Draft:Deception: A Mother's Secret

Deception: A Mother's Secret is a made for television movie that premiered on NBC in November 1991. It was written and directed by Sandor Stern. The movie stars Steven Weber as a man trying to adopt his stepson after his wife's untimely death. As he works to get the information necessary for the adoption, he uncovers the truth about his wife and the boy she called her son.

Plot Terry Milner (Weber) lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Amanda (Mary Page Keller), and his eight-year-old stepson, Jay (Robert Hy Gorman). Jay asks Terry if he can call him "Dad" to which Terry happily agrees. Terry wants to make it official by adopting Jay but Amanda won't allow it and says that doing so would require contacting her estranged ex-husband, which she is firmly against.

Amanda suddenly dies in a car accident and Terry and Jay happen upon the scene while paramedics load Amanda's body into an ambulance. Terry begins the adoption process as he doesn't want Jay in foster care. Terry flies to Denver and locates Amanda's ex-husband, who tells Terry that he and Amanda had no children together and about her unhappy childhood in foster homes. The ex-husband points Terry to a doctor who treated Amanda years ago and who tells him that Amanda was infertile. She refers him to a doctor in Portland, Oregon, who asked for information about Amanda back then. Terry's mother, Geena (Katherine Helmond), argues with him over Amanda's dishonesty while Terry remains loyal to his wife.

Terry has Jay's birth certificate examined and discovers it to be a forgery. Terry’s lawyer agrees that these developments will make adoption more difficult as the state will need to try to find Jay's biological parents and this will likely result in Jay going into the foster system.

Terry takes Jay to Portland under the auspices of it being a vacation. But, Terry has to keep taking time away from Jay to continue his investigation, which requires him to sit Jay in a library while he does research and pawning Jay off on a hired babysitter and later on Geena who has flown in to assist. Terry comes across a newspaper article from six years earlier about an abduction of a two-year-old boy from a Portland supermarket. He also talks to the Portland doctor who confirms that Amanda was infertile and that she would not have been able to adopt when he knew her because she was a single woman with little money.

Terry visits the parents of the kidnapped boy, Donna (Maryann Plunkett) and Keith (Arthur Rosenberg) McKenzie, and tells them that Jay might be him. While looking at baby pictures of the McKenzies' son, Scott, Terry sees one of him playing with a miniature toy fire truck that resembles one Jay frequently has with him. Donna mentions that she put yellow paint on the bottom of Scott's to distinguish it from a toy his cousin had.

Terry returns to the hotel where he and Jay are staying, locates the truck, and finds yellow paint on the bottom of it. Jay and Geena return and Terry tells her that he is planning to leave with Jay right then. Geena asks Terry if Jay is the McKenzies' son. When Terry answers yes, she tells him that if he leaves he'll be a kidnapper too.

Terry and Geena take Jay to the McKenzies but don't say why they are going there. He meets them and plays video games with his sisters and father. Donna tells Terry that it is going to be anguish waiting weeks for the results of a DNA test they plan to do to confirm Jay's parentage. Terry then shows her the truck with the yellow paint, which she recognizes, thus demonstrating that Jay is her son.

Terry takes Jay to the McKenzies' back dock and explains how Amanda so badly wanted to be a mother so she could express the love she never received as a child but that her infertility destroyed that plan. He tells Jay that in her desperation Amanda kidnapped him and raised him as her own. An overwhelmed Jay denies it and jumps in the lake but Terry quickly pulls him out. The McKenzies get towels to dry him off and try to show their love for him as he has finally come home. Terry looks on with Geena, feeling bittersweet that things didn't work out as he wished but knowing that he reunited a family.

Cast Steven Weber as Terry Milner Mary Page Keller as Amanda Milner Robert Hy Gorman as Jay Griffith Katherine Helmond as Geena Milner Maryann Plunkett as Donna McKenzie Arthur Rosenberg as Keith McKenzie