Birthright by Nora Roberts Page B

cruel.”
    “Cruel?” Who was this man, staring at her out of sad, angry eyes? Who was her father? “You can speak to me of cruel after what you’ve done?”
    “What have we done?” he tossed back. “We didn’t tell you. How can that matter so much? Your mother—yourmother needed the illusion at first. She was devastated, inconsolable. She could never give birth to a child. When there was a chance to adopt you, to have a daughter, we took it. We loved you, love you, not because you’re like our own, because you are our own.”
    “I couldn’t face the loss of that baby,” Vivian managed. “Not after the two miscarriages, not after doing everything I could to make certain the baby was born healthy. I couldn’t bear the thought of people looking at you and seeing you as a substitute. We moved here, to start fresh. Just the three of us. And I put all of that away. It doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t change who we are or how much we love you.”
    “You pay for a black-market baby. You take a child stolen from another family, and it doesn’t change anything?”
    “What are you talking about?” Elliot’s face filled with angry color. “That’s a vicious thing to say. Vicious. Whatever we’ve done we don’t deserve that.”
    “You paid a quarter of a million dollars.”
    “That’s right. We arranged for a private adoption and money speeds the wheel. It may not be considered fair to couples less able to pay, but it’s not a crime. We agreed to the fee, agreed that the biological mother should be compensated. To stand there and accuse us of buying you, of stealing you denigrates everything we’ve ever had as a family.”
    “You don’t ask why I came here, why I looked in your files, why I broke into your private papers?”
    Elliot dragged a hand through his hair, then sat. “I can’t keep up. For God’s sake, Callie, do you expect logic and reason when you throw this at us?”
    “Last night, a woman came to my room. She’d seen the news segment I did on my current project. She said I was her daughter.”
    “You’re my daughter,” Vivian said, low and fierce. “You’re my child.”
    “She said,” Callie continued, “that on December 12, 1974, her infant daughter was stolen. From a mall in Hagerstown, Maryland. She showed me pictures of herselfat my age, of her mother at my age. There’s a very strong resemblance. Coloring, facial shape. The damn three dimples. I told her I couldn’t be. I told her I wasn’t adopted. But I was.”
    “It can’t have anything to do with us.” Elliot rubbed a hand over his heart. “That’s insane.”
    “She’s mistaken.” Vivian shook her head slowly. Back and forth, back and forth. “She’s horribly mistaken.”
    “Of course she is.” Elliot reached for her hand again. “Of course she is. We went through a lawyer,” he told Callie. “A reputable lawyer who specialized in private adoptions. We had recommendations from your mother’s obstetrician. We expedited the adoption process, yes, but that’s all. We’d never be a party to kidnapping, to baby brokering. You can’t believe that.”
    She looked at him, at her mother, who stared at her out of swimming eyes. “No. No,” she said and felt a little of the weight lift. “No, I don’t believe that. So let’s talk about exactly what you did.”
    First, she stepped to her mother’s chair, crouched down. “Mom.” All she did was touch Vivian’s hand and repeat. “Mom.”
    With one choked sob, Vivian lunged forward and caught Callie in her arms.

Five
    C allie made coffee as much to give her parents time to compose themselves as for the need. They were her parents. That hadn’t changed.
    The sense of anger and betrayal was fading. How could it stand against her mother’s ravaged face or her father’s sorrow?
    But if she could block out the hurt, she couldn’t block out the need to understand, to have answers she could align until they gave her the whole.
    No matter how much