Birthright

by. I’ve been pretty busy.”
    “This is awkward for you.”
    “I guess it is.”
    “Would you like to come into the back? Have some coffee?”
    “Sure. Thanks.”
    He didn’t touch her, or make any move to take her hand. He didn’t stare or fumble. And his ease put Callie at hers as they stepped into his back room.
    “This is a nice place. Comfortable. I’ve always thought of bibliophiles as stuffy fanatics who keep their books behind locked glass.”
    “I’ve always thought of archaeologists as strapping young men who wear pith helmets and explore pyramids.”
    “Who says I don’t have a pith helmet,” she countered and made him laugh.
    “I wanted to come out to the site, to see your work. To see you. But I didn’t want to . . . push. It’s so much for you to deal with all at once. I thought an extra grandfather could wait.”
    “Doug said I’d like you. I think he’s right.”
    He poured coffee and brought it to the tiny table. “Milk, sugar?”
    “Why mess with a good thing?”
    “How did you hurt your head?”
    She tugged at her new bangs. “I guess these aren’t doing the job after all.” She started to tell him something light, something foolish, then found herself telling him the exact truth.
    “My God. This is madness. What did the sheriff say?”
    “Hewitt?” She shrugged. “What cops always say. They’ll look into it. He’s going to talk to a couple of guys who hassled me and Jake when we first got here, and decorated my car with creative obscenities and red spray paint.”
    “Who would that be?”
    “Some morons named Austin and Jimmy. Big guy, little guy. A redneck version of Laurel and Hardy.”
    “Austin Seldon and Jimmy Dukes?” He shook his head, nudged his glasses back up the bridge of his nose when they took a slide. “No, I can’t imagine it. They’re not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but neither of them would shoot at a man or manhandle a woman, for that matter. I’ve known them all their lives.”
    “They want us off the project. And they’re not alone.”
    “The development is no longer an issue. Kathy Dolan contacted me last night. That’s Ron’s widow. She wants to sell the land to the Preservation Society. It’ll take some doing for us to meet the asking price, but we’re going to meet it. There will be no development at Antietam Creek.”
    “That’s not going to make you preservation guys popular either.”
    “Not with some.” His smile was quiet, smug and very appealing. “And very popular with others.”
    “Just speculation, but could someone have killed Dolan so his wife would be pressured into selling?”
    “Again, I can’t imagine. Then again, I don’t want to imagine. I know this town, its people. It’s not the way we do things here.”
    He rose to get the pot to top off their coffee. Out in the shop, the phone rang, but he let it go. “There were a lot of people who thought highly of Ron, and a lot who didn’t. But I don’t know one of them who’d crack his head open and dump him in Simon’s Hole.”
    “I could say the same thing about my team. I don’t know some of them as well as you know your neighbors, but diggers don’t make a habit of knocking off towners because of a site disagreement.”
    “You love your work.”
    “Yeah. Everything about it.”
    “When you do, every day’s an adventure.”
    “Some a little more adventurous than others. I should get back to it.” But she didn’t rise. “Can I ask you a question first? On the personal front?”
    “Of course you can.”
    “Suzanne and Jay. What happened between them?”
    He let out a long breath, sat back. “I think, too often, tragedy begets tragedy. We were wild when you were taken. Terrified in a way I can’t fully describe.”
    He took off his glasses as if they were suddenly too heavy for his face. “Who would take an innocent child that way? What would they do to you? How could this have happened? For weeks, there was nothing but you to think of, to worry about, to pray for. There were leads, but they never went anywhere. The simple truth was you’d vanished, without a trace.”
    He paused a moment, folded his hands tidily on the table. “We were normal people, living ordinary lives. This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen to normal people living ordinary lives. But it did, and it changed us. It changed Suzanne and Jay.”
    “How? I mean, other than the obvious.”
    “Finding you was Suzanne’s entire focus. She hounded