Sunrise (6 page)

Dayne gave a mock serious nod. “It’s all my fault.” He waved off the firefighters. “She was too distracted to remember she had ground beef thawing over a high flame.” He pressed his fist to his chest. “All my fault.”

Katy opened her mouth as if she might try to defend herself further. But then her shoulders sagged, and she gave the firefighters a sheepish smile. “Sorry, guys. At least the smoke alarm works.”

Landon laughed hard. “It was a slow day at the firehouse anyway. We needed to get out.” He patted Katy on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Here’s a tip.” One of the firefighters nodded at Katy. “Don’t use a high flame unless you’re standing right by the stove.”

Dayne wasn’t about to say he’d told her so. He only saluted the firefighter. “We’ll try to remember that.”

Landon made a few more minutes of small talk. “You and Katy coming to the big leftover dinner tomorrow at the Baxters’?”

“Definitely.” It occurred to Dayne then that Landon might not know about Cody Coleman. He allowed a few seconds for the silliness to fade. Then he explained about the boy and his drinking and how Jim and Jenny and Bailey were at the hospital.

Landon’s face lost some of its color as the story sank in. “I’m sorry. Please . . . tell them Ashley and I’ll be praying.”

“Us too.” The quieter firefighter raised his hand. “If he pulls out of it, pray it’s the last time he does something like this.”

After the conversation ended and Dayne and Katy bid the firefighters good-bye, Dayne hesitated just inside the door. “You’d never see that in LA, not for a minute. Firefighters come to the door, laughing about a false alarm and sticking around to shoot the breeze?” Dayne reached out and pulled Katy to him. “I love this place. I love everything about it.”

“Dayne? What about dinner?” Shawn peered into the hallway. “Me and the brothers are hungry.”

Katy laughed. “Dayne’s going to think up something this time.”

As it turned out, the beef was salvageable. Dayne sliced off the burned bottom and finished the job, slow cooking it the way he’d suggested in the first place. Every time his eyes met Katy’s, they laughed again.

“It’s not funny.” Ricky was still concerned about the fire truck coming to the house. As the youngest Flanigan, he acted brave for his brothers. But his concern showed now that the danger had passed. “The whole house coulda burned down.”

“I know.” Katy put her hand over her mouth. “It’s my nervous laugh. Used to drive my parents crazy.”

Dayne slipped his arm around her waist. “I know the feeling.” He leaned in close to her ear. “Everything about you drives me crazy.” He kissed the tip of her nose and winked at her. “But in a different sort of way.”

Katy managed to pull off a salad without dropping anything or slicing her fingers. BJ prayed for the meal, and the sloppy joes tasted only mildly like smoke.

All through dinner Dayne kept reminding himself that he wasn’t on the set of a movie. This was real life for the Flanigans—a houseful of kids with merriment and boys teasing each other while they ate. Yes, they would have to deal with their concerns about Cody Coleman at some time, but for now the dinner was full of life and love and everything Dayne had always thought a family should be about.

“Hey, let’s play the Three!” Shawn raised his fork.

“The Three?” Dayne gave Katy a look. “Help me out.”

“It’s a dinner game the Flanigans made up. Someone picks a category, and we go around the table. Everyone has to say three answers.” Katy shrugged. “Simple.”

“I called it. I get the topic.” Shawn grinned at the others. “Three favorite moments of all time.” He went first, naming the time he’d scored the winning goal in a championship soccer game, the day he arrived in the United States from Haiti, and the afternoon a year ago when their dad took them to get Mandy, their yellow Lab puppy.

Ricky went next. “Christmas mornings and birthday mornings and every time we go swimming!”

“No, no.” Justin leaned his forearms on the table. “That’s tons of moments. Shawn was talking about three moments.”

“Those are three!” Ricky halfway stood at his place. He held up one finger. “Christmas mornings.” The second finger. “Birthday mornings.” And a third finger. “And every time we go swimming.” He looked at his three fingers. “See, three moments.”

“I think we can call it three.” Katy dabbed her mouth with her napkin and smiled at Ricky. “Very good, buddy. I like the same three.”

And so it went. Finally it was Katy’s turn. She looked at her plate for a moment as a soft laugh came from her throat. “I have about three million.” She glanced at Dayne. “In the last few years, anyway.”

“But you need three exact ones.” Justin was still defining the rules, keeping them on task.

“Hmmm.” Katy tilted her head. “Okay, looking across the theater during opening night and seeing Dayne there, knowing that he had come to see me when he should’ve been in LA. And the second, when Dayne pulled that dusty old Christmas tree off me after I fell on the stage, and then he took out a ring and asked me to marry him.” She looked deep into Dayne’s eyes. “And the third was when we came home a few days before Thanksgiving and found half of Bloomington had fixed up our house. Even Dayne’s brother, Luke.”

“Your turn.” Ricky pointed at Dayne. “Three best moments.”

Dayne held Katy’s gaze a little longer. He loved her so much, and she was right. It was impossible to limit the number of amazing moments to three. Each of hers was still very much alive in his heart as well. But the boys were waiting, so he needed to give an answer. He gave Justin a silly look and jabbed his thumb in Katy’s direction. “She stole mine.”

“You have to think of different ones then.” Justin nodded at his brothers. “Right, guys?”

“Yeah.” Ricky giggled. “Stealing doesn’t count.”

“Okay.” Dayne sighed and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “The first time I saw Katy—the time when I walked into the theater and heard a bunch of kids singing a song from
Charlie Brown
, and then when the show ended, Katy climbed onstage and thanked the kids and families.” He looked at her. “I haven’t been the same since.”

“What’s the second?” BJ bounced in his seat. The boys clearly had no time for mushy stuff.

“Second, when Katy and I walked to the top of the Indiana University stadium. We were all by ourselves, and at the far end of the football field the band was practicing.”

“There was a breeze, and it was the first time—” Katy stopped short, as if she suddenly realized it wasn’t her turn. She put her finger to her lips. “Oops.”

“Yeah, come on! Dayne isn’t finished.” Justin gave Katy a pretend look of warning.

Dayne chuckled, but he shot Katy a look that said he knew what she was about to say. It was one of the first times they’d ever kissed, a moment when their feelings for each other had never been more clear—even with all the obstacles that stood in their way.

Dayne cleared his throat. “And the third—” he felt his smile fade—“was when I was working myself as hard as I could in rehab, and something inside me snapped.”

“Like your arm?” Ricky’s eyes grew wide.

“No . . .” Dayne kept himself from laughing. “Something inside my heart. I stopped working out for a minute and talked to Katy, and I knew—from that moment on—that nothing would come between us ever again. No matter how things worked out or where they worked out, the two of us would be together.”

Ricky made a face. “That’s yucky girl stuff.”

“Yep.” Justin gave Dayne a knowing smile. “But Dayne’s old. That’s okay for him and Katy.”

“I’m old, yes.” Dayne put his arm around Katy’s shoulders and grinned at Justin. “But this old guy just beat you in a football game.”

They all laughed, and Ricky pointed at Justin. “Oooh! You got served!”

“Yeah, okay.” Justin held up his hands in Dayne’s direction. “Tomorrow we get a rematch.”

The upbeat atmosphere continued while they cleared the table and washed dishes and counters. The boys were upstairs brushing their teeth when Katy took a call from Jim Flanigan. There wasn’t much news. Jim and Jenny and Bailey were staying a little longer at the hospital. There had been a few changes in Cody’s vital signs, but nothing drastic enough to be a real encouragement. Jim asked them to keep praying.

When the boys came down in their pajamas, Dayne and Katy cuddled with them on the leather sofa in the great room, and they watched the Indiana Pacers take on the Cleveland Cavaliers. The boys were immediately glued to the action, cheering whenever LeBron James did a monster dunk.

“I thought you’d be Indiana fans.” Dayne loved their enthusiasm.

“We are.” Justin didn’t take his eyes from the screen. “But we’re LeBron fans first.”

The game came down to the final minute, when LeBron led the Cavaliers in a surge that gave them the win. The boys celebrated by reenacting LeBron’s dunks and talking all at once about how they were going to play like that one day.

When the energy died down, Katy made the announcement. “Okay, guys . . . time for bed!”

“Can you read to us?” Ricky took Dayne’s hand as they walked up the stairs.

The feel of Ricky’s little-boy fingers stirred the strongest feelings in Dayne. Feelings of fatherhood and family and all that he wanted to share with Katy in the years ahead. He looked back at her, bringing up the rear next to BJ. “Do we have time?”

“Sure.” Katy put her arm around BJ’s shoulders. “Your mom reads to you, right?”

“Almost every night.” Justin went ahead of the group.

The boys’ rooms were at the end of the hall—Justin and Ricky’s on the left and Shawn and BJ’s on the right. They settled on reading in Shawn and BJ’s room, since everyone agreed it was their turn.

Shawn picked up a book titled
The Encyclopedia of Animal Facts
. “We could read this, but the brothers always say no.”

“Is that right?” Dayne loved how they called themselves “the brothers.” Katy had explained that it was something they’d started the week the boys came home from Haiti. The name had stuck, and now they considered themselves “the brothers.”

Dayne sat next to Shawn and looked at the book. “What are your favorite animals?”

Shawn’s eyes lit up. “All of them. But the Bengal tiger and the cheetah and the elephant are my favorites. Did you know that a cheetah can run seventy miles an hour, and one time they clocked a cheetah running eighty yards in 2.25 seconds?”

Dayne raised his brow. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, only they can’t run their top speeds for more than a hundred yards or they overheat.”

Justin put his hands on his hips. He had a Dr. Seuss book tucked under his arm. “Dayne doesn’t care about the cheetah.”

“Actually, I do.” His heart went out to Shawn. He was the oldest of the three adopted boys but easily the smallest. His love for animals was clearly a God-given gift, something the Flanigans obviously encouraged. Even if Shawn took a little razzing from his brothers. Dayne patted the cover of the animal book. “How about you and I take some time tomorrow, and you show me the best stuff?”

“Cool!” Shawn set the book on his nightstand. “I’ll tell you about the lion and his den and all about the life span of the sea turtle.”

Katy sat on the other bed facing Dayne and Shawn. She thumbed through the pages of the Dr. Seuss book and smiled. “I like this one.”

“Me too.” BJ scooted in and sat next to her.

Justin sat on the other side of Katy, and Ricky joined Dayne and Shawn.

Ricky swung his legs and sat at the edge of the mattress. “Show us the pictures, please.”

For a few seconds, Dayne felt as if ten years had passed by and these were their kids, this warm house their home. Would it be like this? The normalcy of a bedtime routine? Or would he be gone half the time filming movies? Once he fulfilled his current contract, the choice would be his. But if he didn’t make the decision sometime soon, his agent would sign him up for another six films, and there would be no getting out of it.

Katy turned to the first page and began to read. “‘The Star-Belly Sneetches had bellies with stars. The Plain-Belly Sneetches had none upon thars. . . .’”

The story went on about the Star-Belly Sneetches feeling superior because of the stars on their bellies and how Sylvester McMonkey McBean, a clever charlatan, came through town and—for a price—offered the Plain-Belly Sneetches stars on their bellies.

Ricky laughed at the part where McBean offered to remove the stars from the Star-Belly Sneetches so they could still be different.

When the story ended, the Sneetches were broke, having run in and out of the star machines, but they were also wiser, and they made a decision. It no longer mattered whether a Sneetch had a star or not—they were all the same on the inside, and they all deserved to be viewed with respect.

“Know what it’s really about?” BJ brought his legs up under him and looked at Katy. “It’s about how people shouldn’t judge you on how you look.”

“Not the color of your skin or your eyes or your hair or if you have freckles.” Ricky touched his freckled face. “’Cause God made us all and we’re His kids—no matter how different we look.”

Dayne took in the scene, and he felt himself choke up. Here were four boys—three black, one white—all with different birth parents and backgrounds, each one with his own unique look. And yet clearly they’d heard this Dr. Seuss story many times before. Because the moral had been spelled out for them by their parents, and the boys believed it to their very core.

Katy closed the book and glanced at the little faces around the room. “You’re right. God made us all different, but He loves us the same.”

“God has the biggest box of crayons ever.” Justin laughed. “That’s what Mom says. He wouldn’t be a very creative God if He made everyone look alike.”

“Yeah.” BJ yawned, and the dawning of a realization came across his features. He stopped and looked from Katy to Dayne. “Have we heard from Mom and Dad?”

Dayne had known this moment was coming. He and Katy could only keep the boys distracted for so long. He glanced at Katy, and she took his cue. “Your dad called after dinner. Cody’s still very sick. I said we’d pray that he gets better.”