Birthright

bat.
    “I’ve never played baseball. Just some catch with Ty in the front yard.”
    “Don’t try pulling your deprived childhood on me as a bid for sympathy. You’re going to learn to do this right. Shoulders first. Upper body. Then your hips.”
    “Can I do it? Can I?” Ty demanded from behind the protective screen.
    “One generation at a time, slugger.” Doug winked at him. “Let’s get your mom started, then you and I’ll show her how real men bat.”
    “Sexist remarks will not earn you any points,” Lana informed him.
    “Just watch for the ball,” Doug told her. “The ball’s going to be your whole world. Your only purpose in life will be to meet that ball with this bat. You’re the bat and the ball.”
    “Oh, so this is Zen baseball.”
    “Ha ha. Ready?”
    She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, nodded. And hated herself for being such a girl, for actually squealing and cringing as the ball popped out of the machine and flew toward her.
    “You missed it, Mommy.”
    “Yes, Ty. I know.”
    “Strike one. Let’s try again.” This time Doug kept her trapped between his arms and guided her motion with the bat as the ball pitched toward them.
    The knock of bat on wood, the faint vibration in her arms from the contact made her laugh. “Do it again.”
    She knocked several more, all to Tyler’s wild cheers. Then testing, she leaned back, looked up so her lips nearly grazed Doug’s jaw. She waited until his gaze shifted down to hers.
    “How’m I doing?” she murmured.
    “You’re never going to play in the Bigs, but you’re coming along.”
    He laid a hand on her hip, rested it there, then stepped back. “Okay, Ty, you’re up.”
    Lana watched them, the man’s big hands over her child’s small ones on a fat plastic bat. For a moment her heart ached viciously for the man she’d loved and lost. And for a moment, she could almost feel him standing beside her, as she sometimes did when she watched their son sleep late at night.
    Then there was the muffled crack of plastic on plastic, and Ty’s bright and delighted laughter rang out. The ache faded.
    There was only her child, and the man who guided his hands on a fat plastic bat.

Twelve
    I t took three days before the site was cleared for work. During that time, Callie wrote reports, spent a day in the Baltimore lab. She cooperated with the county sheriff, sitting in his office for an hour giving her official statement and answering questions.
    She knew they were no closer to finding Dolan’s killer. She kept her ear tuned to town gossip, read the reports in the newspaper.
    And she knew when she brushed and probed at the earth that she was exploring the place where a man had been killed.
    Others had died there, she thought. Through sickness, through injury. Through violence. With them, she could gather data, reconstruct and outline reasonable theories.
    With Dolan, she was as much in the dark as the local police.
    She could envision the lives, the social order, even the daily routine of people who’d lived thousands of years before she was born. Yet she knew next to nothing about a man she’d met—one she’d argued with.
    She could dig here, and she could discover. Yet shewould learn nothing about a man who’d died only a few feet away from where she worked.
    She could dig into her own past, and she would discover. But it would change nothing.
    “You were never happier than when you had a pile of dirt and a shovel.”
    She turned her head, swiped absently at the sweat that dripped at her temples. And felt her heart give a quick lurch as she saw her father.
    “It’s a dental pick,” she said and held it up. She set it aside, stepped over her camera and other tools, then boosted herself out of the hole. “I’m going to give you a break and not hug you because that’s a nice suit.” But she tilted her head up to kiss his cheek.
    She brushed her hands on the butt of her jeans. “Is Mom with you?”
    “No.” He glanced around, as much with interest as a means to put off the purpose of his visit. “You look pretty busy around here.”
    “We’re making up for lost time. We had to stop everything on-site for three days until the police cleared the scene.”
    “Police? Was there an accident?”
    “No. I forget this isn’t the world. I guess the news reports haven’t gone that far north. There was a murder.”
    “Murder?” Shock covered his face even as he gripped her hand. “My God, Callie. One of your