Birthright

by Nora Roberts

  “They’re snakes.”

  “I like the way they move. Anyway. Doug. He’s an interesting guy. He brought me an Elvis beer cozy from Memphis.”

  “Did he?” The sigh escaped before Lana realized it was there. “Now, why should that just touch my heart?”

  “Because you’ve got the hots for him.”

  “True. Very true.”

  “Listen, that business in the car about your sex life was really just a . . .” She paused, whipped around, and even as Lana prepared to duck and cover, swatted a fat, buzzing bee away, the way a batter might swat a good fastball.

  The somehow fat sound of the contact had Lana shuddering. “Jesus. Are you stung?”

  “No. Those kind usually just like making a bunch of noise and annoying people. Like teenagers, I guess.”

  “Were you, by any chance, a tomboy as a child?”

  “I don’t get that name. I mean, Tom’s probably already a boy, so why is tomboy the word used to describe a girl with likes, skills and habits more traditionally ascribed to boys? It ought to be something like maryboy. Don’t you think?”

  Lana shook her head. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Makes more sense. Anyway, what was I saying before?”

  “Ah . . . about my sex life.”

  “Oh yeah. That bit in the car was really just a ruse.”

  Deciding whatever nature might wing their way, Callie would handle, Lana eased off the hood to lean against the door of her car. “I know.”

  “Not that I don’t like hearing about other people’s sex lives.”

  “Living or dead.”

  “Exactly. Every life has its defining moments.”

  Callie glanced back toward the house as someone inside turned on music. As the Backstreet Boys pumped through the windows, she figured on Frannie.

  “My first one happened when I was sleeping in a stroller in December of ’seventy-four,” she continued. “Defining moments create the grid for the pattern, but it’s the day-to-day that makes the pattern. What you eat, what you do for a living, who you sleep with, make a family with, how you cook or dress. The big finds, like discovering an ancient sarcophagus—that makes the splash in a career. But it’s the ordinary things that pull me in. Like a toy made out of a turtle’s carapace.”

  “Or an Elvis beer cozy.”

  “You are pretty smart,” Callie declared. “I think we’d have gotten along if we’d grown up together, Doug and I. I think we’d have liked each other. So it makes it easier to like him, and it’s less awkward to be around him, or Roger, than it is for me to be around Suzanne and Jay.”

  “And easier to look for the people responsible, to look for the reasons how and why it happened than to deal with the results. That’s not a criticism,” Lana added. “I think you’re handling a complex and difficult situation with admirable common sense.”

  “It doesn’t stop everyone involved from being hurt to some degree. And if we’re right, two people who aren’t even part of it are dead because I have the admirable common sense to demand the answers.”

  “You could stop.”

  “Could you?”

  “No. But I think I might be able to give myself a break, to sit back for a while, try to take a look at the pattern I’m in right now, and how I got there. Maybe if you do that, you’ll be able to accept it all when you do find the answers.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea, Callie decided, to step back from one puzzle and use herself as the datum point for another. What was her pattern and how had she gotten there? What would her layers expose about her life, her personal culture and her role in society?

  She sat down at her computer and began a personal time line from the date of her birth.

  Born September 11, 1974

  Kidnapped December 12, 1974

  Placed with Elliot and Vivian Dunbrook December 16, 1974

  That part was easy. Jogging her memory, she added the dates she’d started school, the summer she’d broken her arm, the Christmas she’d begged for and received her first microscope. Her first cello lesson, her first recital, her first dig. The death of her paternal grandfather. Her first sexual experience. The date of her graduation from college. The year she’d moved into her own apartment.

  Professional highlights, the receipt of her master’s degree, significant physical injuries and illnesses. Meeting Leo, Rosie, her very brief affair with an Egyptologist.

  What had she been thinking?

  The day she’d met Jake. How could she forget?

  Tues, April 6, 1998

  The date of their first sexual consummation.

  Thurs, April 8, 1998

  Jumped right into that one, she mused. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other, and had burned up the mattress in some cramped little room in Yorkshire near the Mesolithic site they were studying.

  They’d moved in together, more or less, in June of that year. She couldn’t pinpoint when or how they’d evolved into a team. If one of them was heading to Cairo or Tennessee, both of them had gone to Cairo or Tennessee.

  They’d fought like lunatics, made love like maniacs. All over the world.

  She recorded the date of their marriage.

  The date he’d walked out.

  The date she’d received the divorce papers.

  Not so much time between, in the big scheme, she thought, then shook her head. The point was her life, not their life.

  Shrugging, she keyed in her doctorate. She entered the day she’d gone to see Leo in Baltimore, her first day on the project, which included meeting Lana Campbell.

  The day Jake had arrived.

  The date Suzanne Cullen had come to her hotel room.

  Her trip to Philadelphia, her return. Hiring Lana, dinner with Jake, the vandalism on her Rover, Dolan’s murder. Conversation with Doug.

  Sex with Jake.

  Blood tests.

  The first visit to the Simpsons.

  Frowning, she went back, consulted her logbook and entered the date each team member had joined the project.

  The shot fired at Jake, the trip to Atlanta, the fire. Interviews with Dr. Blakely’s widow and Betsy Poffenberger, resulting data discovered.

  Bill McDowell’s death.

  Making love with Jake.

  Then the trip back to Virginia, which brought her to the present.

  Once you had the events, you had a pattern, she thought. Then you extrapolated from it to see how each event, each layer connected to another.

  She worked for a time shifting the data around into different headings: Education, Medical, Professional, Personal, Antietam Creek Project, Jessica.

  Sitting back, she saw one element of the pattern. From the day she’d met him, Jake had a connection to every major point in her life. Even the damn doctorate, she admitted, which she’d gone after with a vengeance to keep herself from brooding over him.

  She couldn’t even have an identity crisis without him being involved.

  Worse, she wasn’t sure she’d want it any other way.

  Absently, she reached for a cookie and found the bag beside her keyboard empty.

  “I’ve got a stash in my room.”

  She jolted, jerked around to see Jake leaning against the doorway.

  “But it’ll cost you,” he added.

  “Damnit, stop sneaking around, spying on me.”

  “I can’t help it if I move with the grace and silence of a panther, can I? And your door was open. Standing in an open doorway isn’t spying. What are you working on?”

  “None of your business.” And to keep it that way, she saved the file and closed it.

  “You’re irritable because you’re out of cookies.”

  “Close the door.” She gritted her teeth when he did so, after he’d stepped inside. “I meant with you on the other side.”

  “You should’ve been more specific. Why aren’t you taking a nap?”

  “Because I’m not three years old.”

  “You’re beat, Dun
brook.”

  “I have work I want to do.”

  “If you’d been dealing with the schedule or the site records, you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to close the file before I got a look at it.”

  “I have personal business that doesn’t involve you.” She thought of the time line she’d just generated, and his complete involvement in it. “Or I should have.”

  “You’re feeling pretty beat up, aren’t you, baby?”

  Her stomach slid toward her knees at the slow, soft sound of his voice. “Don’t be nice to me. It drives me crazy. I don’t know what to do when you’re nice to me.”

  “I know.” He leaned down to touch his lips to hers. “I can’t figure out why I never thought of it before.”

  She turned away, opened the file again. “It’s just a time line, trying to establish a pattern. Go ahead.” She got up so he could have the desk chair. “The highlights and lowlights of my life.”

  She plopped down on her sleeping bag while he read.

  “You slept with Aiken? The sleazy Egyptologist? What were you thinking?”

  “Just never mind, or I’ll start commenting on all the women you’ve slept with.”

  “You don’t know all the women I’ve slept with. You forgot some events in this.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You forgot the conference we went to in Paris, May of 2000. And the day we skipped out on it and sat at a sidewalk cafe, drank wine. You were wearing a blue dress. It started to rain, just a little. We walked back to the hotel in the rain, went up to the room and made love. With the windows open, so we could hear the drizzle.”

  She hadn’t forgotten it. She remembered it so well, so clearly, that hearing him recount it made her hurt. “It isn’t relevant data.”

  “It was one of the most relevant days of my life. I didn’t know it then. That’s the tricky thing about life. Too often you don’t know what’s important until the moment passes. You still have that dress?”

  She shifted on her side, pillowed her cheek on her hand as she studied him. He hadn’t had a haircut since they’d started the dig. She’d always liked it when his hair got just a little too long. “Somewhere.”

  “I’d like to see you in it again.”

  “You never noticed or cared what I was wearing before.”

  “I never mentioned it. An oversight.”

  “What’re you doing?” she demanded when he began to type.

  “Adding May of 2000, Paris, to your time line. I’m going to shoot this file to my laptop. I’ll download it later, play with it.”

  “Fine, great. Do what you want.”

  “You must be feeling awful. I don’t recall you ever telling me to do what I wanted before.”

  Why did she want to cry? Why the hell did she want to cry? “You always did anyway.”

  He sent the file to his e-mail, then got up and walked to her. “You always thought so.” He sat down beside her, trailed his fingers over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to leave that day in Colorado.”

  Ah yes, she thought bitterly. That was why she wanted to cry. “Then why did you?”

  “You made it clear it was what you wanted. You said every minute you’d spent with me was a mistake. That the marriage was a bad joke and if I didn’t resign from the project and go, you would.”

  “We were fighting.”

  “You said you wanted a divorce.”

  “Yeah, and you jumped on that quick, fast and in a hurry. You and that six-foot brunette were out of there like a shot, and I got a divorce petition in the mail two weeks later.”

  “I didn’t leave with her.”

  “So it was just a coincidence that she left at the same time.”

  “You never trusted me, Cal. You never believed in me, in us, for that matter.”

  “I asked if you’d slept with her.”

  “You didn’t ask, you accused.”

  “You refused to deny it.”

  “I refused to deny it,” he agreed, “because it was insulting. It still is. If you believed that I’d break a vow to you, that I’d break faith with you over another woman, then the marriage was a bad joke. It had nothing to do with her. Christ, I don’t even remember her name.”

  “Veronica. Veronica Weeks.”

  “Trust you,” he muttered. “It had nothing to do with her,” he repeated. “And everything to do with us.”

  “I wanted you to fight for me.” She pushed up to a sitting position. She had her own wounds. “Just once I wanted you to fight for me instead of with me. I wanted that, Jake, so I’d know. So I’d know what you never once told me.”

  “What? What didn’t I tell you?”

  “That you loved me.”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or weep at the shock on his face. It was rare, she thought, to see him so unguarded, so baffled, so stunned.

  “That’s bullshit, Callie. Of course I told you.”

  “Not once. You never once said the words. ‘Mmm, babe, I love your body’ doesn’t count, Graystone. ‘Oh that, yeah, me too.’ I’d get that sometimes when I said it to you. But you never said it to me. Obviously you couldn’t. Because one thing you’re not is a liar.”

  “Why the hell did I ask you to marry me if I didn’t love you?”

  “You never asked me to marry you. You said, ‘Hey, Dunbrook, let’s take off to Vegas and get married.’ ”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “You’re not that dense.” Weary of it, she raked her hands through her hair. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He took her arm at the wrist, lowered her hand. “Why didn’t you say all this before? Why didn’t you just ask me straight out if I loved you?”

  “Because I’m a girl, you big stupid jerk.” She punched his arm, pushed to her feet. “Digging in the dirt, playing with bones, sleeping in a bag doesn’t mean I’m not a girl.”

  The fact that she was saying things he’d figured out for himself in the past months only made it worse. “I know you’re a girl. For Christ’s sake.”

  “Then figure it out. For somebody who’s spent his adult life studying and lecturing and analyzing cultures, the human condition and societal mores, you’re an idiot.”

  “Stop calling me names and give me a goddamn minute to work this out.”

  “Take all the time you want.” She spun away, headed for the door.

  “Don’t.” He didn’t move, didn’t rise and didn’t raise his voice. Surprise, because everything in their history indicated he would do all three, stopped her. “Don’t walk out. Let’s at least finish this part without turning away from each other. You didn’t ask,” he continued quietly, “because in our culture, verbalization of emotions is as important as demonstrations of emotions. Free communication between mates is essential to the development and evolution of the relationship. If you’d had to ask, the answer had no meaning.”