Forgiven

  Without someone to talk to, he wasn’t sure what to do. He took a swig of his coffee and pursed his lips. “Elizabeth and I didn’t have five children.”

  A pair of blue jays hopped close to the table, then flew away between two nearby maple trees.

  Elaine uttered a confused laugh. “John, what do you mean?”

  He looked down for a moment and then forced himself to make eye contact with her. “We had six.” He paused, giving her time for the truth to sink in. “Elizabeth got pregnant when we were dating. We weren’t that young, really. But her parents wouldn’t consider letting her keep the baby. She was unmarried and pregnant, so they sent her away.”

  Across from him, Elaine’s mouth hung open. “You’re serious.”

  “Yes.” He felt better already, just being able to talk about it. “Her parents knew, but mine didn’t. We never told anyone else, not through all the years of marriage and raising children. Our other kids have no idea.”

  “Elizabeth gave the baby up for adoption—is that what you’re saying?”

  “She had no choice.” He wrapped his fingers around his warm cup and squinted against the morning sunlight. The noise of the farmers’ market faded into the background. “The baby was a boy. Our firstborn son.” He watched her reaction, looking for shock or judgment. There was none. “When Elizabeth was sick with cancer the first time, we tried to find him.” He worked the muscles in his jaw, the disappointment over that time still raw. “The records were sealed. We got nowhere.”

  “Wow.” Elaine set her coffee down and stared at him, her eyes full of amazement. “Elizabeth and I spent all those hours together, working with cancer patients, visiting them. I never knew.”

  “That was our promise.” A brilliant red leaf drifted down and landed on the table beside him. The trees all around were beginning to turn colors, bright reds and pretty yellows. He dusted the leaf onto the ground. “We would go years not talking about it even with each other. Most of the time we tried to believe we’d never had him. But when the cancer came back—” he glanced at his wedding ring—“finding our firstborn son was the most important thing in the world to Elizabeth.”

  A shadow fell over Elaine’s face. “You didn’t find him?”

  “No.” John’s heart hurt, remembering those final days with Elizabeth. “She kept praying, believing God would let her meet him before she died. She wanted it so badly that right at the end she actually convinced herself it had happened. She was . . . she was delusional, fading away a little more with every hour. But in her mind, he’d found her; he’d walked into her hospital room and told her he understood why she’d given him up.” He breathed in through his nose, willing himself not to let the memories get to him.

  “So, she had peace.” Elaine’s voice was clear and kind. “God in all His mercy gave her that. I think it’s wonderful.”

  “That’s what I told myself. Never mind that it wasn’t true. At least she thought it was. It’s like you said. The delusion allowed her to die at peace with all of us.”

  “Did the other kids . . . did they wonder what she was talking about?”

  “No. They weren’t in the room when we had the conversation. We’d just returned from dinner, and they were visiting in the hall, giving us a few minutes together before coming in.” He hesitated, wishing he could go back to that moment once more. “Everyone knew they were her final hours.”

  “And—” Elaine lowered her voice, looking to the distant places of his soul—“why are you telling me?”

  He took another drink of his coffee. “You keep saying how honest I am, how I’m a man of integrity.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I guess I wanted it to be true.”

  She watched him for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No, John. That’s not why you told me.”

  He chuckled and popped a few blueberries into his mouth. “Okay, then why did I tell you?”

  “Because you don’t have closure.” She angled her head, her smile as genuine as the fall morning. “You don’t, do you?”

  “No.” He sighed. He watched a squirrel grab hold of a nut and race up the side of one of the distant maples. His eyes found hers again. “No, I don’t have closure.”

  “Elizabeth wanted to find him, and she didn’t. Now it’s up to you.”

  “That’s just it.” John swished the coffee around in his cup. “I can’t look for him without telling the others. And Elizabeth and I were always set on not telling them. Not giving them a reason to spend a lifetime wondering, the way we had done.”

  Elaine agreed. “I see that.” A group of older kids jogged by on the sidewalk. Their shirts all read Clear Creek Cross-Country. Elaine waited until they were gone. “What would Elizabeth want now? now that she’s gone and he was never really found?”

  “That’s what I don’t know.”

  “That’s why you told me.” She smiled and patted his hand. The sensation was nice but slightly awkward. He was glad when she drew back and took another sip of her drink. “You need someone to help you decide what to do next.”

  That was it exactly. Somewhere in the world, a boy had grown up without his birth parents, without the Baxter family. If Elizabeth wanted to find him, then that was the least he could do for her. “I would start looking tomorrow if it weren’t for the kids.” He anchored his elbows on the table and locked his fingers together. “I keep wondering what might matter to her more—finding our firstborn or keeping the truth about him from the other kids.”

  Elaine thought for a minute. “Didn’t you say Elizabeth left a box of letters?”

  “Yes.” They’d talked about it a few days ago. “They’re the ones Ashley wants copied. She keeps waiting for me to present each of the kids with a scrapbook of their mother’s letters.” His voice grew gravelly thinking about it. “I can barely look at the box without wanting to shut off the lights and cry for a month.”

  “I know.” Elaine gripped the edge of the bench she was sitting on. “I felt like that for years afterwards. I still do.”

  “So . . . what’s the answer?”

  “Maybe the answer’s in the letters. I bet somewhere in there you’ll find what you need to do. Whether you should try and locate this young man or let him go for all time. And once you know that answer, you’ll know the other one—what Elizabeth would want you to tell the kids.”

  A release came over him, as if somehow she had freed him to move ahead in the matter. “The letters, huh?”

  “Yes, John.” Elaine stood and collected the berries, waiting while he moved around the table and joined her. “And something else.”

  They were face-to-face, and he realized that she was shorter than Elizabeth. “What else?”

  “Don’t be afraid to cry. Even for a month.”

  Elaine’s advice played in John’s mind for the next half hour, while they bought squash and tomatoes again, and as he dropped her off at her house. Now he was home, and he set the box of vegetables on the kitchen counter and washed his hands.

  The answer was in the letters.

  It was true—that’s where he was bound to find out what Elizabeth would’ve done, what she would’ve wanted him to do. Even after a beautiful morning of sharing conversation with a woman who was becoming a better friend with every passing day, there was no denying the loneliness.

  The quiet of the house suffocated him with it.

  Going through Elizabeth’s letters would only make him feel worse in some ways. But Elaine was right. There were letters in that box from Elizabeth to him and from him to her. Letters from when she had been forced to move away and have the baby on her own, without so much as a visit from him. And letters where he told her how he’d felt and how no one could keep them from each other once she returned.

  There were the other letters, too, the ones Elizabeth had written for him and for their firstborn child just before she died. Maybe something in that letter would tell him what he should do next. He steeled himself against the past and went upstairs to his room—their room
.

  He turned on the lights in the bedroom and then in the closet. Without thinking too hard about the task that lay ahead, he pulled the box of letters from the top shelf, carried it across the room, and set it on the floor at the foot of the bed. Then he dug around in a bottom cubby near the back of the closet and found the hidden manila envelope, the one that contained a copy of the letter Elizabeth had written to the five kids and the one she’d written to him. And finally the last one—the one marked Firstborn.

  Before opening it, he sat on the edge of his bed and sifted through the box. Not far from the top was a letter she’d written to him after getting her final cancer diagnosis. He unfolded the paper and let his eyes find their way down the page.

  John, darling . . .

  I’m tired so I decided to take a nap. We need to talk tonight. I’m consumed with finding our firstborn son, absolutely consumed. I believe God’s telling me to try my hardest on this. I think I’m supposed to meet him. It’s my only prayer. We’ll talk later.

  Lovingly,

  Elizabeth

  The tears came unbidden. He read the letter again and remembered the first time he’d seen it. Tucked beneath a tube of toothpaste in their bathroom, where she’d known he would find it. He had read the letter, folded it, and slipped it into the box in the closet. Then, quietly so he wouldn’t wake her, he’d climbed into bed beside her and held her until she woke up. When she did, the idea of finding their son was still the first thing on her mind.

  He blinked, and a batch of teardrops slid down his face, onto the folded letter. God, what am I supposed to do? She thought You’d bring our firstborn to her, but You didn’t. Am I supposed to walk away from this? let it go?

  No answers blew across his hurting heart. He tucked the letter along one side of the box and found the one he’d hidden before, the one Elizabeth had written to him after Luke’s birth. He worked his way through five letters before he set them down, stood, and went to the window. It was still early in the morning, just past eight o’clock. But it felt like the darkest hour of night inside their bedroom.

  John opened the blinds and peered out. Five letters—that was enough. All he could take for one day. He sniffed and pressed his palm against the cool glass pane. Besides, he didn’t need more than that to know the answer. It was as clear as it was right, and it brought with it a sense of peace that he hadn’t felt since Elizabeth’s death.

  He stared past their land to the open sky beyond. It was time to start looking. With everything he had, he would search for the young man, and one day—no matter how many months or years it took—he would find him. If he needed to hire one private investigator or two or a whole crew, he would do so. He wouldn’t tell his other children, of course. Not until his search was successful. And it would be successful. Elizabeth’s dying wish had been to find their firstborn son.

  Now it would be his.

  Katy was more nervous than she’d been since high school when the track star asked her out and her father insisted on meeting him first. Dayne had called, and she’d given him directions to the Flanigan house.

  Ashley knew he was in town; she’d guessed as much. But so far the press hadn’t found out. One more day together wouldn’t hurt, only now he was coming to the Flanigans’, and he wanted to meet Jenny and Jim.

  “They’re the closest thing you have to family here.” He was adamant. “I don’t care if they know who I am.”

  She didn’t either, not really.

  Jim had taken the four younger boys to the lumber store, and Bailey and Connor were downstairs in the kitchen, eating and getting ready for rehearsal. In Annie, Bailey was one of the servants, and Connor had the part of Bert Healy. Both kids were happy with their roles, excited about how rehearsal had gone the night before.

  Katy couldn’t stop moving. She paced to the front door, scanned the driveway, and then returned to the kitchen.

  Finally on her next trip to the front door Jenny came up beside her. She brought her head close to Katy’s and peered out the window with her. “Looking for someone?”

  “Jenny!” She took hold of her friend’s shoulders and kept her voice a rough whisper. “Dayne’s coming here. I just got off the phone with him!”

  “Hmmm.” Jenny checked her watch. “Does he know about us? that we know about him?”

  “Yes.” Her heart raced and she tugged at her shorts. The plan hadn’t changed. They were supposed to jog, and she’d chosen the distance. Nearly two miles to the new park down the street. She released Jenny’s shoulders and paced to the hallway and back. “What about Bailey and Connor?”

  “You don’t want them to know?” Jenny looked like she was trying to keep up.

  “No. I don’t want the CKT kids knowing about him.”

  Jenny gave her a strange, knowing look. She nodded and headed toward the kitchen. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Katy looked out the window and saw Dayne’s rental car pull into the driveway. Why was she so nervous? They were almost out of time, weren’t they? He would meet his film crew on Tuesday, and then they could go back to pretending these days had never happened.

  Was she really worried that Bailey and Connor would find out? that they’d tell the rest of the CKT kids? Or was she worried about what Rhonda and the other adults would think?

  Somehow Rhonda hadn’t noticed Dayne last night. But she was bound to figure it out if he came again, and then what? Maybe she didn’t want Rhonda pointing out the obvious, that the drudgery of singleness wasn’t solved by spending time where a person was certain—convinced—that God didn’t want her.

  Katy pursed her lips and blew out. This wasn’t the time to think so deeply about it. Dayne was an acquaintance, a pal. That’s all he could ever be. She watched him walk up to the front door, watched the way his long legs moved with a practiced confidence. She took a step back and swallowed hard. Who was she kidding? Right or wrong, her feelings for him went way beyond friendship. If she could’ve made these days last another week or a month or a year, she would’ve.

  He spotted her through the small windows at the sides of the door and smiled.

  She waved and rushed to open the door. Slow, Katy. She blew out again. Slow down. She ushered him inside and smiled. “Hi. I’ve got the route all picked out.”

  “Okay.” Something in his expression told her that maybe he wanted to hug her, but he kept his distance. “Can I come in for a minute?”

  “Dayne—” she lowered her voice—“the kids don’t know about you. I . . . I think it’s better if they don’t.”

  “They won’t think it’s me—the real me.” He grinned. Bloomington seemed to be good for him. He looked more relaxed, less worried about people finding out who he was. Maybe it was just the relief of getting around town without photographers following him everywhere. “Come on . . . where’re Jim and Jenny?”

  “Jim’s at the store with the little boys.” She smoothed the wrinkles from her T-shirt. She was about to suggest leaving right away when he headed down the hallway. “Hey,” she called after him. When he didn’t stop, she groaned and followed him into the kitchen.

  Jenny was at the stove, making oatmeal. She gave them both a wave. “Hi.” Then she turned to the kids, who had stopped unloading the dishwasher to turn and look at Katy and Dayne. “Bailey . . . Connor, this is Katy’s friend.” She directed the next part to Katy. “You’re going jogging, right?”

  “Right.” Katy couldn’t slow her racing heart. She was grateful for Jenny, relieved at the way she’d diverted the attention.

  Connor said hello as he was turning back to the dishes. But Bailey’s glance lingered a little longer as she looked from Dayne to Katy and back again. Finally she said hi and returned to helping her brother.

  Jenny stirred the pot a few times and adjusted one of the burners. Then she followed Katy and Dayne back toward the front door. When they were out of earshot of the kids, Jenny wiped her palms on her jeans and held out her hand. “Dayne, nice to meet you. I’d ask you to stay
for oatmeal, but it looks like you have plans.”

  “We do.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Thanks for the offer, though. And hey, your kids are cute.”

  “Thanks.” She looked at Katy. “I don’t think they picked up on who he was.”

  “It doesn’t really matter.” Dayne smiled. “I don’t think they’d alert the media.”

  Katy shifted her weight to the other foot. They needed to get going. They had barely an hour for the jog as it was. “I’m more worried about the people at CKT. If they find out, the media won’t be far off.”

  “They’re not far off, anyway.” Dayne bumped her shoulder with his and winked at her. “We both know that.”

  “Well, anyway—” Jenny smiled at him—“enjoy your jog.” Her eyes took on a more serious look. “From what Katy says, you don’t have a chance like this all that often.”

  “I don’t.” He glanced back at Katy, and she felt her insides melt.

  She looked away, fighting her feelings for him, feelings she had been denying one way or another since he’d arrived in town on Thursday evening. If she stood there another minute, she would scream. The combination of hoping Bailey and Connor hadn’t guessed who he was, the small talk in the foyer, and the knowledge that after today they might never be alone like this again was about to drive her crazy.

  “Okay . . .” Katy took his hand. “We’re leaving. We’ll never make it to the park if we don’t go now.”

  Dayne held his free hand up and raised his brow in Jenny’s direction as they neared the front door. “Thanks for the oatmeal offer.” They were halfway outside when he yelled back, “Maybe next time.”

  Katy pointed down the street toward a grove of trees a block away. “Follow me.” She started at a sprint and held that pace until they reached the trees and she couldn’t breathe. She stopped and grabbed her side. “Yikes . . .” She bent over, her lungs burning.