizabeth was gone. He would always have a firstborn child out there, a young man who lived a public life and whose movies he could follow in the media anytime he wanted to. He would always have pictures, always have knowledge of how Dayne was doing.
But after today, he would never—not ever—have him as a son.
Chris Kane pushed back from his desk, stood, and faced his window. LA was crystal clear this afternoon, a day when he would’ve been better off to take a walk on the beach or hike the Santa Monica Mountains. Instead he had had to make that phone call, had to deal with this John Baxter character before the guy somehow found another way to Dayne.
Because Dayne Matthews could never know about this phone call.
Ever since Dayne had started talking about his biological family, he’d been different. Not as edgy or social, more of an introvert. For a while Chris had figured it was more about the girl, the drama instructor in Bloomington. But the more time that passed, the more sure he was that all of it was troubling Dayne. The biological family, the girl, the whole city of Bloomington for that matter.
There were days when Chris feared that Dayne would up and move to Indiana and never look back. He took hold of the window frame and shuddered. He couldn’t have that, not for a minute. Dayne was a brilliant actor, only barely scraping the surface of what he was capable of. The last thing he needed was some misplaced set of emotions geared toward small-town life in Middle America.
He needed to be at nightclubs, making the social scene. He needed a different actress on his arm every other month—something to keep the tabloids talking about him. Oh, sure, Chris’s clients could complain about the paparazzi, but none of them had enough money to buy the free ink those photographers gave them every week.
Chris kept track of these things. Dayne hadn’t made a cover of one of the rags in a month. Last time his face was only a two-inch box, a mention because of the deposition in the case of the crazy fan’s attack. The fan would be good for stirring up interest, but it would be short-lived.
It wasn’t just the attention from the paparazzi that seemed to be waning—it was Dayne’s intensity. In the past he had attacked roles, conquering them and leaving his director and costars and audience collectively breathless. Chris hadn’t seen Dream On yet, but he’d heard rumors. Dayne was slipping. Dayne had lost his edge. Dayne wasn’t what he once was.
As his agent, Chris understood what was happening. Dayne hadn’t lost his edge, not really. The simple fact was this: Dayne was distracted. Chris stared at the traffic on busy Mulholland Drive below. He was Dayne’s agent, his gatekeeper. It was up to him to protect Dayne from himself—especially when it came to his career.
He thought about the conversation with John Baxter. Okay, so he’d stretched the details, made some of them up. Dayne would be furious with him if he ever found out, which he wouldn’t. He could hear in the Baxter guy’s tone that he was finished. The man probably figured if Dayne didn’t want anything to do with his family, so be it.
Which was exactly what Chris wanted him to feel. Because Dayne Matthews needed to get his head out of the past, out of the clouds, out of some misdirected set of emotions that had hi
m longing for a life he could never live. He was a movie star, a celebrity. Chris had told the Baxter man the truth. Dayne had no time for exploring his roots. He owed his very best acting to his audience and directors and agent.
Chris sighed and returned to his desk. There was a price to pay for being famous, and in the long run Dayne would certainly rather pay it.
Even if it meant a little sacrifice here and there along the way.
The restaurant was dark, the waiters dressed in white tuxedos. Katy was surprised. She’d driven by the café a dozen times each week on the way to and from CKT practice. Never had she realized the atmosphere inside was so formal. She smoothed her skirt and rested her elbows on the linen tablecloth.
Her date was in the restroom, and she was glad for the break.
The conversation had been stiff and painful, though the guy seemed comfortable with the fact. Terrence C. Willow, attorney-at-law, was thirty-two years old. His aunt was one of the CKT moms, and like so many others she had insisted on setting Katy up. At least for dinner.
From the beginning Katy wanted to protest, but common sense got the better of her. If she didn’t date, she’d never meet a man she might fall in love with, never find the person God had for her, and worst of all never get married. Not that being single was so bad, not for some people.
But long ago when she pictured how she would spend her late twenties, she pictured having children of her own—not getting set up by every well-meaning mom in town. Between Rhonda and her, there’d been more blind dates than in all of Bloomington combined. Katy was sure of it.
On paper, Terrence sounded promising. He was a water-skier and a hiker, he volunteered time with his church’s junior high group, and his ultimate career goal was to sit on a bench in a Bloomington courtroom. His latest job had him working at the district attorney’s office downtown—clearly a strong step toward becoming a judge.
The CKT mom had shown Katy his picture; he was nice-looking. Tall, thin—a little too thin—blond hair and glasses. The quiet, sensitive sort, Katy figured. A guy with strong morals and intentions, ready to spend his life putting away the bad guys. If she was going to fall for someone, why not Terrence C. Willow?