Birthright

let me take care of you? Even now, when you’re hurting.”
    Baffled, she gestured to the cupboard. “It’s just . . . right there.”
    “Fine. Great.” He let her go, turned his back. “Get it yourself.”
    She started to shrug it off, scoot down. Then stopped herself. She wasn’t sure of the steps of this new dance they seemed to have begun, but at least she could try to find the rhythm.
    “Look, maybe you could give me a hand down. If I jar something, I think my head’ll fall off. And I guess I banged up my feet some, too.”
    Saying nothing, he turned back, lifted her feet one at a time. He swore under his breath, then caught her at the waist, lifted her down to the floor. Gently, she noted. He’d been gentle several times that night—more in that single night than she could recall him being with her since they’d met.
    His face was scratched, his hair was wild, and his eyesannoyed. Everything inside her softened. “I guess you carried me all the way inside.”
    “It was either that or leave you out there.” He reached over her head, took the bottle of pills out of the cabinet. “Here.”
    “Thanks. You know what, I think I need to sit down.” She did, right on the floor, as much to see how he’d react as for necessity.
    She saw it, that quick concern that raced over his face before it closed down again. He turned on the faucet, poured her a glass of water, then crouched down to give it to her.
    “You dizzy?”
    “No. It just hurts like the wrath of God. I’ll just sit here, take drugs, wait for the cops.”
    “I’ll call this in, then we’ll put some ice on that head. See how it does.”
    “Okay.” Thoughtfully, she shook out pills as he went to the phone. She wasn’t sure what this new aspect of Jacob Graystone meant. But it was certainly interesting.

Fifteen
    C allie didn’t trust herself to dig on three hours of spotty sleep. The knot on her forehead brought a dull, constant ache that made paperwork unappealing.
    Napping was a skill she’d never developed, and was only one step below her least-honed ability. Doing nothing.
    For twenty minutes, she indulged herself by experimenting with various ways to disguise the scrape and bruise. Swooping her hair down made her look like a low-rent copy of Veronica Lake. Tying on a bandanna resulted in a cross between a time-warped hippie and a girl pirate.
    None of those were quite the effect she was looking for.
    Though she knew she’d probably live to regret it, she snipped off some hair to form wispy bangs.
    They’d drive her crazy as they grew out, but for now they met the basic demands of vanity. With her sunglasses and hat, she decided, you could hardly make out the sunburst of color and patch of raw skin.
    If she was going out, and she was, she didn’t want the goose egg to be the focus of attention.
    She’d put off going by Treasured Pages as Doug had asked, and it was time to stop procrastinating. Sheunderstood why he’d asked it of her, and she could admit to her own curiosity about another member of the Cullen family.
    But what was she supposed to say to the old guy? she asked herself as she hunted up a parking spot on Main. Hey, Grandpa, how’s it going?
    So far her time in Woodsboro had been just a little too interesting. Old family secrets, crude graffiti all over her Rover—which was why she was driving Rosie’s enormous Jeep Cherokee—murder, mystery and finally gunshots and mild concussions.
    It was enough to drive a person back to the lecture circuit.
    Now, she thought, she was forced to parallel park in an unfamiliar vehicle, on a narrow street that had, to spite her, suddenly filled with traffic.
    She didn’t see how it could get much worse.
    She muscled the car in and out, back and forth, dragging the wheel, cursing herself and the town’s predilection for high curbs until sweaty, frustrated and mildly embarrassed, she finessed the Jeep between a pickup and a hatchback.
    She slid out, noted that now that she’d completed the task, traffic was down to three pokey cars and a Mennonite with a horse and carriage.
    It just figured.
    But the mental bitching kept her from being nervous as she walked down the block to the bookstore.
    There was a woman at the counter when Callie walked in, and a man behind it with wild gray hair and a white shirt with pleats so sharp they could have cut bread. Callie saw the instant shock run over his face, heard him stop speaking in the middle of a sentence as if someone had