Birthright

tell me what you need me to do.”
    H e made the appointment with the doctor before he left Suzanne’s. It seemed to settle her, though it had stirred Jay up, left him feeling half sick with the pressure in his chest.
    He wouldn’t drive by the site. Suzanne had urged him to, almost begged him to go by and speak to this Callie Dunbrook.
    But he wasn’t ready for that. Besides, what could he say to her, or she to him?
    He had come to a revelation on the day of Jessica’s twenty-first birthday. His daughter, if she lived, and he prayed she lived, was a grown woman. She would never, never belong to him.
    He couldn’t face the drive back home, or the evening to come. The solitude of it. He knew it was solitude, and some measure of peace he’d looked for when he’d quietly agreed to the divorce. After years of turmoil and grief, tension and conflict, he’d been willing, almost eager to be alone.
    He could tell himself that need for solitude was the reason he’d never remarried and rarely dated.
    But in his heart, Jay Cullen was a married man. Jessica might have been the living ghost in Suzanne’s life, but his marriage was Jay’s.
    When he gave in to the pressure from friends, or his own needs, and courted a woman into bed, he considered it emotional adultery.
    No legal paper could convince his heart Suzanne wasn’t still his wife.
    He tried not to think of the men Suzanne had been with over the years. And he knew she would tell him that was his biggest flaw—his instinct to close himself off from what made him unhappy, what disturbed the easy flow of life.
    He couldn’t argue about it, as it was perfectly true.
    He drove into town and felt that familiar pang of regret and the conflicting surge of simple pleasure. This was home, no matter that he’d lived away from it. His memories were here.
    Ice cream and summer parades. Little League practice, the daily walk to school down the sidewalk. Cutting through Mrs. Hobson’s yard for a shortcut and having her dog, Chester, chase him all the way to the fence.
    Finding Suzanne waiting on the corner for him. Then when they got older, finding her pretending not to wait for him.
    He could see her, and himself, through all the stages.
    The pigtails she’d worn when they’d been in first grade, and the funny little barrettes, pink flowers and blue butterflies she’d taken to sliding into her hair later.
    Himself at ten, trudging up the steps to the library to do a report, wearing Levi’s so new and stiff they’d felt like cardboard.
    The first time he’d kissed her, right there, under the old oak on the corner of Main and Church. Snow had sprung them from school early, and he’d walked her home instead of running off with his friends to have a snowball fight.
    It had been worth it, Jay thought now. It had been worth all the terror and cold sweats and aches he’d felt buildingup to that one moment. To have his lips on Suzanne’s lips, both of them a soft and innocent twelve.
    His heart had been beating so fast he’d been dizzy. She smiled even as she’d shoved him away. And when she’d run away, she’d been laughing—the way girls did, he thought, because they know so much more than boys at that age.
    And his feet hadn’t touched the ground for the three blocks he’d raced to find his friends already at war in the snow.
    He remembered how happy they’d been when he’d gotten his degree and they’d been able to move back to Woodsboro. The little apartment they’d rented near the college had never been theirs. More like playing house, playing at marriage.
    But when they’d come back, with Douglas just a baby, they’d settled into being a family.
    He pulled into a parking spot on the curb before he realized he’d been looking for one. Then he got out and walked the half block to Treasured Pages.
    He saw Roger at the counter waiting on a customer. Jay shook his head, held up a hand, then began to wander the shelves and stacks.
    He’d been closer to Roger, Jay supposed, than he’d been to his own father, who’d have been happier if his son had scored touchdowns instead of A’s.
    Just something else he’d lost along with Jessica. Roger had never treated him any differently after the divorce, but everything was different.
    He stopped when he saw Doug rearranging the stock in the biography section.
    He’d seen Doug twice since Doug had been back in Woodsboro, and still it was a shock to realize this tall, broad-shouldered man was his boy.
    “Got