Coming Home Read online

  But in his research the PI had found out something else. Elizabeth was dying of breast cancer with maybe only a week or so to live.

  The next morning Dayne flew into Indianapolis and drove a rental car to the hospital in Bloomington. As he was about to step out of his car he spotted all of them, the entire Baxter family leaving the hospital. They were emotional, clearly. Several of them had arms around each other’s shoulders and their heads were bowed, the moment serious. Dayne guessed they were headed out for a meal, a chance to get away from the hospital for a little while. As they came closer he saw Luke and then the others, girls who had to be his sisters. He hesitated, wondering if he should introduce himself, wondering if they’d recognize him from the movies or if they’d think he was some crazy imposter.

  But as he started to get out of the car he heard the sound he’d come to know better than his own heartbeat. The sound of cameras clicking.

  Dayne remembered his frustration. “I shut the door. I figured the paparazzi could take pictures of me sitting in a car in a hospital parking lot. But if I approached the Baxters, they would want to know why.” And just like that everything real and good and private about his birth family would be gone forever. They would be scrutinized and photographed and made to be an object of public curiosity.

  So Dayne stayed in his car.

  After a few minutes he drove to the front of the hospital, parked illegally and hurried inside, baseball cap pulled low over his face. The paparazzi knew better than to follow him into a hospital. And for the next hour he had the only time he would ever have with his birth mother.

  “I was desperate to meet her.” Dayne felt the sadness again. He’d missed so much by not knowing about his family in his early years. “And the cool thing is she was expecting me. I think she’d been praying for me, that she would meet me. That’s what she said, anyway.”

  “That was the same day … the first time you saw me.”

  “I was a wreck by then.”

  He sighed and stopped walking. For a long while he stared out at the Pacific and simply felt. Felt the sand beneath his toes and the ocean breeze on his skin. Felt the love of the only woman he’d ever wanted, the girl he had fallen for from that very first long ago moment. God was so good, letting him find Elizabeth Baxter … even when he only had the privilege of knowing her for an hour.

  “She didn’t get that I was famous.” Dayne chuckled but the sound was more sad than funny. “Which was so great. Because she was proud of me anyway. She was so sick she was borderline lucid. But still she talked to me like she’d known me all my life.”

  “In a way she had. Through prayer, anyway.” Katy eased her hands around his waist and leaned on his shoulder. “It wasn’t her choice to give you up.”

  “I wish I would’ve known her with my dad. I have a feeling they were beautiful together.”

  “Definitely. Look at the family they created.”

  Dayne let that settle in for another long moment. “We can start walking back. The kids will be up soon.” He put his arm around her again and kissed the top of her head. “I love you. Thanks for listening.”

  “It’s important. Remembering.” She smiled up at him. They walked a little faster than before, more aware of the time. “It’s not like we do this often. It’s been years.”

  She was right. Dayne rarely brought any of this up, mainly because it felt better to believe he’d always been part of the Baxter family. “When I left the hospital all I could think was I should’ve grown up there, in Bloomington. Then I see this old community theater and a sign on the marquis, Charlie Brown the Musical.” He hesitated, feeling the way he’d felt that day. “I knew if she hadn’t given me up I would’ve done theater in that building. My whole life might’ve been different.”

  Dayne couldn’t resist, so he parked and snuck in through the back door. He slipped into the back row and watched the production. “You came up on stage at the end of the show and it was like the complete picture. Because I knew I would’ve dated you. There would never have been anyone for me but you.”

  “My choreographer told me you’d been there.” She laughed. “We all thought she was crazy.”

  The encounter started a pursuit of Katy, one that Dayne kept up until he proposed to her a few years later. Along the way he and Katy dealt with stalkers and attacks in the gossip rags. Ultimately, Dayne had to wrestle with the one thing that truly figured to keep them apart.

  His lack of faith.

  But a trip to Mexico to visit his missionary friend from boarding school changed everything. After the miracle of that trip, Dayne didn’t see God as the enemy.

  The breeze had died down, and the sun was breaking through the fog. He smiled at her. “Remember what I did after that?”

  “How could I forget?” She put her head on his chest and they stayed that way for a minute. “I came home from CKT rehearsal the next day and there were flowers waiting for me.” She looked up at him, deep into his eyes. “The card said, ‘I once was lost but now am found.’ After that I knew.”

  “What did you know?” His voice was soft, barely louder than the sound of the breaking surf.

  “I knew you loved me.”

  He kissed her, unaware of anything around him but her. Always her. “With all my life, Katy.”

  They had met up again after that and started a conversation, how things might work out and whether she could live his life or not. But then he was in the most awful car accident, a head-on collision on Pacific Coast Highway caused by pursuing paparazzi. He had almost died, and even after surviving the initial trauma, he faced months of rehab. Katy had gone to LA to push him, to insist that he never give up.

  And to tell him she loved him, too.

  When he came back to Bloomington after his recovery time, he found that the Baxters and the Flanigans and so many others in Bloomington had completely renovated the old house on the edge of the lake, the one Dayne planned to fix up before the accident.

  “Wasn’t that the most amazing thing, pulling into the driveway and seeing half the town there?” They still faced each other. Katy was the one person he had shared all this with. His entire history since he found out he was a Baxter. “It was like an incredible episode of a home makeover show.”

  “I couldn’t believe how much work they’d done.”

  Dayne grinned. “Let’s walk. I keep getting distracted.”

  “It’s a pretty great story.”

  “It is.” He laughed and took hold of her hand. “I couldn’t have made it up, that’s for sure.”

  After that it was only a matter of time before Dayne proposed to her. He was so thrilled to have his new relationship with the Baxters, so excited about his wedding plans that he’d moved into the lake house and for a while he thought he’d be content in Bloomington.

  But the chance to make movies for God beckoned him every day. When Keith Ellison called from LA asking him to partner in a faith-film venture, Dayne talked it over with Katy and the two made the decision. They would live and work in LA as long as God might use them there.

  “The hardest thing about leaving Bloomington?” Dayne looked up at the sky, but he felt the wetness in his eyes. “Knowing that I’d see my dad less.” He paused, his thoughts and emotions swirling together. “I’d just found him … you know?” “I’m glad we go back often.”

  “We do.” He didn’t want to feel guilty. This wasn’t about whether they’d made the right decision. “I just miss him. I lost a lot in the whole deal. Missing out on being a Baxter all those years.” He stood a little straighter as they reached their back steps. “And now he’s seventy.”

  “You know what that means.” Katy hugged him once more, running her hands along his arms and back.

  “What?”

  “It means you need to find an hour to put that whole story in a letter. Before tomorrow.”

  For the first time that month, the letter felt possible. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He could hardly wai
t to get to Bloomington, to spend a week celebrating his father’s seventy years with the greatest family ever. Dayne might not have had as many years with John Baxter as the others, but this much was sure.

  They were the best years of his life.

  Nine

  THE MORNING OF HER FATHER’S SURPRISE PARTY, ASHLEY DID something that might’ve surprised her brothers and sisters.

  She drove to the cemetery.

  There were certain days Ashley made a point of going, and this was one of them. Long before she made plans to throw a surprise party for her dad this final Saturday in June, she knew she’d spend time in the early morning hours at the cemetery. Now, at just before seven in the morning, she quietly kissed Landon’s cheek as he slept and she slipped on a lightweight Nike jacket. The kids were asleep, too, and would be for another hour at least.

  She left the house without making a sound and she kept the radio off while she drove. The cemetery was on the outskirts of Bloomington, in a pretty patch of land lush with green grass and the occasional trees and shrubs. Ashley narrowed her gaze on the road ahead and thought about her decision to make this trip. Her mother and baby daughter were not at the cemetery. She knew that much.

  But something about going to the place where they were buried created in Ashley a reflective feeling, an almost sacred moment where she could remember vividly once more the beauty of those two lives and the depth of how she missed them. The cemetery was a place where Ashley’s soul found a quiet it didn’t easily find at other times.

  She pulled into the parking lot and easily found her way down the winding paved sidewalk through the cemetery to the place where they were buried, the two of them side by side. Her mother’s larger tombstone, and Sarah’s smaller one. She liked to think that God had allowed Sarah to be born with anencephaly because her dear grandmother — Ashley’s mom — would’ve wanted a grandchild with her in heaven. Ashley sat on the bench adjacent to the graves.

  Her mother had lived long enough to see her get married. Ashley would always be grateful for that. She looked up at the blue sky overhead, at the full branches of the oak tree not far from where she sat. Landon had gone to New York City after 9 – 11 to look for his firefighter buddy, Jalen. It took months before his body was found in the pile at Ground Zero, and only then did Landon come home.

  Ashley could picture that moment like a painting in her mind, the way she would always picture it. She’d been working on a piece of art, her paints and easel set up outside what had then been her parents’ house. The one she and Landon shared with their kids now. She hadn’t known he was coming, and suddenly he was there. His hands on her shoulders, and the whisper of his voice in her ears.

  “You have the most beautiful hair.” His words found their way straight to her heart. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

  She had turned around and found him standing there, his face weathered, his shoulders sunken. As if the experience in New York had all but killed him. And with that they were together, together in a way that nothing and no one could ever separate again. The wedding plans happened quickly but the whole time her mom was fighting for her life. Ashley prayed along with the rest of the family, but her prayer was more personal.

  That God would allow her mom to live long enough to see her get married. In all His mercy, the Lord answered her prayer. One particular memory presented itself that early morning. The moment Ashley tried on her wedding dress in her mother’s bedroom. Her mom was too weak to leave the house, but that day she stood and came to Ashley. For several minutes she helped button up the back of the gown and she fawned over the train and helped adjust it so she could take in the whole of the sight of Ashley.

  “I’m not sure if there’s ever been a more beautiful bride.” Her face shone with happiness, and for the first time in weeks she looked almost well again.

  Ashley had let the words find permanent lodging in her heart. Her mom had certainly said the same words to her sisters over the years and to Reagan when she and Luke married. But in that moment she felt like truly the most beautiful bride ever.

  Tears filled Ashley’s eyes in the cool morning light, and she blinked them back. Maybe it was just that she had needed to hear the words more than her sisters needed them. After all, she was the Baxter girl who had gone off to Paris and made foolish decisions, the one who had probably hurt their mother the most. The reconciliation and redemption Ashley felt, standing before her mother in her wedding gown, was something she would hold on to until her final heartbeat.

  “Oh, Mom …” Ashley breathed the words out loud. “I still miss you so much.” She looked down at the tombstone, at her mother’s name and the few words they were able to etch into the marker. “We’re throwing Dad a surprise party. You probably know, but I wanted to tell you. I can’t believe he’s turning seventy.”

  She let her eyes fall on the smaller stone.

  “Sarah … you were such a special baby. God must be using you for a very great purpose in heaven.”

  Ashley smiled through her tears. There was no way to calculate the things little Sarah had taught her. When she was born, they all filled the hospital room. Everyone in the Baxter family, all of them holding hands and singing songs of praise. Celebrating life as if there was no sign of impending death.

  They passed little Sarah around the room, taking turns holding her and loving her and singing quiet songs of praise to God on her behalf. When Sarah was returned once more to Ashley’s arms, they sang the hymn that had come to mean so much to them over the years.

  “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”

  Cole had done something then, something that he still talked to Ashley about. He had given her a drawing he’d done, a picture of Ashley’s mother holding baby Sarah, the two of them in a beautiful land. A land Cole told her was heaven. “I saw the two of them, so I drew it,” he told her.

  No artwork before or since could compare to that single illustration and what it meant to Ashley in the hour before Sarah’s death. From that point on, Ashley was at peace, certain that her baby girl would be fine. Until they met again she would be loved and cared for and safe — not only with Jesus.

  But by Ashley’s mother.

  At the time, Ashley still struggled with her father’s decision to remarry, and of all her sisters she and Erin were probably the most distant with her dad’s new wife. But Sarah’s birth changed all that. Elaine came to the hospital with a small pink outfit for the baby. Clothes that gave Ashley a very clear message.

  Sarah’s life mattered. It was meant to be celebrated before it could be mourned.

  From that day on, Ashley felt a fiercely protective love for Elaine.

  Ashley finished up by praying, asking God for His blessing on her father’s birthday party. That it would be a time of sweet laughter and remembering. When she was finished, Ashley stood and filled her lungs with the morning air. She still had a lot to do to get ready for today. She’d spent enough time in the cemetery, remembering and thanking God.

  Now it was time to get back to the living.

  THE BARBECUE WAS OPEN AND LANDON was struggling with the grate, trying to clean it and adjust it closer to the fire. Ashley watched him from the kitchen window and after a minute he walked through the back patio door and held up the scrub brush. “This isn’t cutting it.” Grime from the barbecue practically covered his arms. “Remind me again why we didn’t clean this thing after the Labor Day barbecue last year?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “Can I take a picture? Please? You look like an ad for an industrial cleaner.”

  He raised an eyebrow in her direction. “Do I have grease on my face, too?”

  “Well,” she winced, “let’s just say the whites of your eyes look very bright.”

  Laughter came over him, too. “Any suggestions?”

  She looked under the sink and found a different scrubber. It wasn’t as bristled, but it promised dramatic results. “Here.” She handed it to him. “Maybe clean off before you use it.”

 
; He took her advice and went to the sink. A few minutes of hot soapy water and a handful of paper towels later and he looked like himself again. “Now I won’t scare the children.” He chuckled. “How long before I need to start the barbecue?”

  Ashley looked at the clock on the microwave. It was just after four. “As long as it’s hot by four-thirty. I have the tray of meat ready.” She turned to him again. “I thought it’d be better to have the burgers and hotdogs ready before everyone gets here. That way we can all be together and you won’t be stuck outside cooking.”

  “I like it.” He held the new scrubber up in the air. “Here I go. Wish me luck.”

  He walked back outside and Ashley held tight to the feeling inside her. Something about her dad’s big birthday, or maybe her earlier visit to the cemetery made her more nostalgic than usual. Knowing that her dad was seventy years old was a stark reminder to all of them. Time didn’t stand still, even for the greatest of love.

  Even for the Baxter family.

  Landon felt better these days, his lungs healthier than they’d been when he was fighting fires. His new job — helping out with drug intervention in the schools—was every bit as rewarding and the improvement in his lungs made doctors hopeful that Landon’s life expectancy might not be affected by his disease. A disease he’d most likely gotten as a result of his work at Ground Zero.

  All of which was why Ashley sometimes watched Landon a little longer, holding on to the sight of him. There was no telling how long any of them had, after all. Always better to treasure the moment. Life had taught her that if nothing else.

  She pulled up a bar stool at the kitchen counter and called each of her siblings, just to make sure they were on track for five o’clock. Dayne and Katy had landed at the Indianapolis airport late last night and they’d driven to Luke and Reagan’s. The two families would caravan to Bloomington. Dayne guessed they’d be a little early. The same was true for Brooke, although Peter had rounds at the hospital and wouldn’t be able to come till later. “He tried everything he could to get it rearranged.” She sounded frustrated. “He’ll meet up with us around seven. He said to save him a burger.”