Birthright

man.”
    “He’s a patsy for kids.”
    “While they’re occupied, I need to talk to you.”
    “Figured. Let’s take a walk. I need to stretch my legs anyway.”
    “I don’t want to leave Ty.”
    “Believe me,” Callie said as she dusted herself off, “Leo’ll keep him occupied and happy.” She headed off, leaving Lana no choice but to follow.
    “I have a little more information on Carlyle.”
    “The investigator found him?”
    “Not yet. But we did find something interesting. While practicing in Chicago and Houston, Carlyle represented couples in over seventy adoptions. Duly decreed through the court. This most certainly comprised the lion’s share of his practice and income. During his time in Boston, he was the petitioners’ council in ten adoptions.”
    “Which means?”
    “Wait. During his practice in Seattle, he completed four adoptions. Through the court,” Lana added. “We’re now under one per year. What does the pattern say to you?”
    “The same as it’s saying to you, I imagine: that he found it more profitable to steal babies and sell them than to go through the rigmarole of the system.” Callie walked into the trees that ranged along the curve of the river. “It’sa reasonable hypothesis, but there’s not enough data to prove it.”
    “Not yet. If we can find one of the adoptive parents who recommended him to a friend or to someone in a support group, someone who went to him but whose petition and decree weren’t filed, we’ll have more. There’ll be a trail. No matter how careful he was, there’s always a trail.”
    “What do we tell those people, if we find them?” Callie demanded, and booted at a fallen twig. “Do we tell them the child they raised was stolen from another family? That they never legally made that child theirs?”
    “I don’t know, Callie. I don’t know.”
    “I don’t want to involve other families. I can’t do it. At least not at this point. Those people made families. It’s not their fault that this bastard twisted that, twisted something as loving and honorable as adoption into profit and pain.”
    His profit, Lana thought. Your pain. “If we find him, and what he’s done comes out . . . Eventually—”
    “Yeah, eventually.” She looked back toward the dig. Layer, by layer, by layer. “I can’t see eventually. I have to take it as it comes.”
    “Do you want me to call off the investigator?”
    “No. I just want him focused on finding Carlyle, not putting a case together for what happens after we do. We’ll deal with that . . . when we deal with it. She wrote me letters.” Callie paused, watched a fat jay spear through the trees. Deeper in the woods, a woodpecker hammered like a maniac while across the road, the hound lay in his usual patch of sun and slept.
    “Suzanne wrote me letters every year on my birthday. And she saved them in a box. I read one last night. It broke my heart, and still it doesn’t connect to me. Not the way she needs it to. She’s not my mother. Nothing’s ever going to make her my mother.”
    She shook her head. “But there has to be payment made. We find Carlyle, and he has to pay. He and whoever else was part of it. I can do that for her.”
    “I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if someone took Tyler from me. And I can’t. I can’t because it’s tooterrifying. But I can imagine that finding you again is both a tremendous joy and tremendously painful for her. I don’t know what else you can do than what you’re doing. And what you’re doing is both very kind and very brave.”
    Callie laughed, but there was no humor in it. “It’s neither. It’s just necessary.”
    “You’re wrong, but I won’t waste my time arguing with a client. Which is why I won’t point out how unnecessary it was for you to have me draft this.” She slid the paperwork out of her shoulder bag. “The statement refusing any part of Suzanne’s or Jay Cullen’s estates. You need to sign it, where indicated. Your signature needs to be witnessed.”
    Callie nodded, took the papers. They were, at least, a definite step. “Leo’ll do it.”
    “I’d like to advise you to take a few days to think about this.”
    “She’s not my mother, not to me. I’m not entitled to anything from her. I want you to take a copy of this and deliver it, personally, to Douglas Cullen.”
    “Oh, damn it, Callie.”
    “Whether or not you shove it down his throat is your option, but I want him to have a