Birthright

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 lookfor 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.”
    I t 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