Birthright

by Nora Roberts

  digging.”

  Lana straightened and glanced over to where Tyler was happily digging in a small pile of dirt with Leo beside him. “He’s in heaven.”

  “That pile’s been sieved,” Callie told her. “Twenty bucks says Leo plants some stone or a fossil he has in his pocket so the kid finds it.”

  “He’s a nice man.”

  “He’s a patsy for kids.”

  “While they’re occupied, I need to talk to you.”

  “Figured. Let’s take a walk. I need to stretch my legs anyway.”

  “I don’t want to leave Ty.”

  “Believe me,” Callie said as she dusted herself off, “Leo’ll keep him occupied and happy.” She headed off, leaving Lana no choice but to follow.

  “I have a little more information on Carlyle.”

  “The investigator found him?”

  “Not yet. But we did find something interesting. While practicing in Chicago and Houston, Carlyle represented couples in over seventy adoptions. Duly decreed through the court. This most certainly comprised the lion’s share of his practice and income. During his time in Boston, he was the petitioners’ council in ten adoptions.”

  “Which means?”

  “Wait. During his practice in Seattle, he completed four adoptions. Through the court,” Lana added. “We’re now under one per year. What does the pattern say to you?”

  “The same as it’s saying to you, I imagine: that he found it more profitable to steal babies and sell them than to go through the rigmarole of the system.” Callie walked into the trees that ranged along the curve of the river. “It’s a reasonable hypothesis, but there’s not enough data to prove it.”

  “Not yet. If we can find one of the adoptive parents who recommended him to a friend or to someone in a support group, someone who went to him but whose petition and decree weren’t filed, we’ll have more. There’ll be a trail. No matter how careful he was, there’s always a trail.”

  “What do we tell those people, if we find them?” Callie demanded, and booted at a fallen twig. “Do we tell them the child they raised was stolen from another family? That they never legally made that child theirs?”

  “I don’t know, Callie. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to involve other families. I can’t do it. At least not at this point. Those people made families. It’s not their fault that this bastard twisted that, twisted something as loving and honorable as adoption into profit and pain.”

  His profit, Lana thought. Your pain. “If we find him, and what he’s done comes out . . . Eventually—”

  “Yeah, eventually.” She looked back toward the dig. Layer, by layer, by layer. “I can’t see eventually. I have to take it as it comes.”

  “Do you want me to call off the investigator?”

  “No. I just want him focused on finding Carlyle, not putting a case together for what happens after we do. We’ll deal with that . . . when we deal with it. She wrote me letters.” Callie paused, watched a fat jay spear through the trees. Deeper in the woods, a woodpecker hammered like a maniac while across the road, the hound lay in his usual patch of sun and slept.

  “Suzanne wrote me letters every year on my birthday. And she saved them in a box. I read one last night. It broke my heart, and still it doesn’t connect to me. Not the way she needs it to. She’s not my mother. Nothing’s ever going to make her my mother.”

  She shook her head. “But there has to be payment made. We find Carlyle, and he has to pay. He and whoever else was part of it. I can do that for her.”

  “I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if someone took Tyler from me. And I can’t. I can’t because it’s too terrifying. But I can imagine that finding you again is both a tremendous joy and tremendously painful for her. I don’t know what else you can do than what you’re doing. And what you’re doing is both very kind and very brave.”

  Callie laughed, but there was no humor in it. “It’s neither. It’s just necessary.”

  “You’re wrong, but I won’t waste my time arguing with a client. Which is why I won’t point out how unnecessary it was for you to have me draft this.” She slid the paperwork out of her shoulder bag. “The statement refusing any part of Suzanne’s or Jay Cullen’s estates. You need to sign it, where indicated. Your signature needs to be witnessed.”

  Callie nodded, took the papers. They were, at least, a definite step. “Leo’ll do it.”

  “I’d like to advise you to take a few days to think about this.”

  “She’s not my mother, not to me. I’m not entitled to anything from her. I want you to take a copy of this and deliver it, personally, to Douglas Cullen.”

  “Oh, damn it, Callie.”

  “Whether or not you shove it down his throat is your option, but I want him to have a copy.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Lana replied. “That’s going to really help me get him to ask me out again.”

  “If he blows you off because of me, then he’s not worth your time anyway.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Lana fell into step as Callie started back toward the dig. “You’ve got a guy.”

  “I do not.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “If you’re talking about Graystone, you’re way off. That’s over, that’s done.”

  “Pig’s eye.”

  Callie stopped, tipped down her sunglasses to stare over the rims into Lana’s face. “Is that a legal term?”

  “I’d be happy to look up the Latin translation so it sounds more official. I like you,” she added, and shifted her shoulder bag as they began to walk again. “So we’ll call it an honest observation, with just a touch of harmless envy. He’s gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, he’s got looks.” She shifted her attention to where he crouched with Sonya over a section drawing. “Jake and I are associates, and we’re working on tolerating each other enough so we can be in the same room without coming to blows.”

  “You seemed to be doing fine in that area the other night. I know when a man’s looking at a woman as if he’d like to slurp her up in one big gulp—hence the envy. I’d catch my husband looking at me that way sometimes. It’s something you don’t forget, and I saw it when Jake looked at you.”

  How did she explain it? she wondered as she watched Jake give Sonya an absent pat on the shoulder before he rose. She watched him stride toward the spoil, sling Ty up, hang him upside down until the kid nearly busted a gut laughing.

  He was as good with kids as he was with women, she mused. Then, annoyed with herself, she admitted he was just good with people. Period.

  “We’ve got a primal thing. Sex was—well, we were damn good at it. We didn’t seem to be much good for each other outside the sack.”

  “Yet you told him about this.”

  Callie tapped the papers against her thigh as they walked. “He caught me at a vulnerable moment. Plus you can trust Jake with a confidence. He won’t go blabbing your business around. And he’s a demon on details. Never misses a trick.”

  He missed with Ronald Dolan. The man was dug in and dug deep. He’d tried every angle he could think of during their late-afternoon meeting. First the united male front, with a touch of amusement over Callie’s performance that morning.

  She’d fry his balls for breakfast if she knew he’d apologized for her, but he needed to get back on some level footing with Dolan. For the good of the project.

  Then he tried charm, the deity of science, patience, humor. Nothing budged Dolan from the trench he’d decided to stand in.

  “Mr. Dolan, the fact is the County Planning Commission put a hold on your development, and for good reason.”

  “A few weeks and that ends. Meanwhile I’ve got a bunch of people out there tearing up my property.”

  “A dig of this nature is very systematic and organized.”

  Dolan snorted, kicked back in his desk chair. “I come out there, I see a bunch of damn holes. Lot of college kids pissing around, probably smoking dope and God knows. And you’re d
igging up bodies, hauling them off.”

  “Remains are treated with both care and respect. The study of prehistoric remains is vital to the project.”

  “Not my project. And a lot of people around here don’t like the idea of you messing with graves. All we’ve got is your word they’re thousands of years old.”

  “There are conclusive tests—”

  “Nothing conclusive about science.” Dolan made a fist, then jabbed out with his index finger as if shooting a gun. “Changes its mind all the time. Hell, you scientists can’t make up your mind when you figure the world began. And you talk to my wife’s old man, he’ll give you plenty of reasons why the whole evolution business is bunk.” He gave his suspenders a snap. “Can’t say I disagree.”

  “We could spend the next few hours debating evolution versus creationism, but it wouldn’t solve our current problem. Whatever side you fall on, there is solid evidence that a Neolithic village existed along Antietam Creek. The bones, the artifacts and ecofacts so far excavated and dated substantiate that.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact whenever those bodies were put there, they weren’t asking to be dug up and put under some microscope. Ought to have enough respect to let the dead rest in peace, that’s my feeling on it.”

  “If that’s the case, just how do you intend to proceed with your development?”

  He had this worked out. Not all the way, but enough to keep the naysayers quiet. “We’ll put up markers, that’s what we’ll do.” He’d thought this angle through carefully, particularly carefully when he’d realized how an extensive delay would wipe out his cash flow. He could afford to cull out an acre, section it off, even put in fancy stones to spotlight a bunch of bones.

  He could even use it as a selling point, use the prehistoric impact the same way he often used Civil War history to advertise a development.

  But the one thing he couldn’t afford to do much longer was sit and wait.

  “We’ve yet to determine the full area we suspect is a Neolithic cemetery,” Jake pointed out. “Where the hell are you going to put the markers?”

  “I’ll get my own survey, and we’ll do the right thing. You got some Indian—excuse me, Native American—coming out to say some mumbo jumbo and give you the go-ahead. Well, I made some calls myself, and I can get me a Native American out here who’ll protest any tampering with those bodies.”

  Jake leaned back. “Yeah, you probably could. There are some disagreements within the tribes on how this sort of thing should be handled. But believe me, Mr. Dolan, we’ll trump you on that score. I’ve been doing this for nearly fifteen years, and I have contacts you couldn’t dream about. Added to that, it so happens I’m a quarter Indian, excuse me, Native American, myself. And while some may feel the graves should be left undisturbed, more are going to feel sympathetic with the sensitivity with which we handle the project than with the idea of having those graves paved and sodded over so you can see a profit on your investment.”

  “I paid for that land.” Dolan’s jaw set. “Fair deal. It belongs to me.”

  “It does.” Jake nodded. “By law, it does. And in the end, it’s the law that will support what we’re doing on it.”

  “Don’t you tell me about the law!” For the first time since they’d started the meeting, Dolan blew. It didn’t surprise Jake, he’d been watching it build all along. “I’m sick and goddamn tired of having some flatlander come in here and tell me what I can do, what I can’t do. I’ve lived in this county all my life. My father started this business fifty years back and we’ve spent our lives seeing that people around here have decent homes. All of a damn sudden we got environmentalists and tree huggers coming along and bitching and whining ’cause we put up houses on farmland. They don’t ask the farmer why he’s selling, why he’s had enough of breaking his ass year after year just to get by, and maybe he’s sick and damn tired of hearing people complain ’cause the cost of milk’s too high. You don’t know nothing about this place and got no right coming into my office telling me I don’t care about anything but the bottom line.”

  “I don’t know what you care about, Mr. Dolan. But I know we’re not talking about farmland and the loss of open space anymore. We’re talking about a find of enormous scientific and historical impact. To preserve that, we’ll fight you every step of the way.”

  He got to his feet. “My father’s a rancher in Arizona, and I watched him bust his butt year after year to get by. He’s still doing it, and that’s his choice. If he’d sold off, that would’ve been his choice, too. I don’t know your community, but I know fifty acres of it—and I’m going to know it better before I’m done than you know your own backyard. People lived there, worked there, slept there and died there. The way I look at it, that makes it their place. I’m going to make it my business to make sure that, and they, are acknowledged.”

  “I want the pack of you off my land.”

  “Talk to the State of Maryland, to your own County Planning Commission, to the court.” His eyes were cool and green now, and his voice was no longer lazy. “You take us on, Dolan, and the press is going to bury you long before the courts decide who’s right. Dolan and Sons will end up one more artifact.”

  Jake walked out. As he did, he noted by the secretary’s wide eyes and sudden, avid interest in her keyboard that she’d heard at least part of Dolan’s rampage.

  Word was going to spread, he thought. He imagined they’d have a number of visitors out to the site in the next few days.

  He pulled out his cell phone as he got in his car.

  “Get the legal wheels greased, Leo. Dolan’s got a bug up his ass, and all I managed to do was shove it in deeper. I’m going to swing by and see Lana Campbell, give the Preservation Society’s attorney an update.”

  “She’s still out here.”

  “Then I’m on my way back.”

  A mile and a half out of town, behind a curving gravel lane, in a house Dolan had custom-built, Jay Cullen sat with his ex-wife and stared at Callie Dunbrook on video.

  He felt, as he always did when Suzanne pushed the nightmare in front of him again, a tightness in his chest, a curling in his belly.

  He was a quiet man. Had always been a quiet man. He’d graduated from the local high school, had married Suzanne Grogan, the girl he’d fallen in love with at first sight at the age of six, and had gone on to earn his teaching degree.

  For twelve years, he’d taught math at his alma mater. After the divorce, after he’d been unable to stand Suzanne’s obsession with their lost daughter, he’d moved to the neighboring county and transferred to another school.

  He’d found some measure of peace. Though weeks might go by without him consciously thinking of his daughter, he never went through a day without thinking of Suzanne.

  Now he was back in the house he’d never lived in, one that made him uncomfortable. It was too big, too open, too stylish. And they were right back in the cycle that had sucked them down, destroyed their marriage and broken his life to pieces.

  “Suzanne—”

  “Before you tell me all the reasons she can’t be Jessica, let me tell you the rest of it. She was adopted four days after Jessica was taken. A private adoption. She sat where you’re sitting right now and explained to me that after some research, she felt it necessary to have tests done. I’m not asking you to agree with me, Jay. I’m not asking for that. I’m asking you to agree to the tests.”

  “What’s the point? You’re already convinced she’s Jessica. I can see it on your face.”

  “Because she needs to be convinced. And you, and Doug—”

  “Don’t drag Doug through this again, Suze. For God’s sake.”

  “This is his sister.”

  “This is a stranger.” Absently, he laid a hand on Sadie’s head when she laid it on his knee. “No matter what blood tests say, she’s still going to be a stranger.”

  He turned away from the video image, away from the worst of the pain. “We’re never getting Jessica back, Suz
anne. No matter how hard you try to turn back the clock.”

  “You’d rather not know, isn’t that it?” Bitterness clogged her throat. “You’d rather close it off, forget it. Forget her, so you can drift along through the rest of your life without hitting any bumps.”

  “That’s right. I wish to God I could forget it. But I can’t. I can’t forget, but I can’t let it drive my life the way you do, Suzanne. I can’t stand out there and let myself be slapped down and beaten up again and again the way you have.”

  He stroked Sadie’s head, her silky ears, and wished it were as easy to comfort Suzanne. To comfort himself. “What happened to us on December twelfth didn’t just cost me a daughter. I didn’t just lose a child. I lost my wife—my best friend. I lost everything that ever mattered to me because you stopped seeing me. All you could see was Jessie.”

  She’d heard the words before, had seen that same quiet grief on his face when he said them. It hurt, still it hurt. And still, he wasn’t enough.

  “You gave up.” It was tears now, cutting through the bitterness. “You gave up on her, the way you would have given up if we’d lost a puppy.”