Birthright

tears choked him. “I want to fix this for you. My baby. But I don’t know how.”
    “I want it to be a mistake.” She turned her hot, damp cheek onto his shoulder. “Why can’t it just be a mistake? But it’s not.” She let out a trembling breath. “It’s not. I have to deal with it. And I can only do that my way. Stepby step, point by point. Like a project. I can’t just look at the surface and be satisfied. I have to see what’s under it.”
    “I know.” He dug his handkerchief out of his pocket. “Here.” He dabbed at her cheeks. “I’ll help you. I’ll do everything I can to help.”
    “I know.” She took the handkerchief from him. “Now dry yours,” she murmured and gently wiped away his tears. “Don’t tell Mom I cried.”
    “I won’t. Do you want me to go with you, to speak to the Cullens?”
    “No. But thanks.” She laid her hands on his cheeks. “We’ll be all right, Dad. We’ll be okay.”
    Jake watched them. He’d known, just as Callie had known, the minute he’d seen Elliot. And when she’d broken down, cried in her father’s arms, it had ripped at his gut. He watched the way they stood now, with Callie’s hands on his face. Trying to comfort each other, he thought. To be strong for each other.
    There was a tenderness between them he’d never experienced in his own family. Graystones, he thought, weren’t adept at expressing the more gentle of emotions.
    He’d describe his own father as stoic, he supposed. A man of few words who worked hard and rarely complained. He’d never doubted his parents loved each other, or their children, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard his father actually say “I love you” to anyone. He’d have found the words superfluous. He’d shown love by seeing there was food on the table, by teaching his children, by the occasionally affectionate headlock or pat on the back.
    His tribe, Jake thought, hadn’t spent much time on the softer aspects of family. That had been his environment, his culture and his learning curve.
    Maybe that was why he’d never gotten comfortable telling Callie the things women wanted to hear.
    That she was beautiful. That he loved her. That she was the center of his world and everything that mattered.
    He couldn’t go back and change what had been, but he was going to stick this time. He was going to be there for her through this crisis whether she wanted him or not.
    He saw her walk toward the creek. Elliot picked up the water bottles they’d dropped and, straightening, looked over at Jake.
    When their eyes met, Elliot walked out of the dappled shade and back into the brutal sun that covered the site.
    Jake met him halfway.
    “Jacob. How are you?”
    “Well enough.”
    “I’d like to tell you that both Vivian and I were very sorry when things didn’t work out between you and Callie.”
    “Appreciate that. I’d better tell you that I know what’s going on.”
    “She confided in you?”
    “You could put it that way. Or you could say I pried it out of her.”
    “Good. Good,” Elliot repeated, and rubbed at the tension at the nape of his neck. “It helps knowing she’s got someone close by to lean on right now.”
    “She won’t lean. That’s one of our problems. But I’m around anyway.”
    “Tell me, before she comes over, should I be worried about what happened here? The murder?”
    “If you mean does it have anything to do with her, I don’t see how. Added to that, I’m sticking pretty close.”
    “And when you shut down the dig for the season?”
    Jake nodded. “I’ve got some ideas on that.” He looked past Elliot as Callie started across the field. “I’ve got plenty of ideas.”
    S he knew it was a cop-out, she knew it was cowardly. But Callie had Lana call Suzanne and set up a conference, in her office for the following day. She’d have put it off a little longer, but Lana had an opening at three. Making excuses to change the day was just a little more of a cop-out than Callie could justify.
    She tried to work on her daily report, but she wasn’t getting anywhere. She tried to channel her mind into a book, into an old movie on TV, but she couldn’t pull it off.
    She thought about going for a drive, but that was foolish. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do once she got there.
    She wondered if she’d feel less boxed in if she gave up the motel room and camped on-site.
    It was a consideration.
    But in the meantime she was stuck in a twelve-by-fourteen-foot room with a