The Black Sheep's Secret Child

“Oh, don’t be like that.” His mother picked up her menu and once more began to peruse the entrées. “Your father used to shut down the exact same way.”

“Stop comparing me to him.”

“I will when you stop behaving like him. Siggy has no heart and very little soul. He is bullheaded and unforgiving.”

“But you married him and had three children. Why do that if he’s so terrible?”

“I was young, idealistic and ambitious. He told me I was talented, and I thought with him backing me I would have an amazing career as a singer.” Trent’s mother sighed. “And in the beginning he charmed the pants right off me.”

“What changed?”

“He thought I had an affair.”

The waiter brought their drinks, giving Trent a moment to assimilate what his mother had said.

“Did you?”

Naomi didn’t look surprised or annoyed by his question. “I didn’t sleep with Marco, but I did fall in love with him. He was an incredibly talented musician I met shortly after he signed with West Coast Records.”

“Marco? I don’t recall anyone by that name at the label.”

“That’s because your father destroyed his career. He never made an album and eventually gave up music.” Naomi got a faraway look in her eye. “It was a year after Rafe was born. Siggy promised that I could record my second album. I’d been working on songs while pregnant with Rafe. One of those was a duet. Marco and I recorded it together. He had the most amazing voice. If he’d signed with any other record company, he probably would’ve been huge.”

Trent couldn’t figure out why she was telling him all of this. “Does Siggy think this Marco is my father?” It would explain why he could do no right in his father’s eyes. Trent hadn’t realize how much he’d needed his father’s favoritism to have a basis in logic.

“No. He ran a paternity test on all three of you.” Her smile had an acid bite. “That was the moment I stopped trying to make my marriage work. The day I discovered he would never trust me.”

“Then why does he hate me?” It was the cry of a small child who didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. And it was a question he’d never asked his mother before.

“Because you were my beautiful, musical boy and I doted on you. Rafe didn’t inherit my talent or my joie de vivre. He was a serious baby with the most solemn eyes. It was almost as if from birth he was weighed down by his father’s expectations.” Trent’s mother gave her head a sad shake. “You, on the other hand, and your sister after you, were exuberant and artistic. For all his early success with West Coast Records, Siggy was a businessman, not a visionary. He related better to Rafe.”

Trent pondered what he’d learned and realized he’d never stopped being angry with his father. In fact, he’d gone a step farther and used his contentious relationship with his father as an excuse to keep people at bay.

“I don’t want to be like my father.”

“You’re not like him at all.”

“So you think I have a heart and a soul?”

His mother smiled. “I never doubted it for a second.”

* * *

Savannah poured candy into a large bowl and set it on the small table just inside her front door. It was five o’clock on Halloween, but she didn’t expect trick-or-treaters to show up for another hour. She and Dylan had been living in LA for a week. The mission-style house she’d rented was about the same size as Trent’s guesthouse and beautifully furnished, but Savannah was having a hard time settling in.

She’d had several meetings with the director, her fellow actors and the wardrobe department, and was anxious to start filming. As she’d done after starting the soap opera, she’d hired an acting coach to help her prepare for her new role. But her down time offered abundant opportunity to worry, and lately she’d been revisiting the multitude of ways she could have handled things better since leaving New York two years earlier.

Her doorbell rang. Trick-or-treaters already? Savannah glanced to where her son sat in the middle of the living room, wearing his adorable dragon costume. Seeing that he was occupied with Murphy, also dressed like a dragon, she picked up the bowl of candy and opened her front door.

Instead of an adorable child dressed as a princess or a superhero, a tall, leafy plant with legs stood before her.

“Hello?”

The day before, she’d received a lovely fruit basket from the movie’s executive producers, welcoming her on board. She couldn’t imagine whom the plant was from.

To her utter shock, the face that emerged from behind the foliage was Trent’s.

“I hope it’s okay that I dropped by.”