Birthright

fresh nick on the back of her hand. “Don’t be sad.”
    Deliberately she turned away from him. “It’s a key find.”
    “And hits a little close to home right now.”
    “That’s not the issue.” She couldn’t let it be. Reaching down, she picked up her camera, began to document.
    She’d already stepped away from him, and there was no sound but the click of the shutter. He ordered himself to be patient. “I’ll make the calls.”
    “I’m not going to have her and her child crumble while you powwow. Make it fast, Graystone,” she ordered, and went to get Leo.
    D igger’s find of an antler horn and a hollowed bone that might have been used as a kind of whistle were overshadowed by the skeletons. But with them, and the flakes, the broken spear points Rosie unearthed, Callie began to put together a picture of the settlement in her mind.
    The storm broke, as Jake had predicted. It gave her the chance to hole up in her motel room and sketch her vision of the settlement. The knapping area, the huts, the graveyard. If she was right, she expected they’d find the kitchen midden somewhere between areas D-25 and E-12.
    She needed more hands, and could only hope today’s find would shake some loose.
    When the phone rang, she answered it absently. The minute she heard her father’s voice her focus shattered.
    “I wasn’t sure I’d catch you this time of day, but I thought I’d try there before I tried your cell phone.”
    “We got hit by a storm,” she told him. “I’m doing paperwork.”
    “I wanted you to know I tracked down Henry Simpson. He’s retired now, relocated in Virginia. I . . . I spoke with him briefly. Honey, I didn’t know how much you wanted me to tell him. I said you were interested in finding out a bit more about your birth parents. I hope that was all right.”
    “It seems the simplest way.”
    “He couldn’t tell me much. He thought Marcus Carlyle had relocated. He didn’t seem to know where or when, but he, ah, told me he’d see if he could find out.”
    “I appreciate it. I know this isn’t easy for you, or Mom. Ah, if I decide to talk to Dr. Simpson myself, I’ll probably ask you to talk to him again, fill him in more specifically.”
    “Whatever you want. Callie, this woman, Suzanne Cullen . . . what do you plan to tell her?”
    “I don’t know. I can’t leave things the way they are, Dad.” She thought of the bones again. Mother and child. “I’d never be able to live with it.”
    There was a long pause, a short sigh. “No, I don’t suppose you could. We’ll be here if you need . . . anything.”
    “You’ve always been there.”
    She couldn’t go back to work now, she thought after she hung up. Nor could she stand pacing the box of a room. She looked at her cello. But there were times, she thought, when music didn’t soothe the savage beast.
    The only way to move forward was to do what came next.
    She called Suzanne.
    T he directions were detailed and exact. That told Callie that Suzanne could be, when necessary, controlled and organized. Figured, she thought as she drove up the long sweep of gravel that cut through the trees. You couldn’t start your own national business from scratch if you were hyper and scattered as she’d seemed on her visit to Callie’s motel room.
    She also, obviously, liked her privacy, Callie decided. Kept her roots here in the area, but dug them into secluded ground.
    The house itself showed her good taste, financial security and an appreciation for space. It was honey wood, contemporary lines, with two long decks and plenty of glass. Plenty of flora, too, Callie noted, and all of it lush and tended, with what looked to be stepping-stones or stone paths winding around through pristine oak chips or plots of tidy grass.
    It was, to Callie’s mind, a fair way to analyze a person—this study of their choice of habitat. She imaginedJake would agree. How and where an individual elected to live spoke to that individual’s personality, background and inner culture.
    As she pulled up behind a late-model SUV, Callie tried to remember what Suzanne had been wearing when she’d come to the motel. Choices of apparel, body ornamentation, style were other signals of type and category.
    But the visit was blurred in her mind.
    Though the lightning had passed on, the rain was still beating the ground. Callie slid out of the car and arrived on the front porch, dripping.
    The door opened immediately.
    She was wearing very slim black