Page 53 of Comfort Read

The day John came to him and said he wanted to do his next project without Wayne, wanted to dissolve Ballard Brothers Productions, wanted to be his own man and follow his own path forward, alone: That was the day Wayne stopped understanding. But by then, it was already too late.

There was a legal battle, of course. One that dragged the Ballard name thoroughly through the mud, and that the tabloids, already too interested in John and Seline, sunk their teeth into like bloodhounds. The two of them seemed to get more famous every week, eventually staring out at Wayne from what felt like every magazine cover in every grocery store. Each photo felt like a slap in the face, a forced reckoning with what had once been his, and now was not.

John made more pictures, several different production companies behind him, Nick always by his side, in his ear. Their mother died and John didn’t go to the funeral; Sage turned five, and then six, and then seven and eight, but Wayne wasn’t invited to the parties.

Wayne left the movie business. He took what capital he had, which was a tidy sum between his savings and the money he eventually won in the lawsuit, and did what he would have done in the first place, if John hadn’t been part of the story. He invested it. He was very good at investing it. He was so good at investing it that soon enough other people were paying him to invest their money, too. His bank accounts ballooned as John’s fame did, as John made a series of soulless films he’d never have considered working on before. Wayne tried to use the money to cushion himself, to soften the impact of seeing John’s pupils blown, his jaw slack, in photographs under damning headlines. Wayne sent Sage letters and gifts, and when they turned up on his front stoop marked Return to Sender, did his best to feel nothing at all.

It was an unseasonably cold day for California when Seline showed up. She was wearing a sundress and shivering, but refused him when he offered her a coat—Wayne’s always remembered that, and never known why. Something about the set of her chin, maybe, and the way it reminded him so much of his brother. Stubborn, unyielding, but in such a childlike way that you couldn’t help but love her for it.

She told him that John had made a mistake. She had made a mistake. She was afraid of what would become of him if things didn’t change. John needed Wayne, she insisted, more than he needed Nick, more even than he’d ever needed her. John was lost, rudderless, without the steadying hand of his brother.

She asked Wayne if he’d see John. Wayne—God help him—agreed.

John wanted money when he showed up. Didn’t he always? He’d become a liability in Hollywood, his reputation for drug use and unreliability outshining even his talent. He wanted to change, he said. Nick had turned him into someone he wasn’t, he said. He had an idea, he said, for a big, ambitious movie, the kind of movie he and Wayne would have made together, once. He had lost his way, he said, and he needed Wayne to help him find it.

Wayne had laughed. Wayne had cried. They’d embraced, and Wayne had said of course he’d fund the movie. That he’d do anything for John. That all he’d ever wanted was to put the world in John’s hands, and watch as he turned it into something beautiful.

It could have been a wonderful story, one in which the bonds of brotherhood triumphed over any obstacle. Even now, Wayne can see that. If even one thing had gone differently, there might not have been a tragedy at all. If John had agreed to stay in rehab, or if Wayne had pushed him harder to go back; if Nick had been a little less tenacious, or Seline a little less passive; if the critics had been less vicious, or the paparazzi less persistent; if John had been more honest about his debts, or less inclined towards believing the rumors that his new project, so artsy and avant-garde, would flop.

Instead, ten months after he sat across from Wayne and promised to change, John put their father’s pistol in his mouth. His note was short and to the point: It was all too much. He couldn’t bear it. He’d wanted to be better. He was sorry.

Wayne only saw it the once, that note. He’d felt, at the time, that once was enough, and for twenty years even the memory was folded up at the back of a mental drawer, one he never opened and refused to dwell on. When Seline blamed him, wanted him out of her life and Sage’s, he put that in the drawer, too. When he saw his nephew on television, when he heard through the grapevine that Nick was now managing his career, he stuffed every ounce of fear and sadness and betrayal in with the rest, and went on with his life. He made more money. He did his best to ignore the persistent sense that he was only the shell of a person, and that what had made him more than that went to the grave with his brother.

So when, nearly two decades later, he found the box with John’s old journals, he hadn’t read them. He’d just sent them along to Sage, long since an adult, and steeled himself to eventually hear from his assistant that they’d been returned, like everything else he’d ever sent. It was safer for everyone if he didn’t go any further, if he didn’t allow himself to try to connect. Keeping his distance, letting things sort themselves out without him, was what he should have done in the first place. Sage had a right to know who his father was, but the best way to protect what was left of John was for Wayne to stay out of it. God knew he’d learned that lesson the hard way.

But when Sage read the journals and showed up insisting that his whole career was based on a lie—when Sage suddenly veered into cancelling contracts and making himself a liability in the eyes of the industry—when Sage sat across from him at the very same desk John had and asked him to fund an experimental new project—well. That didn’t just open the drawer in Wayne’s mind where he kept all those feelings carefully locked away. It ripped it off its rails entirely.

TWENTY-TWO

Kit sits in silence, considering, for a long moment after Wayne finishes telling him the story.

He hadn’t known, when he booked his flight out here, what it made sense to hope for. He’d only known he owed it to Sage to try, though there was every chance Wayne would refuse to see him, or read him the riot act for taking part in Sage’s lie. Kit had even considered the possibility that some sort of security force, hidden from view on his first visit, would jump out from behind a bush when Kit’s rideshare pulled into the driveway and carry him away to a secret rich-person prison under the Hollywood Hills.

Admittedly, he didn’t think that last option was likely. Then again, a year ago Kit would have laughed at the idea that he’d ever be Sage Ballard’s fake boyfriend, or see Sage Ballard’s very real dick. If nothing else, the last few months have given him a much broader understanding of the possible.

Still: Kit hadn’t expected Wayne to answer the door in a Hawaiian shirt, shake his head, smile, and say, “Ah. Kit. I should’ve known you’d turn up.” And he really hadn’t expected to be led into a neat, high-ceilinged office, sat down in an expensive-looking chair, and told such a tragic story.

“I’m sorry,” is where Kit decides to start, when he’s gathered his wits. “About John, about all of it. It must have been horrible.”

Wayne’s eyebrows climb slightly, as though he wasn’t expecting that response. “Thanks. It was.”

“Why’d you tell me?” Kit doesn’t entirely mean to ask this, but curiosity gets the better of him. “I mean, I haven’t exactly proven myself so trustworthy with your family’s secrets.”

Wayne shrugs. “Maybe I just wanted to tell someone. Or maybe…” He picks up a paperweight, a heavy glass ball with a bloom of red and gold through the center, and rolls it under one palm. “Maybe I liked you, when we met the other day. I figure Sage sent you here to beg on his behalf; maybe I wanted you to understand that I wasn’t just some heartless monster, when I said no.”

“Sage didn’t send me.” Kit tries not to let his heart sink at the suggestion that Wayne won’t budge, will offer up a no regardless of Kit’s approach. “Sage isn’t speaking to me, which is fair of him, but not my favorite thing that’s ever happened, honestly. It’s the first time I’ve ever had my number blocked by someone I hooked up with, and I can’t say that I care for it.”

Drumming his fingers on the table, Wayne says, “And here I thought the whole thing was a ruse. At least that’s what I read in the papers.”

Kit winces, and briefly considers diving for the nearest window. Wayne’s cliffside views render this an almost certain path to death, but it’s his conscience, not his will to live, that forces him past the impulse. “It started that way, yeah. I don’t know when things changed for Sage, but for me it was pretty early on. And then after the dinner the other night, we—I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say I screwed myself out of a lot more than a contract here.”

“I see.” Wayne picks up the paperweight again, passing it carefully from hand to hand without looking at it, his eyes on Kit. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here, Kit? I know you didn’t come all the way to California to hear about my brother. If Sage really isn’t speaking to you, then he hasn’t told you I pulled out of the Lanterns deal, and nobody else knew about it. So: What is it that you want? If you’re hoping I’ll interfere and convince him to take your call, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“No, no, nothing like that. I wouldn’t ask anyone for that—it’s up to Sage to decide who he lets into his life.” Kit swallows hard, slipping his hands under his thighs so Wayne won’t see that they’ve started to shake. “And I’m not here about the money, either. I did think you probably pulled out when you realized he’d lied to you, but that’s not really any of my business, is it?”

“Not really, no.” Wayne’s voice is light—almost amused, but too bitter to truly get there. “But this is Hollywood, after all. You’d be amazed by what people can convince themselves they have the right to say.”

Grimacing, thinking of every horrible conversation about the aftermath of Emerson, Kit says, “Oh, I don’t know about that. In my experience, people are pretty audacious everywhere.”