Beyond the Farthest Star

  “Give us a second chance, Reney.”

  At that moment she knew: what she really wanted—and what she had wanted all along—had never been with Calvin Clayman. It had been with another man, a man of passion and principle. The man she’d chosen but had never given her heart to. How had they lost their way?

  But if they’d lost it, perhaps they could find it again …

  Ignoring him, Maurene tossed the phone onto the bed. It bounced once and landed on the floor. “She planted them the day he left us and then spent all winter in her pajamas.” Maurene stretched out her arms toward the blooms as if seeing her mother there. “I was eight years old and terrified to leave her alone to go to school in the morning. Afraid she wouldn’t be there when I got home.

  “Then in May, she was walking from the kitchen to the bedroom and, out the window, there they were! Two hundred yellow tulips! Completely forgot she planted them, and she said she just …”

  Maurene smiled, remembering. “My mother started to laugh. Seemed so out of place in our backyard. Yet there they were: God’s teacups of sunshine.”

  Maurene’s face was more relaxed when she pivoted toward Calvin again. “She said it was the fact something so beautiful could still grow in our yard—after that awful, awful winter—it made her believe again. Made her able to believe.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Reney?” Calvin demanded.

  “Don’t you know?” she returned, suddenly alight with the knowledge herself. “Can’t you guess? Think what time of year it was, Calvin. I was up to my waist in yellow tulips the day I chose Adam. I only called you nineteen times ‘cause you were Anne’s father. That’s all.”

  “I’m still Anne’s father,” Calvin asserted, his confidence slipping.

  “No,” Maurene said firmly. “No, you’re not.” Retrieving the picture of Anne and Adam, she added, “You want this photo of Anne, or don’t you?”

  Calvin’s words were coldly sardonic. “So, it’s cool, Reney. No, freakin’ awesome. You stickin’ with this ‘I made my choice and I’m keepin’ to it’ mantra. But listen, Reney: one night—one totally heinous night—you run home to the Ad-man and hey, presto, the Ad-man has a choice too. You really think he’s gonna choose … you?”

  At first the insult bounced off Maurene. Then Calvin’s smirk awoke a deeper fear inside her. “Calvin, what did you do? What did you do, Calvin?”

  “Leave the picture and get out, Reney.”

  “What have you done?” she demanded again.

  “My turn to say it,” Calvin returned sternly. “Get out. Go.”

  “What?”

  “I said go!” With a sweep of his arm, Calvin caught the vase of tulips and flung it against the wall. It shattered there, in an explosion of glass and a shower of yellow stars.

  Maurene backed away, but Calvin was now ignoring her. Snatching up one glass of liquor, he drained it at a single swallow. Taking the other with him, he went into the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MAURENE ARRIVED HOME in a welter of conflicting emotions. She was relieved to have escaped from her illusions, and at the same time fearful. What deliberate damage had Calvin done? What secret had he revealed, and to whom had he told it?

  The house was quiet when Maurene entered through the back door. Setting her keys and purse on the kitchen table, she listened to a rustling coming from the living room. When she neared the corner, she saw the walls illuminated with a flickering, orange glow.

  On the hearth gleamed a small fire that chuckled and fluttered as brightly tattooed ash drifted up the chimney. Before the blaze, seated cross-legged on the floor, was Adam, looking like a tribal medicine man deep in a ritual.

  All around him were packing boxes and stacks of papers. As Maurene watched, he thrust his hand into the near crate, then trickled a bunch of publicity photos and news clippings into the flames.

  Without turning, Adam spoke. “He had a really big nose.”

  “Adam?”

  Selecting a clipping from the box, Adam recited aloud from its headline: “‘PINT-SIZE PREACHER PRAYS WITH PREZ.’ Great big nose. When he took a breath, I was afraid he’d suck all the oxygen right outta the room. All of it.” Adam waved the newspaper column over his head as if to stir the air. “Made me pray fast, so no one’d suffocate. What do you think of that? Never told anyone either.” He crumpled the report into a ball and tossed it into the fire.

  “Adam? What’re you doing? I mean, why?”

  Adam stared at her without replying, then lifted a coffee mug to his lips. He took a long swallow, shuddering as the liquid went down.

  “Is that …? Are you drinking, Adam?”

  From beside him, where it had been hidden from Maurene’s view, Adam lifted the pink shoebox and smiled at her. From it he extracted the vodka bottle, now two-thirds empty, refilling the coffee mug before recapping the bottle. “Really think I didn’t know, Mo?” His words were slurred. The firelight cast a wavering shadow of Adam on the wall. “Think I’m that blind? Think I’m that stupid?”

  Dropping the liquor bottle back into the box, Adam selected a photograph and showed it to Maurene while sipping from the cup with the other hand. In the image a diminutive Adam stood amid a crowd of dignitaries. A lean, hard-faced, austere-looking man peered down at him from behind.

  “I prayed for this woman,” Adam recalled. “She was a deaf-mute. Made funny faces and waved her hands. Scared me a little. She kinda looked like my mother, so I prayed from there. Know what I mean? Prayed from there.” He touched his heart. “Next thing, her eyes get wide, and I can tell she’s hearing things for the first time in her life. She raises her arms and tries to praise God, but all she can do is make funny sounds. Yabba, yabba, gabble, gabble. Couldn’t talk, of course.”

  Maurene circled Adam slowly to view him from the other profile, but her husband never stopped his story. “I started laughing then. Couldn’t quit. Everybody in the church thought it was the Spirit moving me! But you know what? I was just a six-year-old kid laughing at this woman who looked like my mother, making baby-talk noises.”

  Adam tapped a forefinger on the photo, and Maurene realized he was pressing the tip against the image of his father. “He knew,” Adam admitted. “He knew why I was laughing.”

  Adam’s goofy grin faltered. He put one hand to his cheek. “Right after this photo we were in the car together … alone. I was crying, ‘cause I missed my mom, ‘cause I had just seen her. And I was begging him to get me ice cream—anything!—just make the picture stop playing in my head. And … he hit me.” Adam tapped his cheekbone. “Here. Said if I didn’t start acting like a grown-up about the things of God, then he’d find some other kid to be his miracle boy.”

  Chuckling without mirth, Adam pondered aloud, “Still don’t know if he meant him … or God. My father would find some other boy … or God would. Never clear on that.” Adam shrugged. “Both of us prob’ly thought it came to the same thing anyhow.”

  Adam stood and a heap of clippings and photos slid from his lap onto the floor. He ripped the dove necktie from around his throat and tossed it into the fire.

  “Oh, Adam,” Maurene said, her heart aching … breaking with understanding, for the first time, of the pain Adam had lived with in order to be the Miracle Preacher Boy.

  “You were right, Mo. I was scared of him. Terrified! From that day on, I never stopped acting like an adult. Acting the part.” Scooping up a handful of papers, Adam heaped them into the blaze, then watched as the ones on the edges curled and wrinkled and browned and burst into flame. “Acting the part with everyone, with everything … until tonight.”

  When he stumbled toward her, Maurene backed away until she bumped into a chair and unintentionally sat. Adam stood swaying before her. He seemed to recognize she was intimidated, for he set down the cup, then knelt in front of her.

  “You were right again,” he continued. “Playacting. Perfect father. Perfect pastor. No wonder Anne hates me. No w
onder she won’t call me ‘Dad.’ “

  “She doesn’t hate you. She loves you. We both do.”

  “Really?” Adam queried. He leaned closer and stared into her face. “You do? You?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “I never wanted you to feel like you had to act …”

  Adam was a beat behind. “Thass good, Mo. That you love me, I mean. Good.”

  Hesitantly, Maurene stretched out her hand and stroked Adam’s cheek. “We don’t have to pretend anymore, okay?”

  But it was not tenderness Maurene saw reflected in Adam’s eyes. Something was off there. Something besides the liquor. Something like steel. Something like fire.

  “‘Kay, Mo. If you say so, Mo.” There was a dangerous-feeling pause. “Or is it Reney? Keep getting your name mixed up in my head.” Staggering sideways, Adam managed to lurch into a chair.

  “Where’s Anne?” Maurene asked, trying desperately to change direction.

  Adam shook his head. “Not here.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not here’?”

  Adam stared into a corner of the room. “She ran away from school this morning. We’re s’posed to wait. Wait by the phone. Which you see I’m doing.” He waved the cup toward the phone, vodka sloshing out when he did. “Need ‘nother drink.” Adam looked unable to rise, but his voice was clearer when he added, “We forgot her birthday, Maurene.”

  A rush of shame and guilt and horror flooded Maurene. “Oh, dear God! Her birthday! Oh, Annie.”

  Squinting at the empty mug, Adam added, “All is not lost. Good ol’ Callie remembered.” Lifting the cup to eye level, Adam peered around it at Maurene. “Why would he do that, Mo? Why would Callie remember our daughter’s birthday?”

  A rushing, a pounding, began, in her ears, in her temples, as if her head would crack open. “Not now, Adam. Let’s not do this now. Please.”

  “Okay,” he said agreeably. Then, “When?”

  “You’ve been drinking, Adam. And Annie’s missing! I think we should—”

  “Know what I think? I think maybe we should do ‘this’ now. I’ll help: Callie knew Anne’s birthday because …”

  Slowly, carefully, Maurene replied, “Because I made a mistake.”

  “A mistake?”

  Maurene spread her hands. “What does it matter what we call it? Calvin told you everything. Didn’t he? Didn’t he?” Her voice rose in pitch until it had a thin screech in it. “Why do you need

  me—”

  “Calvin told the devil, and the devil let me read the sworn affidavit.” Adam repeated the words in a kind of singsong rhyme. “Calvin told the devil and the devil let me read …” Abruptly dropping the song, Adam ordered, “Tell me. Not gonna be real till I hear it from you. So with who … who with … with whom did you?”

  “Calvin,” Maurene said quietly. “It was Calvin I slept with, Adam.”

  Adam considered her for a moment. “It’s Callie, Reney. He likes to be called Callie.”

  Now that the dam had burst, Maurene’s explanation flooded out. “It was spring break. Senior year. You were off on a mission trip. Remember I begged you not to go. Remember? To stay with

  me.”

  Adam reviewed this silently. “So what were you planning, Reney? You and Callie? Since you were pregnant with his kid?”

  Maurene shuddered as she remembered. “We planned … I was going to drive to a clinic in Sterling Heights. I was going to terminate the pregnancy.”

  “Annie, you mean. You were going to kill Annie.”

  Maurene scrubbed each eye with a knuckle as if wanting to cause herself pain. “Calvin was supposed to pick me up. Give me a ride to the clinic after basketball practice. Only …” She leaned forward toward Adam. “Only he was late and you—you were early.”

  There was no mercy in the look Adam gave her.

  “I didn’t want to lie to you, Adam. Remember? I kept saying, ‘Go home. I’ll call you later.’ But you wouldn’t go! So when I blurted out, ‘I’m pregnant,’ the rest of the story just … happened. It was on the news. About this woman who was raped in a parking lot at a mall by a man in a ski mask. I mean, I wasn’t really talking about me, but you said, ” ‘Teerman’s, Mo? Where you work?’ ”

  There was a long pause. “I don’t know why. I just said ‘Yes.’ And I let you think it was me.”

  “And if I hadn’t been early?”

  Without any energy left, Maurene sighed. “Then you’d still be the Miracle Preacher Boy, the man of God you were supposed to be, and not stuck in Leonard with me and a daughter you clearly don’t want.”

  When he didn’t respond, she said desperately, “Adam? Adam! Tell me I’m wrong! Tell me that’s not what you think!”

  There was no reply.

  Fire glow and muted voices tap-danced into Anne’s bedroom by way of the crack under her door. She held her breath, not for fear of being discovered, but so she could hear better. All the lights were off in her room, and she sat on an oval rag rug directly beside the entry. Outside her window the darkness was profound, but it was nothing compared to the black rage in her heart.

  It seemed she had been there for hours. However long it had really been, it had been enough. She had heard her mother come home. She heard her father’s slurred speech and the back and forth about how the Miracle Preacher Boy had lost his way.

  When Anne overheard how Adam’s father had abused him, she felt a rush of sympathy for him. Forces he could not control had shaped and molded him, pressuring him into playacting that had finally burst like an overfilled balloon. Like her mother, Anne wanted to comfort him, tell him it would be all right.

  But when she had heard the note of deep-rooted bitterness enter Adam’s voice, she waited and continued to listen.

  Then came the revelation about her real father.

  Even her mother had lied! For sixteen years Maurene had kept up a sham, a web of deceit woven around their family. For the entire length of Anne’s life she had been surrounded by liars.

  Maurene had not wanted to keep her and had trapped Adam into marrying her with a tale that was completely bogus.

  Adam was not her real father—had never been her real father—and when directly challenged to say he still wanted her as a daughter, he’d been silent. Why was she wasting any more time with these frauds? These losers?

  But out there, not that far away, was her real father. He had made a mistake in not wanting her to begin with, but he had only been a high school kid back then.

  Anne understood what it was to be young and confused. She couldn’t hold that against him.

  And now Calvin Clayman had come in search of her. Anne did not understand all Adam meant about how “Callie told the devil and the devil had the affidavit,” but she did not care. That was all about Adam’s pride, Adam’s ego, Adam’s position and reputation.

  However awkward it might be, Anne knew what she must do: she must go to her real father. The lie about her birth was not of his making. He had stayed away all these years, but now he was back. It must be that his heart had yearned for a connection with her, even as hers did now for him.

  Scooting back away from the door to the farthest corner of the room, Anne grabbed her cell phone and stabbed the keys for Stephen’s number. She sent this text:

  Sticks-boy. Need you to come and get me. Don’t call and don’t ask questions. Park a block away. Come now.

  By way of reply she received:

  Five minutes.

  Stephen’s truck rattled and groaned and creaked. It carried on an entire discussion with the bumps and washboards of the two-lane track heading from Leonard out toward the Starlight Motel.

  The level of conversation did not extend to the two occupants of the cab.

  Stephen had tried, unsuccessfully, to get Anne to talk. As they approached the last hill and the last stand of oaks concealing the Starlight from view, he made one more attempt. “You sure this is a good idea?”

  “Are you deaf or just stupid? Didn’t I say I don’t want to
talk about it?”

  “But in the middle of the night?” Stephen argued. “Sneakin’ out and all? What’s up with that?”

  Grudgingly, Anne mentally conceded that since he had arrived so promptly and so willingly, perhaps he needed at least a minimum of explanation.

  “Look,” she said at last. “I’m going to meet this guy. The one who was at my folks’ place earlier.” When she caught a sideways glance from Stephen, she continued. “Not just ‘this guy.’ Calvin. His name is Calvin.”

  “I’m confused,” Stephen admitted.

  Yeah? Anne thought. You should see inside my head right now.

  Aloud, she said, “He’s an old family friend.”

  “Emphasis on the family part,” she thought.

  She exhaled. “Look—just drive, or let me out and I’ll walk. Got it?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like it.”

  As the truck topped the rise, Anne saw the forlorn STARLIGHT MOTEL sign straight ahead. The neon lettering glowed, but half the letters were burned out and the second word blinked fitfully as if too tired to remain lit for long.

  When they arrived at the motel parking lot two minutes later, Stephen insisted that Anne remain in the truck while he went into the office.

  “I keep telling you chivalry is dead, Sticks-boy.”

  “Yeah? Well, this time, just do it till I see if he’s even really here.”

  Moments later Stephen emerged from the office and returned to the truck. She knew from his expression he was not happy.

  “There’s a Calvin in Room 215,” he admitted. “But how do

  you—”

  Anne was out of the truck with her backpack slung over her shoulder before he could finish. “How many Calvins you think they got at the Starlight? Thanks for the ride, Sticks-boy. See you.” Grabbing a small, gray suitcase from the truck bed, Anne tossed her hair and walked away.

  “Anne,” Stephen called after her. “Annie, wait.”

  “What?” She only partially turned. Why am I hesitating? she asked herself.

  Anne tracked Stephen’s gaze from the Porsche in the parking lot up to the second floor of the motel and back to her face. “Is he … your boyfriend, Annie?” Stephen got between her and the motel.