Birthright

games and bicycles. Steve loved being a father, and was so much more immediately tuned to parenthood than I was. Sometimes, I think, because he was only going to be given such a short time to be one, he was somehow able to pack years into those short months with Ty.”
    “He loved you both. You can see it right here, in the way he’s holding you both.”
    “Yes.” She turned away, surprised and shaken that Doug could see and understand that from a snapshot.
    “I’m not looking to take his place with you, Lana. Or with Ty. I know a lot about how impossible it is to step into a hole that’s been left behind. When I was a kid I thought I could, even that I should. Instead, all I could do was watch my parents break apart, and that hole grow deeper and wider. I had a lot of anger because of that, anger I didn’t even recognize. So I moved away from the source of the anger, geographically, emotionally. Stayed away for longer and longer periods.”
    “It must’ve been so hard for you.”
    “Harder now that she’s back, because it makes me look at my whole life differently. I didn’t stand by my parents, or anyone else for that matter.”
    “Doug, that’s not true.”
    “It’s absolutely true.” It was important she knew that, he realized, understood that. And understood he was ready tochange. “I walked away from them because I couldn’t—wouldn’t live with a ghost. Because I figured I wasn’t important enough to keep them together—and I blamed them for it. I blamed them,” he admitted. “I walked away from every potential relationship since. I’ve never, as an adult, had a real home or tried to make one. I never wanted children because that meant responsibility and worry.”
    He stepped to her now, took her hands. “I don’t want to take his place. But I want a chance to make a place with you, and with Ty.”
    “Doug—”
    “I’m going to ask you to give me that chance. I’m going to ask you to think about that while I’m gone.”
    “I don’t know if I can let myself love someone like that again.” Her fingers gripped his, but they weren’t steady. “I don’t know if I have the courage.”
    “I look at you, at this place, at that boy sleeping upstairs, and I don’t have any doubts about your courage.” He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “Take some time and think about it. We’ll talk when I get back.”
    “Stay here tonight.” She wrapped her arms around him and held on. “Stay tonight.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”
    C allie worked on her laptop until dark, then stretched out to stare up at the stars and plot out her next workday in her mind. She would complete the excavation of the woman’s skeleton, then supervise its transfer to the lab. She’d continue to work horizontally in that sector.
    Leo was due in, so she would pass all film and reports on to him.
    She and Jake needed to do another survey and update the plotting.
    She’d have to take a look at the long-range weather forecast and prepare accordingly.
    Right now it looked to continue warm and clear for the next few days. Perfect digging weather, with temps rarelygetting past the low eighties and the humidity returning to civilized levels.
    She let herself drift, automatically tuning out the country music Jake had playing on low and concentrating on the night sounds. A quiet whoosh of a car on the road to the north of the field, the occasional plop of a frog or fish in the waters of the pond to the south.
    The beagle from the farm just west was beginning to bay at the rising moon.
    Lana didn’t know what she was missing, Callie thought, enjoying the cool fingers of air tickling her cheeks. There was an utter peace here, in the night, in the open, that couldn’t be found anywhere within walls.
    She was stretched out on ground where others had slept. Year by century by era. And beneath her, the earth held more secrets than civilization would ever find.
    But what they did find would always fascinate.
    She could hear the faint scratch of Jake’s pencil over paper. He’d sketch by the light of his Coleman lantern, she thought, sometimes late into the night. She often wondered why he hadn’t pursued art rather than science. What had caused him to choose to study man instead of translating him onto canvas?
    And why had she never asked?
    She opened one eye, studying him in the lamplight.
    He was relaxed, she thought. She could tell by the line of his jaw, his mouth. He’d taken