Birthright

by Nora Roberts

  But she steeled herself, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and opened the door to Vivian Dunbrook.

  Her first thought was the woman was so lovely—so perfectly dressed in a tailored gray suit accented with good, understated jewelry and wonderful classic pumps.

  It was a knee-jerk female reaction, but it didn’t stop Suzanne from remembering she’d changed her outfit twice after Vivian had phoned. Now she wished she’d worn her navy suit instead of the more casual black slacks and white blouse.

  Fashion as the equalizer.

  “Mrs. Cullen.” Vivian’s fingers gripped tighter on the handle of the bag she carried. “Thank you so much for seeing me.”

  “Please come in.”

  “Such a beautiful spot.” Vivian stepped inside. If there were nerves, they didn’t show in her voice. “Your gardens are wonderful.”

  “A hobby of mine.” Back straight, face composed, Suzanne led the way into the living room. “Please, sit down. Can I get you anything?”

  “No, please, don’t trouble.” Vivian chose a chair, ordered herself to sit slowly and not just collapse off her trembling legs. “I know you must be very busy. A woman in your position.”

  “My position?”

  “Your business. So successful. We’ve enjoyed your products very much. My husband particularly. Elliot has a weakness for sweets. He’d like to meet you and your husband, of course. But I wanted, first . . .I hoped we could talk. Just you and I.”

  She could be just as cool, Suzanne told herself. Just as classy and polite. She sat, crossed her legs, smiled. “Are you in the area long?”

  “Just a day or two. We wanted to see the project. It isn’t often Callie has a dig close enough for us to . . . Oh, this is awkward.”

  “Awkward?” Suzanne repeated.

  “I thought I knew what to say, how to say it. I practiced what I would say to you. I locked myself in the bathroom for an hour this morning and practiced in front of the mirror. Like you might for a play. But . . .”

  Emotion clogged Vivian’s voice. “But now, I don’t know what to say to you, or how to say it. I’m sorry? What good is it for me to tell you I’m sorry? It won’t change anything, it won’t give back what was taken from you. And how can I be sorry, all the way sorry? How can I regret having Callie? It’s not possible to regret that, to be sorry for that. I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.”

  “No, you can’t. Every time you held her, it should’ve been me holding her. When you took her to school the first day and watched her walk away from you, it should’ve been me who felt so sad and so proud. I should’ve told her bedtime stories and worried late at night when she was sick. I should’ve punished her when she disobeyed and helped her with her homework. I should’ve cried a little when she went on her first real date. And I should’ve been allowed to feel that sense of loss when she went off to college. That little empty space inside.”

  Suzanne fisted a hand over her heart. “The one that has pride at the edges of it, but feels so small and lonely inside. But all I had was that empty space. That’s all I’ve ever had.”

  They sat, stiffly, in the lovely room, with the hot river of their bitterness churning between them.

  “I can’t give those things back to you.” Vivian kept her head up, her shoulders stiff and straight. “And I know, in my heart, that if we’d learned this ten years ago, twenty, I would’ve fought to keep them from you. To keep her, whatever the cost. I can’t even wish it could be different. I don’t know how.”

  “I carried her inside me for nine months. I held her in my arms moments after her first breath.” Suzanne leaned forward as if poised to leap. “I gave her life.”

  “Yes. And that I’ll never have. I’ll never have that bond with her, and I’ll always know you do. So will she, and it will always matter to her. You will always matter to her. Part of the child who was mine all of her life is yours, now. She’ll never be completely mine again.”

  She paused, fighting for composure. “I can’t possibly understand how you feel, Mrs. Cullen. You can’t possibly understand how I feel. And maybe in some selfish part of ourselves we don’t want to understand. But I ache because neither of us can know what Callie’s feeling.”

  “No.” Her heart quivered in her breast. “We can’t. All we can do is try to make it less difficult.”

  There had to be more than anger here, Suzanne reminded herself. There had to be more, for the child who stood between them. “I don’t want her hurt. Not by me or you, not by whoever’s responsible for this. And I’m afraid for her, afraid of how far someone will go to prevent her from finding what she’s looking for.”

  “She won’t stop. I considered asking you to go with me. If both of us asked her to let it be . . . I even talked to Elliot about it. But she won’t stop, and it would only upset her if we asked something she can’t give.”

  “My son’s in Boston now. Trying to help.”

  “We’ve asked questions in the medical community. I can’t believe Henry . . . my own doctor.” Her hand lifted to her throat, twisted the simple gold necklace she wore. “When she finds the answers, and she will, there’ll be hell to pay. Meanwhile, she’s not alone. She has her family, her friends. Jacob.”

  “It’s hard to tell which group he fits into.”

  For the first time since she’d come into the house, Vivian smiled and meant it. “I hope the two of them figure it out this time. And get it right. I . . . I should go, but I wanted to give you these.”

  She touched the bag she’d set down beside the chair. “I went through the photographs and snapshots in our albums. I made copies of what I thought you’d . . . what I thought you’d like to have. I, ah, wrote the dates and occasions on the back when I remembered.”

  She rose, picked up the bag and held it out. Staring at it, Suzanne got slowly to her feet. There was a fist around her heart, squeezing so tight she wondered she could breathe at all.

  “I wanted to hate you,” she declared. “I wanted to hate you and I wanted you to be a horrible woman. I’d tell myself that was wrong. How could I want my daughter raised by a horrible, hateful woman? But I wanted it anyway.”

  “I know. I wanted to hate you. I didn’t want you to have this lovely home, or to hear you speak of her with so much love. I wanted you to be angry and cold. And fat.”

  Suzanne let out a watery laugh. “God. I can’t believe how much better that makes me feel.” She let herself look into Vivian’s eyes. She let herself see. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “No, neither do I.”

  “But right now, I’d really like to look at the pictures. Why don’t we take them back to the kitchen? I’ll make coffee.”

  “That would be absolutely great.”

  While Suzanne and Vivian spent two emotional hours going through Callie’s pictorial history over coffee and crumb cake, Doug once again sat in Roseanne Yardley’s office.

  “You didn’t mention you were Suzanne Cullen’s son.”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “I admire a woman who achieves success on her own terms. And I attended a conference some years ago on children’s health and safety. She was a speaker. A powerful one, who spoke eloquently of her own experience. I thought then she was a very brave woman.”

  “I’ve begun to see that for myself.”

  “I’ve spent most of my life concerned with the health and well-being of children. And I’ve always considered myself astute. It’s difficult to accept I might have been in any way involved with a man who exploited them, for profit.”

  “Marcus Carlyle arranged to have my sister taken and sold. He undoubtedly did the same with a number of others. And he very likely used you. A casual mention of a patient. Parents who may have lost a child and were unable to conceive another. Relatives of parents who were childless. One or more of your patients might very well have been a baby stolen from another part of the country.”

  “I spent some difficult hours thinking o
f those things. You won’t get to Lorraine,” she said after a moment. “Richard will block you there. And to be frank, she’s not particularly strong. She never was. Nor did she ever exhibit any interest in Marcus’s work. But . . .” She slid a piece of paper across the desk toward him. “This might be a better, more useful contact. To the best of my information that’s Marcus’s secretary’s location. I know people who know people who knew people,” she said with a sour smile. “I made some calls. I can’t promise that’s accurate or up-to-date.”

  He glanced down, noted Dorothy McLain Spencer was reputed to live in Charlotte. “Thank you.”

  “If you find her, and the answers you’re looking for, I’d like to know.” She rose. “I remember something Marcus said to me one evening when we were discussing our work and what it meant to us. He said helping to place a child in a stable and loving home was the most rewarding part of his job. I believed him. And I would swear he believed it, too.”

  Lana found herself smiling the minute she heard Doug’s voice over the phone. Deliberately, she made her voice breathless and distracted. “Oh . . . it’s you. Digger,” she said in a stage whisper, “not now.”

  “Hey.”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this way, but Digger and I are madly in love and running off to Bora Bora. Unless you’ve got a better offer.”

  “I could probably swing a weekend at the Holiday Inn.”

  “Sold. Where are you?”

  “On my way to the airport. I’ve got a line on Carlyle’s secretary, so I’m heading to Charlotte to check it out. With the connections, it’s going to take me all damn day to get there. I wanted to let you know where I’d be. Got a pad and pencil?”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Right.” He gave her the hotel he’d booked. “Pass that on to my family, will you?”

  “ASAP.”

  “Anything going on I should know about?”

  “I’m going to be able to move back into my office in a week. Two at the most. I’m pretty excited.”

  “No more leads on the arson?”

  “They know how, but not who. Same goes, to date, for the trailer. We miss you around here.”

  “That’s nice to know. I’ll call once I check into the hotel. When I get back, I’m taking Digger’s place.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “He’s out, I’m in. Nonnegotiable.”

  “A challenging phrase to a lawyer. Come back soon and we’ll talk about it.”

  She was still smiling when she hung up. Then immediately picked up the phone again to put the plan that had formed in her mind into action.

  Time for a break, chief.”

  With her face all but in the dirt, Callie gently blew soil away from a small stone protrusion. “I’ve got something here.”

  Rosie cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve got something every day with your nice pile of bones. Makes the rest of us look like slackers.”

  “This is stone.”

  “It’s not going anywhere. It’s lunch break.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Rosie sat to open Callie’s tea jug. “Thing’s still full. Want a lecture on dehydration?”

  “I’ve been drinking the water. I don’t think this is a tool, Rosie. Or a weapon.”

  “Sounds like a job for a geologist.” Since she’d poured out tea already, Rosie drank it before hopping down to take a look. “Definitely been worked.” She ran a thumb over the smoothed edge Callie had uncovered. “Considerably. It looks like the rhyolite. Typical of what we’ve been finding.”

  “It feels different.”

  “It does.” Rosie sat back on her heels as Callie worked with brush and probe. “Want pictures?”

  Callie grunted. “Don’t bother Dory. Just grab the camera. There’s a nub here. Doesn’t feel natural.”

  She continued to work while Rosie retrieved one of the cameras. “Another group of people just drove up. This place has been a regular Disneyland ride all morning. Ease back, you’re casting a shadow.”

  Callie waited until Rosie took the shots, then shifted to her trowel, carefully explored the earth. “I can feel the edges of it. It’s too small for a hand ax, too big for a spear point. Wrong shape for either anyway.”

  She brushed at the loosened dirt, went back to probing.

  “You want half this sandwich?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m drinking your tea. I’m not going back for my Gatorade.” With the sandwich and drink, she sat down again, watched the stone shape grow. “You know what that looks like to me?”

  “I know what it’s starting to look like to me.” Excitement was beginning to skip down her spine as she worked, but her hands remained steady and sure. “Christ, Rosie. It’s a day for art.”

  “It’s a goddamn cow. A goddamn stone cow.”

  Callie grinned down at the fat body, the facial details carved into stone. “A dust catcher. What will our anthro have to say about man’s ancient need for tchotchkes? Is this sweet or what?”

  “Majorly sweet.” Rosie rubbed her eyes as her vision blurred. “Whew! Too much sun. You want more pictures?”

  “Yeah, let’s use the trowel for scale.” She picked up the camera herself, framed the shots. She was reaching for her clipboard when she noticed Rosie hadn’t moved.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  “Little woozy. Weird. I think I’d better . . .” But she stumbled, nearly pitched over when she got to her feet. Even as Callie reached out, Rosie collapsed forward against her.

  “Rosie? Jesus. Hey! Somebody give me a hand.” She braced herself, held the weight while people ran over.

  “What is it?” Leo boosted himself into the hole. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. She fainted. Let’s get her out of here. She’s out cold,” she told Jake when he swung down with them.

  “Let me have her.” He shifted Rosie into his arms. “Dig, Matt.”

  He held her up, free-lifting a hundred and thirty pounds of dead weight. The team and visitors gathered in, hands reaching, then laying her on the ground.

  “Everybody move back. I’m a nurse.” A woman pushed through. “What happened?”

  “She said she was feeling dizzy, then she just fainted.”

  “Any medical conditions?” the woman asked as she checked Rosie’s pulse.

  “No, nothing I know of. Rosie’s healthy as a horse.”

  With one hand still monitoring the pulse, the nurse lifted one of Rosie’s eyelids to check her pupils. “Call an ambulance.”

  Callie burst through the doors of the emergency room right behind the gurney. The only thing she was sure of now was that Rosie hadn’t simply fainted.

  “What is it? What’s wrong with her?”

  The nurse who’d ridden in the ambulance from the site grabbed Callie’s arm. “Let them find out. We need to give the attending as much information as possible.”

  “Rosie—Rose Jordan. Ah, she’s thirty-four. Maybe thirty-five. She doesn’t have any allergies or conditions that I know of. She was fine. Fine one minute and unconscious the next. Why hasn’t she come to?”

  “Did she take any drugs or medications?”

  “No, no. I told you she’s not sick. And she doesn’t take drugs.”

  “Just wait over there. Somebody will be out to talk to you as soon as they can.”

  Jake strode in behind her. “What did they say?”

  “They’re not telling me anything. They took her back there somewhere. They’re asking me a bunch of questions, but they’re not telling me anything.”

  “Call your father.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a doctor. They’ll tell him things they might not tell us.”

  “God, I should’ve thought of that myself. I can’t think,” she added as she pulled out her phone. She stepped outside with it, breathed slow and steady as she called her father’s cell phone.

  “He’s coming,” she told Jake. “He’s coming right away.” She reached down, gripped
his hand when she saw the nurse come back.

  “Let’s sit down.”

  “My God. Oh my God.”

  “They’re working on her. You need to help us. You need to tell me what kind of drugs she took. The sooner they know that, the quicker they can treat her.”