Birthright (18 page)

“We could spend the next few hours debating evolution versus creationism, but it wouldn't solve our current problem. Whatever side you fall on, there is solid evidence that a Neolithic village existed along Antietam Creek. The bones, the artifacts and ecofacts so far excavated and dated substantiate that.”

“Doesn't change the fact whenever those bodies were put there, they weren't asking to be dug up and put under some microscope. Ought to have enough respect to let the dead rest in peace, that's my feeling on it.”

“If that's the case, just how do you intend to proceed with your development?”

He had this worked out. Not all the way, but enough to keep the naysayers quiet. “We'll put up markers, that's what we'll do.” He'd thought this angle through carefully, particularly carefully when he'd realized how an extensive delay would wipe out his cash flow. He could afford to cull out an acre, section it off, even put in fancy stones to spotlight a bunch of bones.

He could even use it as a selling point, use the prehistoric impact the same way he often used Civil War history to advertise a development.

But the one thing he couldn't afford to do much longer was sit and wait.

“We've yet to determine the full area we suspect is a Neolithic cemetery,” Jake pointed out. “Where the hell are you going to put the markers?”

“I'll get my own survey, and we'll do the right thing. You got some Indian—excuse me,
Native American
—coming out to say some mumbo jumbo and give you the go-ahead. Well, I made some calls myself, and I can get me a Native American out here who'll protest any tampering with those bodies.”

Jake leaned back. “Yeah, you probably could. There are some disagreements within the tribes on how this sort of thing should be handled. But believe me, Mr. Dolan, we'll trump you on that score. I've been doing this for nearly fifteen years, and I have contacts you couldn't dream about. Added to that, it so happens I'm a quarter Indian, excuse me, Native American, myself. And while some may feel the graves should be left undisturbed, more are going to feel sympathetic with the sensitivity with which we handle the project than with the idea of having those graves paved and sodded over so you can see a profit on your investment.”

“I paid for that land.” Dolan's jaw set. “Fair deal. It belongs to me.”

“It does.” Jake nodded. “By law, it does. And in the end, it's the law that will support what we're doing on it.”

“Don't you tell me about the law!” For the first time since they'd started the meeting, Dolan blew. It didn't surprise Jake, he'd been watching it build all along. “I'm sick
and goddamn tired of having some flatlander come in here and tell me what I can do, what I can't do. I've lived in this county all my life. My father started this business fifty years back and we've spent our lives seeing that people around here have decent homes. All of a damn sudden we got environmentalists and tree huggers coming along and bitching and whining 'cause we put up houses on farmland. They don't ask the farmer why he's selling, why he's had enough of breaking his ass year after year just to get by, and maybe
he's
sick and damn tired of hearing people complain 'cause the cost of milk's too high. You don't know nothing about this place and got no right coming into my office telling me I don't care about anything but the bottom line.”

“I don't know what you care about, Mr. Dolan. But I know we're not talking about farmland and the loss of open space anymore. We're talking about a find of enormous scientific and historical impact. To preserve that, we'll fight you every step of the way.”

He got to his feet. “My father's a rancher in Arizona, and I watched him bust his butt year after year to get by. He's still doing it, and that's his choice. If he'd sold off, that would've been his choice, too. I don't know your community, but I know fifty acres of it—and I'm going to know it better before I'm done than you know your own backyard. People lived there, worked there, slept there and died there. The way I look at it, that makes it their place. I'm going to make it my business to make sure that, and they, are acknowledged.”

“I want the pack of you off my land.”

“Talk to the State of Maryland, to your own County Planning Commission, to the court.” His eyes were cool and green now, and his voice was no longer lazy. “You take us on, Dolan, and the press is going to bury you long before the courts decide who's right. Dolan and Sons will end up one more artifact.”

Jake walked out. As he did, he noted by the secretary's wide eyes and sudden, avid interest in her keyboard that she'd heard at least part of Dolan's rampage.

Word was going to spread, he thought. He imagined they'd have a number of visitors out to the site in the next few days.

He pulled out his cell phone as he got in his car.

“Get the legal wheels greased, Leo. Dolan's got a bug up his ass, and all I managed to do was shove it in deeper. I'm going to swing by and see Lana Campbell, give the Preservation Society's attorney an update.”

“She's still out here.”

“Then I'm on my way back.”

A
mile and a half out of town, behind a curving gravel lane, in a house Dolan had custom-built, Jay Cullen sat with his ex-wife and stared at Callie Dunbrook on video.

He felt, as he always did when Suzanne pushed the nightmare in front of him again, a tightness in his chest, a curling in his belly.

He was a quiet man. Had always been a quiet man. He'd graduated from the local high school, had married Suzanne Grogan, the girl he'd fallen in love with at first sight at the age of six, and had gone on to earn his teaching degree.

For twelve years, he'd taught math at his alma mater. After the divorce, after he'd been unable to stand Suzanne's obsession with their lost daughter, he'd moved to the neighboring county and transferred to another school.

He'd found some measure of peace. Though weeks might go by without him consciously thinking of his daughter, he never went through a day without thinking of Suzanne.

Now he was back in the house he'd never lived in, one that made him uncomfortable. It was too big, too open, too stylish. And they were right back in the cycle that had sucked them down, destroyed their marriage and broken his life to pieces.

“Suzanne—”

“Before you tell me all the reasons she can't be Jessica,
let me tell you the rest of it. She was adopted four days after Jessica was taken. A private adoption. She sat where you're sitting right now and explained to me that after some research, she felt it necessary to have tests done. I'm not asking you to agree with me, Jay. I'm not asking for that. I'm asking you to agree to the tests.”

“What's the point? You're already convinced she's Jessica. I can see it on your face.”

“Because she needs to be convinced. And you, and Doug—”

“Don't drag Doug through this again, Suze. For God's sake.”

“This is his sister.”

“This is a stranger.” Absently, he laid a hand on Sadie's head when she laid it on his knee. “No matter what blood tests say, she's still going to be a stranger.”

He turned away from the video image, away from the worst of the pain. “We're never getting Jessica back, Suzanne. No matter how hard you try to turn back the clock.”

“You'd rather not know, isn't that it?” Bitterness clogged her throat. “You'd rather close it off, forget it. Forget her, so you can drift along through the rest of your life without hitting any bumps.”

“That's right. I wish to God I could forget it. But I can't. I can't forget, but I can't let it drive my life the way you do, Suzanne. I can't stand out there and let myself be slapped down and beaten up again and again the way you have.”

He stroked Sadie's head, her silky ears, and wished it were as easy to comfort Suzanne. To comfort himself. “What happened to us on December twelfth didn't just cost me a daughter. I didn't just lose a child. I lost my wife—my best friend. I lost everything that ever mattered to me because you stopped seeing me. All you could see was Jessie.”

She'd heard the words before, had seen that same quiet grief on his face when he said them. It hurt, still it hurt. And still, he wasn't enough.

“You gave up.” It was tears now, cutting through the
bitterness. “You gave up on her, the way you would have given up if we'd lost a puppy.”

“That's not true.” But his anger had already dissolved in weariness. “I didn't give up, I accepted. I had to. You just didn't see what I was doing, what I was feeling. You couldn't, because you'd stopped looking at me. And after seven years of it, there wasn't anything left to see. There wasn't anything left of us.”

“You blamed me.”

“Oh no, honey, I never blamed you.” He couldn't bear it, couldn't stand to see her spiraling back into that despair, that guilt, that grief. “Never once.”

He stood up, reached for her. She still fit against him, two parts of one half, as she always had. He held her there, feeling her tremble as she wept. And knew he was as helpless, as useless to her as he'd been from the moment she'd called him and told him Jessica was gone.

“I'll have the tests. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

H
e made the appointment with the doctor before he left Suzanne's. It seemed to settle her, though it had stirred Jay up, left him feeling half sick with the pressure in his chest.

He wouldn't drive by the site. Suzanne had urged him to, almost begged him to go by and speak to this Callie Dunbrook.

But he wasn't ready for that. Besides, what could he say to her, or she to him?

He had come to a revelation on the day of Jessica's twenty-first birthday. His daughter, if she lived, and he prayed she lived, was a grown woman. She would never, never belong to him.

He couldn't face the drive back home, or the evening to come. The solitude of it. He knew it was solitude, and some measure of peace he'd looked for when he'd quietly agreed to the divorce. After years of turmoil and grief, tension and conflict, he'd been willing, almost eager to be alone.

He could tell himself that need for solitude was the reason he'd never remarried and rarely dated.

But in his heart, Jay Cullen was a married man. Jessica might have been the living ghost in Suzanne's life, but his marriage was Jay's.

When he gave in to the pressure from friends, or his own needs, and courted a woman into bed, he considered it emotional adultery.

No legal paper could convince his heart Suzanne wasn't still his wife.

He tried not to think of the men Suzanne had been with over the years. And he knew she would tell him that was his biggest flaw—his instinct to close himself off from what made him unhappy, what disturbed the easy flow of life.

He couldn't argue about it, as it was perfectly true.

He drove into town and felt that familiar pang of regret and the conflicting surge of simple pleasure. This was home, no matter that he'd lived away from it. His memories were here.

Ice cream and summer parades. Little League practice, the daily walk to school down the sidewalk. Cutting through Mrs. Hobson's yard for a shortcut and having her dog, Chester, chase him all the way to the fence.

Finding Suzanne waiting on the corner for him. Then when they got older, finding her pretending not to wait for him.

He could see her, and himself, through all the stages.

The pigtails she'd worn when they'd been in first grade, and the funny little barrettes, pink flowers and blue butterflies she'd taken to sliding into her hair later.

Himself at ten, trudging up the steps to the library to do a report, wearing Levi's so new and stiff they'd felt like cardboard.

The first time he'd kissed her, right there, under the old oak on the corner of Main and Church. Snow had sprung them from school early, and he'd walked her home instead of running off with his friends to have a snowball fight.

It had been worth it, Jay thought now. It had been worth all the terror and cold sweats and aches he'd felt building
up to that one moment. To have his lips on Suzanne's lips, both of them a soft and innocent twelve.

His heart had been beating so fast he'd been dizzy. She smiled even as she'd shoved him away. And when she'd run away, she'd been laughing—the way girls did, he thought, because they know so much more than boys at that age.

And his feet hadn't touched the ground for the three blocks he'd raced to find his friends already at war in the snow.

He remembered how happy they'd been when he'd gotten his degree and they'd been able to move back to Woodsboro. The little apartment they'd rented near the college had never been theirs. More like playing house, playing at marriage.

But when they'd come back, with Douglas just a baby, they'd settled into being a family.

He pulled into a parking spot on the curb before he realized he'd been looking for one. Then he got out and walked the half block to Treasured Pages.

He saw Roger at the counter waiting on a customer. Jay shook his head, held up a hand, then began to wander the shelves and stacks.

He'd been closer to Roger, Jay supposed, than he'd been to his own father, who'd have been happier if his son had scored touchdowns instead of A's.

Just something else he'd lost along with Jessica. Roger had never treated him any differently after the divorce, but everything
was
different.

He stopped when he saw Doug rearranging the stock in the biography section.

He'd seen Doug twice since Doug had been back in Woodsboro, and still it was a shock to realize this tall, broad-shouldered man was his boy.

“Got any good beach reading?” Jay asked him.

Doug glanced over his shoulder, and his solemn face brightened with a grin. “I've got some pretty sexy stuff in my private stash. But it'll cost you. What are you doing in town?”