Birthright

any good beach reading?” Jay asked him.
    Doug glanced over his shoulder, and his solemn face brightened with a grin. “I’ve got some pretty sexy stuff in my private stash. But it’ll cost you. What are you doing in town?”
    As soon as he’d asked, he knew the answer. And the grin faded.
    “Never mind. Mom pulled you into this.”
    “You’ve seen the video.”
    “I’ve done more than see the video. I got a close-up look, live and in person.”
    Jay moved in closer to his son. “What did you think?”
    “What am I supposed to think? I didn’t know her. She’s got Mom stirred up, that’s all I know.”
    “Your mother told me she went to see this woman, not the other way around.”
    “Yeah, well.” Doug shrugged. “What difference does it make?”
    “What about Roger?”
    “That news segment of her shook him up, but he’s holding pretty steady. You know Grandpa.”
    “Has he been out to this dig to see her?”
    “No.” Doug shook his head. “He said he was afraid if we started coming at her, started crowding her, she’d just leave, or refuse the tests or something. But he wants to. He’s been reading books on archaeology, like he wants to have something to talk to her about once we’re all one big, happy family again.”
    “If she’s your sister . . . If she is, we need to know. Whatever the hell we do about it, we need to know. I’m going to go talk to Roger before I head out. Keep an eye on your mom, okay?”

Ten
    F ull of the thrill of his time at the dig, Tyler broke away from his mother as they came into the bookstore. His face glowed with excitement and innocent sweat as he raced toward the counter to hold up a flattened chunk of rock.
    “Look, Grandpa Roger, look what I got!”
    With a quick glance of apology toward Jay, Lana hurried over. “Ty, don’t interrupt.”
    Before she could scoop up her son, Roger was adjusting his glasses and leaning over. “Whatcha got there, big guy?”
    “It’s a part of a spear, an Indian spear, and maybe they killed people with it.”
    “I’ll be darned. Why, is that blood I see on there?”
    “Nuh-uh.” But fascinated by the idea, Ty peered at the spear point. “Maybe.”
    “Sorry.” Lana picked Ty up, set him on her hip. “Indiana Jones here forgets his manners.”
    “When I get big, I can dig up bones.”
    “And won’t that be fun?” Lana rolled her eyes and adjusted Ty’s weight. Not much longer, she thought with a little pang, and she wouldn’t be able to carry him this way.“But however big we are, we don’t interrupt people when they’re having a conversation.”
    “Sit that load on down here.” Roger patted the counter. “Lana, this is my . . .” Son-in-law still came most naturally to his lips. “This is Douglas’s father, Jay. Jay, this is Lana Campbell, the prettiest lawyer in Woodsboro, and her son, Tyler.”
    Lana set Tyler on the counter, offered a hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Cullen.”
    She saw Callie’s eyes, Doug’s nose. Would he, she wondered, feel the same jolt of astonished pleasure seeing those parts of himself in his children as she did seeing her own in Ty? “Tyler and I have just been visiting the Antietam Creek Project.”
    He knows, she thought as she saw emotion wash over his face. He knows the daughter taken from him so many years before is standing, right now, only a few miles away.
    “And they got skeleton parts and lotsa rocks and fo—What are they?” Ty asked his mother.
    “Fossils.”
    “Dr. Leo let me have this, and it’s millions of years old.”
    “Goodness.” Roger smiled, though Lana saw him reach over, touch Jay’s arm. “That’s even older than me.”
    “Really?” Ty stared up at Roger’s craggy face. “You can come dig with me sometime. I’ll show you how. And I got candy, too. Dr. Jake pulled it out of my ear !”
    “You don’t say?” Obliging, Roger leaned down as if to search in Ty’s ear. “I guess you ate it all.”
    “It was only one piece. Dr. Leo said it was magic and Dr. Jake has lots of tricks up his sleeve. But I didn’t see any more.”
    “Sounds like you had quite a day.” Amused, Jay tapped Ty on one grubby knee. “Is it all right if I see your rock?”
    “Okay.” Ty hesitated. “But you can’t keep it, right?”
    “No. Just to look.” Just to hold something, Jay thought, that might have a connection with Jessica. “This is very cool. I used to collect rocks when I was a boy, and I had some Civil War bullets,