The meeting with Lucas was a deadly disruption in Cameron's life. The nightmares he keeps having were occuring less frequently, but now, because of the unplanned visit, they show us more frequently. He began cross-checking the lock on his door before leaving the room or going to bed. He avoided the coffee shops around his campus or downtown. Every tall, blonde guy he sees on the road makes his heart skip a beat…in a bad way.
But you can only get scared for a while then you either allow it to consume you or make you stronger. Cameron chose to use the fear to his advantage and gets stronger. He started putting more effort into his work, both academic and secret. Finally his labour paid off, the web crawler he created to surf the internet finally hit a mark. It wasn't a news article. It was a document from the "Willow Creek Children's Foundation Annual Donor Audit," dated eighteen years and nine months ago.
The document was a list of major contributions and among them was a na name···Sterling Family Charity Trust Fund. Under this name was a sum of $500,000 donated to the foundation for "New Beginnings" infant care and placement program.
"The "New Beginnings" program" he said with shocked breath. That was it. That was the channel. He cross-checked again. A follow-up report from two years later noted that the "New Beginnings" program had been shut down after a state review took place. The report was all media works but it's clear that something went wrong along the way. Something that called for a state review and closure.
He had a direct line now: Sterling money = Willow Creek = "New Beginnings" = Him.
The questions surrounding his adoption, began to make a horrifying sense. He hadn't been chosen, he'd been funded. A project for the wealthy, placed with an opportunistic couple like the Reeds. He thinks his birth family, maybe connected to the Sterlings in some way, had used this charity foundation for a private, illegal adoption. Something had gone wrong. The baby had been taken, but not by the family it was meant for? Or the family the baby was meant for had been the Reeds all along, and the "state review" was a cover for something darker?
The Sterling family remained a mystery. Public records were all walls of privacy. No missing person reports matching his description. No heartfelt interviews. Just a silent, gaping hole in their history that Cameron was now circling. Were they victims? Or were they, in some way, the cause of his disappearance?
He needed to see them. Not post on the Internet, but physically.
——————
The opportunity came from a class assignment. His "Modern Business Studies" professor told them to work on a case study about corporate crisis management and assigned each student a major firm to work on. Coincidentally…or what he'll later call fate…Cameron was given Sterling Global to work on.
It was a perfect cover. He can now carry out his research in the name of an assignment without looking suspicious. It was the perfect cover. He dug deeper into the Sterling empire, trying to find any important clue. He viewed every interview of Alexander Sterling, trying to crack the mask and see what's underneath. He watched videos of Anastasia Sterling, observing her every expression. He found an old documentary of Alistair and Eleanor Sterling when they were much younger. They were opening a children's hospital wing. In the documentary, Eleanor was smiling radiantly but at the same time it looked sad.
One evening, while he was going through a business journal archive, he found a small write up from a society column seventeen years ago. Eleanor Sterling, a philanthropist and longtime supporter of children's cases, was absent from the annual Golden Heart Gala last night. A family staff member said that she was attending to a private family matter that required her attention. The Sterlings just started making a public appearance not long ago.
Private family matter, seventeen years ago. That was one year after he'd been taken. It felt like cold water was poured on his head, he felt a cold rush down his spine. "The timeline fits" he said, horrified. Now it all makes sense why they had to go away from public view, because they were grieving a lost child.
He felt so sad and his chest felt tight when he came to that conclusion. He thought of Eleanor's sad eyes in the documentary. He thought of the empty crib in the bedroom. The thought of them being behind his current situation began to fade. What if they were just… broken? What if they were looking for him, just as he was looking for them, but in the dark?
He needed to see them presently. To see if what he's thinking is correct.