Birthright

looked at him with guarded eyes. “Don’t you?”
    “Sure.” He stood, hitched on his jeans. “Next time you’re in the mood for a quick fuck, just knock on the wall.” He saw emotion flicker over her face before she turned her head away again.
    “What’s this? Hurt feelings?” He heard the cruel edge in his own voice, and didn’t give a damn. “Come on, Dunbrook, let’s not pretty this up. You pushed the buttons, you got results. No harm, no foul.”
    “That’s right.” She wished for him to go. Wished for him to crouch down and scoop her up, to hold on to her. Just to hold on to her. “So we’ll both sleep better tonight.”
    “I’ve got no problem sleeping, babe. See you in the morning.”
    She waited until she heard the door close, until she heard his open next door. Shut.
    Then for the second time that day, she wept.
    C allie told herself she was steady when she took a seat in Lana’s office the next afternoon. She would do what needed to be done. This was only another step.
    “You want coffee?” Lana asked her.
    “No, thanks.” She was afraid her system would explode if she added any more caffeine. “I’m fine.”
    “You don’t look fine. In fact, you don’t look like you’ve slept in a week.”
    “I had a bad night, that’s all.”
    “This is a difficult situation, for everyone. But you, most of all.”
    “I’d say it’s tougher on the Cullens.”
    “No. Tug-of-war’s harder on the rope than the people pulling it.”
    Unable to speak, Callie simply stared. Then she pressed her fingers to her lids. “Thanks. Thanks for getting it, for not just being the objective legal counsel.”
    “Callie, have you thought about counseling?”
    “I don’t need counseling.” She dropped her hands back in her lap. “I’ll be okay. Finding answers is all the therapy I need.”
    “All right.” Lana sat behind her desk. “The investigator’s found a similar pattern in Carlyle’s practice after the mid-fifties. That is, a decrease in adoption petitions after Carlyle establishes himself in an area. Yet from what we’ve gathered, it appears his income and client base increase. It’s fair to assume the main source of that income was in black-market adoptions. We’re still working on tracking him after he left Seattle. There’s no record of him practicing law anywhere in the States after he closed his offices there. But we have found something else.”
    “Which is?”
    “His son, Richard Carlyle, who lives in Atlanta. He’s a lawyer.”
    “Isn’t that handy.”
    “My investigator reports he’s clean. Squeaky. He’s forty-eight, married, two children. He got his law degree from Harvard, graduated in the top five percent of his class. He worked as an associate for a prominent Boston firm. He met his wife through mutual friends on a visit to Atlanta. They courted long-distance for two years. When they married, he relocated to Atlanta, took a position as junior partner in another firm. He now has his own.”
    Lana set the folder aside.
    “He’s practiced in Atlanta for sixteen years, primarily in real estate. There’s nothing to indicate he lives above his means. He would have been nineteen, twenty, when you were taken. There’s no reason to believe he was involved.”
    “But he must know where his father is.”
    “The investigator’s prepared to approach him on that matter, if that’s what you want.”
    “I do.”
    “I’ll take care of it.” Her intercom buzzed. “That’s the Cullens. Are you ready?”
    Callie nodded her head.
    “If you want me to take over, at any time, if you want me to do the talking, or call for a break, you’ve only to give me a sign.”
    “Let’s just get it over with.”

Thirteen
    I t was a strange moment, seeing what would have been her family had fate taken a different turn. She wasn’t sure just what to do as they came in. Should she stand, remain in her chair? Where should she look? How should she look?
    She tried to get a bead on Jay Cullen without staring. He was wearing chinos and a shirt with tiny blue and green checks, and very old Hush Puppies. A blue tie. He looked . . . pleasant, she decided. Quietly attractive and reasonably fit, and very like the fiftyish math teacher she knew him to be.
    And if the shadows under his eyes—oh, God, her eyes—were any indication, he hadn’t been sleeping well.
    There weren’t enough chairs in Lana’s little office to accommodate everyone. For a moment—seconds, Callie supposed,