Birthright

  “That’s not true.” But his anger had already dissolved in weariness. “I didn’t give up, I accepted. I had to. You just didn’t see what I was doing, what I was feeling. You couldn’t, because you’d stopped looking at me. And after seven years of it, there wasn’t anything left to see. There wasn’t anything left of us.”

  “You blamed me.”

  “Oh no, honey, I never blamed you.” He couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand to see her spiraling back into that despair, that guilt, that grief. “Never once.”

  He stood up, reached for her. She still fit against him, two parts of one half, as she always had. He held her there, feeling her tremble as she wept. And knew he was as helpless, as useless to her as he’d been from the moment she’d called him and told him Jessica was gone.

  “I’ll have the tests. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

  He made the appointment with the doctor before he left Suzanne’s. It seemed to settle her, though it had stirred Jay up, left him feeling half sick with the pressure in his chest.

  He wouldn’t drive by the site. Suzanne had urged him to, almost begged him to go by and speak to this Callie Dunbrook.

  But he wasn’t ready for that. Besides, what could he say to her, or she to him?

  He had come to a revelation on the day of Jessica’s twenty-first birthday. His daughter, if she lived, and he prayed she lived, was a grown woman. She would never, never belong to him.

  He couldn’t face the drive back home, or the evening to come. The solitude of it. He knew it was solitude, and some measure of peace he’d looked for when he’d quietly agreed to the divorce. After years of turmoil and grief, tension and conflict, he’d been willing, almost eager to be alone.

  He could tell himself that need for solitude was the reason he’d never remarried and rarely dated.

  But in his heart, Jay Cullen was a married man. Jessica might have been the living ghost in Suzanne’s life, but his marriage was Jay’s.

  When he gave in to the pressure from friends, or his own needs, and courted a woman into bed, he considered it emotional adultery.

  No legal paper could convince his heart Suzanne wasn’t still his wife.

  He tried not to think of the men Suzanne had been with over the years. And he knew she would tell him that was his biggest flaw—his instinct to close himself off from what made him unhappy, what disturbed the easy flow of life.

  He couldn’t argue about it, as it was perfectly true.

  He drove into town and felt that familiar pang of regret and the conflicting surge of simple pleasure. This was home, no matter that he’d lived away from it. His memories were here.

  Ice cream and summer parades. Little League practice, the daily walk to school down the sidewalk. Cutting through Mrs. Hobson’s yard for a shortcut and having her dog, Chester, chase him all the way to the fence.

  Finding Suzanne waiting on the corner for him. Then when they got older, finding her pretending not to wait for him.

  He could see her, and himself, through all the stages.

  The pigtails she’d worn when they’d been in first grade, and the funny little barrettes, pink flowers and blue butterflies she’d taken to sliding into her hair later.

  Himself at ten, trudging up the steps to the library to do a report, wearing Levi’s so new and stiff they’d felt like cardboard.

  The first time he’d kissed her, right there, under the old oak on the corner of Main and Church. Snow had sprung them from school early, and he’d walked her home instead of running off with his friends to have a snowball fight.

  It had been worth it, Jay thought now. It had been worth all the terror and cold sweats and aches he’d felt building up to that one moment. To have his lips on Suzanne’s lips, both of them a soft and innocent twelve.

  His heart had been beating so fast he’d been dizzy. She smiled even as she’d shoved him away. And when she’d run away, she’d been laughing—the way girls did, he thought, because they know so much more than boys at that age.

  And his feet hadn’t touched the ground for the three blocks he’d raced to find his friends already at war in the snow.

  He remembered how happy they’d been when he’d gotten his degree and they’d been able to move back to Woodsboro. The little apartment they’d rented near the college had never been theirs. More like playing house, playing at marriage.

  But when they’d come back, with Douglas just a baby, they’d settled into being a family.

  He pulled into a parking spot on the curb before he realized he’d been looking for one. Then he got out and walked the half block to Treasured Pages.

  He saw Roger at the counter waiting on a customer. Jay shook his head, held up a hand, then began to wander the shelves and stacks.

  He’d been closer to Roger, Jay supposed, than he’d been to his own father, who’d have been happier if his son had scored touchdowns instead of A’s.

  Just something else he’d lost along with Jessica. Roger had never treated him any differently after the divorce, but everything was different.

  He stopped when he saw Doug rearranging the stock in the biography section.

  He’d seen Doug twice since Doug had been back in Woodsboro, and still it was a shock to realize this tall, broad-shouldered man was his boy.

  “Got any good beach reading?” Jay asked him.

  Doug glanced over his shoulder, and his solemn face brightened with a grin. “I’ve got some pretty sexy stuff in my private stash. But it’ll cost you. What are you doing in town?”

  As soon as he’d asked, he knew the answer. And the grin faded.

  “Never mind. Mom pulled you into this.”

  “You’ve seen the video.”

  “I’ve done more than see the video. I got a close-up look, live and in person.”

  Jay moved in closer to his son. “What did you think?”

  “What am I supposed to think? I didn’t know her. She’s got Mom stirred up, that’s all I know.”

  “Your mother told me she went to see this woman, not the other way around.”

  “Yeah, well.” Doug shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

  “What about Roger?”

  “That news segment of her shook him up, but he’s holding pretty steady. You know Grandpa.”

  “Has he been out to this dig to see her?”

  “No.” Doug shook his head. “He said he was afraid if we started coming at her, started crowding her, she’d just leave, or refuse the tests or something. But he wants to. He’s been reading books on archaeology, like he wants to have something to talk to her about once we’re all one big, happy family again.”

  “If she’s your sister . . . If she is, we need to know. Whatever the hell we do about it, we need to know. I’m going to go talk to Roger before I head out. Keep an eye on your mom, okay?”

  Ten

  Full of the thrill of his time at the dig, Tyler broke away from his mother as they came into the bookstore. His face glowed with excitement and innocent sweat as he raced toward the counter to hold up a flattened chunk of rock.

  “Look, Grandpa Roger, look what I got!”

  With a quick glance of apology toward Jay, Lana hurried over. “Ty, don’t interrupt.”

  Before she could scoop up her son, Roger was adjusting his glasses and leaning over. “Whatcha got there, big guy?”

  “It’s a part of a spear, an Indian spear, and maybe they killed people with it.”

  “I’ll be darned. Why, is that blood I see on there?”

  “Nuh-uh.” But fascinated by the idea, Ty peered at the spear point. “Maybe.”

  “Sorry.” Lana picked Ty up, set him on her hip. “Indiana Jones here forgets his manners.”

  “When I get big, I can dig up bones.”

  “And won’t that be fun?” Lana rolled her eyes and adjusted Ty’s weight. Not much longer, she thought with a little pang, and she wouldn’t be able to carry him this way. “But however big we are, we don’t interrupt people when the
y’re having a conversation.”

  “Sit that load on down here.” Roger patted the counter. “Lana, this is my . . .” Son-in-law still came most naturally to his lips. “This is Douglas’s father, Jay. Jay, this is Lana Campbell, the prettiest lawyer in Woodsboro, and her son, Tyler.”

  Lana set Tyler on the counter, offered a hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Cullen.”

  She saw Callie’s eyes, Doug’s nose. Would he, she wondered, feel the same jolt of astonished pleasure seeing those parts of himself in his children as she did seeing her own in Ty? “Tyler and I have just been visiting the Antietam Creek Project.”

  He knows, she thought as she saw emotion wash over his face. He knows the daughter taken from him so many years before is standing, right now, only a few miles away.

  “And they got skeleton parts and lotsa rocks and fo—What are they?” Ty asked his mother.

  “Fossils.”

  “Dr. Leo let me have this, and it’s millions of years old.”

  “Goodness.” Roger smiled, though Lana saw him reach over, touch Jay’s arm. “That’s even older than me.”

  “Really?” Ty stared up at Roger’s craggy face. “You can come dig with me sometime. I’ll show you how. And I got candy, too. Dr. Jake pulled it out of my ear!”

  “You don’t say?” Obliging, Roger leaned down as if to search in Ty’s ear. “I guess you ate it all.”

  “It was only one piece. Dr. Leo said it was magic and Dr. Jake has lots of tricks up his sleeve. But I didn’t see any more.”

  “Sounds like you had quite a day.” Amused, Jay tapped Ty on one grubby knee. “Is it all right if I see your rock?”

  “Okay.” Ty hesitated. “But you can’t keep it, right?”

  “No. Just to look.” Just to hold something, Jay thought, that might have a connection with Jessica. “This is very cool. I used to collect rocks when I was a boy, and I had some Civil War bullets, too.”

  “Did they kill anybody?” Ty wanted to know.

  “Maybe.”

  “Ty’s very bloodthirsty these days.” Lana caught a movement out of the corner of her eye, turned. “Hello, Doug.”

  “Lana.” He studied the boy who was bouncing on the counter and trying to suppress, Doug imagined, the need to tell an adult to give him back his treasure.

  Pretty kid, he thought. Looked like his mother. Absently, Doug ran a hand over Ty’s tumbled hair. “You kill anyone lately?”

  Ty’s eyes went wide. “Nuh-uh. Did you?”

  “Nope.” He took the spear point from Jay, turned it over in his hand, then offered it back to Ty. “Are you going to be an archaeologist?”

  “I’m gonna be . . . what’s the other one?” he asked Lana.

  “Paleontologist,” she supplied.

  “I’m gonna be that, ’cause you get to find dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are the best. I got a sticker book about them.”

  “Yeah, they’re the best. I used to have a collection of dinosaurs. They were always fighting, trying to eat each other. Remember, Dad?”

  “Hard to forget the bloodcurdling screams and chomping.”

  “Is he your dad?” Ty wanted to know.

  “That’s right.”

  “My dad had to go to heaven, but he still watches out for me ’cause that’s what dads do. Right?”

  “We try.” Jay felt a fresh wave of grief wash through him.

  “Do you play baseball?” Fascinated, as always, with the concept of dads, Ty began to swing his legs. “I got to play T-ball, and Mom helped. But she doesn’t catch real good.”

  “Well, I like that.” Lana gave Ty a quick drill in the belly with her finger. “Do you have a minute?” Lana asked Doug. “I need to speak with you.”

  “Sure.”

  Since he made no move to lead her somewhere more private, she turned an exasperated look to Roger.

  “Leave the big guy with me,” Roger offered. “Doug, why don’t you take Lana in the back, get her a nice cold drink?”

  “Okay.” He gave Ty a tap on the nose. “See you later, Ty-Rex. What?” he demanded as Lana made a choking sound.

  “Nothing. Thanks, Roger. Nice to meet you, Mr. Cullen. Ty, behave.” With that, she followed Doug into the back room.

  “So.” She brushed back her hair as he dug in the mini-fridge for cold drinks. “I guess you didn’t enjoy yourself as much as I did the other night.”

  He felt a little finger of unease tickle its way up his spine. “I said I did.”

  “You haven’t called to ask if you could see me again.”

  “I’ve been tied up with things.” He held out a Coke. “But I thought about it.”

  “I can’t read your mind, can I?”

  As she opened the can, he thought about the way she looked in snug jeans. “Probably just as well,” he decided.

  She tilted her head. “You probably thought that was a compliment.”

  “Well, my thoughts were pretty flattering.” He popped the top, gave her another once-over as he lifted the can. “I didn’t figure you owned a pair of jeans. The other times I’ve seen you, you’ve been all spruced up.”

  “The other times I’ve either been working or going out to what I thought was a very nice dinner with an interesting man. Today, I’m playing with my son.”

  “Cute kid.”

  “Yes, I think so. If you’re going to ask me out, I’d like you to do it now.”

  “Why?” He felt his neck muscles tighten when she only arched her brows. “Okay, okay. Man. You want to go out tomorrow night?”

  “Yes, I would. What time?”

  “I don’t know.” He felt like he was being gently, thoroughly squeezed. “Seven.”

  “That’ll be fine.” With what she considered their personal business concluded, she set her briefcase on Roger’s desk. “Now that we’ve settled that, I should let you know I’m Callie Dunbrook’s lawyer.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m representing Callie Dunbrook in the matter of establishing her identity.”

  Now those neck muscles bunched like fists. “What the hell does she need a lawyer for?”

  “That’s between my client and myself. However, this is one matter she directed me to share with you.” Lana opened her briefcase, took out legal papers. “I drew up these papers, per her request. She instructed me to give you a copy.”

  He didn’t reach out. He had to fight back the urge to hold his hands behind his back. First she maneuvers him into a date—date number two, he amended. Then she drops the bomb. And all without breaking a sweat.

  All while looking like Vogue’s version of the casual, country mom.

  “What the hell’s up with you?”

  “In what context?”

  He slapped the can down on the desk. “Did you come in here to wrangle another date or to serve me with legal papers?”

  She pursed that pretty sex-kitten mouth. “I suppose the word ‘wrangle’ is accurate enough, if unflattering. However, I’m not serving you with papers. I’m providing you with a copy, per my client’s request. So if the question is rephrased, and you ask did I come in today to wrangle another date or to provide you with legal papers, the answer is both.”

  She picked up his soft drink can, set it on the blotter so it