Birthright Read online

  “There,” she said, sliding the last of the mushrooms onto the platter and forcing a smile. “Do you want me to take this outside?”

  “Not yet.” Mitch reached over the counter and snatched one of the mushrooms.

  “They’re hot. You’re going to burn your tongue,” Grace warned as she took the spatula and went to work on another cookie sheet from the oven, this one covered with what appeared to be tiny egg rolls.

  “I’m tough. I can take it.” He popped the mushroom into his mouth and grinned. “Mmm, delicious. Will you marry me?”

  “You’re just a few years too late, Mitch. Sure, Lily,” she remembered to answer. “Take those outside, okay? Thanks.”

  Still wearing an artificial smile, Lily returned to the deck with the plate. Everyone seemed so happy, so relaxed, so easy with who they were. But the wall between her and her friends, a solid, unbreakable pane of glass, enabled her to see them but not join them. She wondered if Aaron had felt like this in high school, aware of the warm friendships and social cliques he wasn’t a part of.

  Lily had always assumed he’d deliberately separated himself. He hadn’t needed people like her and her friends. He could play basketball without becoming one of the school jocks. He could attend classes without becoming a true student. He’d always seemed out of place in Riverbend High, anyway. He’d seemed too old for school, somehow, not book-smart but street-smart, wise in a way that even the class valedictorian could never be. Wise enough to know he didn’t belong. Wise enough to know he never would.

  “Tell me about your house,” Susie demanded, sidling up to Lily. “It’s gorgeous from the outside. How have you fixed it up?”

  Lily knew her manners. She set the heavy platter on the table and told Susie what she wanted to hear. She described the living room, explained that several of the bedrooms were serving more as storage areas than actual rooms, complained that the kitchen was too big. She mentioned her favorite corner bedroom, which she’d converted into a studio because it was filled with sunlight for half the day. Susie asked her about the floors—“Hardwood throughout? Wow, that’s real quality!”—and the windows—“I just love that beveled glass, the way it turns the light into rainbows.” Lily loved that about the leaded-glass windows, too.

  But she didn’t want to be here talking about her windows. She was experiencing a soul-deep sensation of emptiness, as if she’d been cut loose and was floating, disconnected. She wished she could leave without being noticed, but knew that was impossible. She would have to endure the party a little longer.

  She did. She was amiable, she was pleasant, she asked questions about her friends’ jobs and their children and silently thanked them all for being considerate enough not to ask her any questions about herself. She ate half a hamburger and several of the stuffed mushrooms, she sipped a soft drink, and by eight-thirty, with the sun low but glazing the sky in golden light, she apologetically said she had to go. She didn’t want to have to lie to her friends about the reason for her early departure; to be sure, she wasn’t exactly certain what the reason was, other than that having to remain amiable and pleasant was draining her of energy and giving her a headache.

  Fortunately her friends didn’t question her early departure. “I understand,” Grace murmured, walking Lily around to the front of the house. “It’s hard for you. I understand.”

  They still thought she was grieving over Tyler. Fine. Let them.

  She climbed into her car, waved to Grace and drove away. Turning the corner, she braked and let out a long breath. Deceiving her friends was just one more thing she hated about herself.

  She wanted to cry, but tears seemed pointless. What had happened had happened. It couldn’t be changed. Her only option was to move forward.

  Taking that concept literally, she shifted into gear and cruised down the street. If she went home, she would undoubtedly spend the rest of the evening roaming through the vast rooms of her ridiculous house and contemplating the debacle her life had become.

  Instead, she kept driving, leaving the Penningtons’ neatly settled neighborhood for the edge of town, passing a modest farm, an overgrown field, a copse of trees stretching its shadow across the road as the sun hovered on the horizon. By the time she reached River Road, there was more shadow than light, but she knew this area well. She’d practically lived on the river as a child, she and her friends. This had been their favorite hangout. Long before anyone had dubbed them the River Rats, they’d claimed the river as their own.

  She drove slowly along the road that paralleled the river. After about a mile she came to the unpaved turnoff she was looking for. She bounced her car onto the rutted dirt road and braked. The trees canopied her car, their leaves mottling what little light remained in the sky.

  Not much had changed here. If the trees were a little taller, so was she. If the ground had more undergrowth, more sticks and stones and mulch, well, she hadn’t walked a smooth path in a long time. She got out of the car and picked her way carefully down to the water’s edge.

  The river hadn’t changed at all. A wide silver band, it glided serenely past the stones and reeds and low-growing shrubs that crowded the bank.

  There was the tree limb, she thought with a sigh that was almost happy. How odd that the site of her fall imbued her with a sense of peace. Maybe because she’d survived that fall. Thanks to her friends, it hadn’t been too bad. And it had changed her life for the better, at least in terms of a ten-year-old girl’s desires.

  They used to climb out onto the limb and jump from it into the river. All summer long they’d bike down here, drape their towels over tree branches, scramble out along the limb and jump. Jacob had been the first to try it, because he’d been the oldest and the biggest, and he’d felt it was his duty to test the situation before anyone took any chances on it. He’d climbed out carefully, clinging to the limb with his hands, as well as his feet, and dropped into the water. He went under, then surfaced. “It’s deep enough,” he’d reported.

  After that, they’d all had to jump off the limb. Over and over, every hot sunny day that summer, they’d done so. The boys always had to show off, of course—they performed cannonballs, belly flops or somersaults off the limb. The girls weren’t quite as flamboyant.

  Lily still recalled the thrill of hurling herself off the limb. It hadn’t been terribly dangerous, but it hadn’t been exactly safe, either. She remembered the weird ecstasy of plunging through air that smelled of damp earth and foliage, and then suddenly she’d hit the water and sink through a swirl of bubbles and coldness. And then she’d swim back up and shake her head clear—and think only of climbing back onto the limb to jump again.

  One day in August, while inching along the limb, she’d lost her balance. The boys might have liked to show off in their jumps, but the girls had liked to show off their grace while standing and walking on the limb. They never had to grip the limb with their hands. Their natural equilibrium kept them steady, as if the limb was a wide balance beam.

  But one day, after a night of rain, the limb was wet and slick. As she started down its length, her foot slipped and she went over the side, very close to the water’s edge. She angled her body to hit the water, and it did—except for her left foot, which slammed against a rock on the shore.

  Standing just a bit downriver from the limb now, she scanned the shoreline in the dim light, wondering if the rock was still there. It had been practically a boulder, she recalled, a huge lump of unyielding granite. She remembered the sudden stabbing pain and the crazed yearning to keep her foot in the water, as if the sluggish current could wash the pain away. Her foot had throbbed horribly, and when Beth and Ed Pennington had hauled her out of the river, she’d seen that her instep was a purplish blue and beginning to swell.

  Mitch and Jacob had immediately climbed onto their bikes and sped off, heading straight for Lily’s father’s office to get help, even though she’d insisted she was all right. Beth had refused to let her stand. “I read somewhere that if you have a
broken bone you’re not supposed to move it.”

  “I don’t have a broken bone,” Lily had argued, although given the livid color of her ballooning foot, she’d had to conclude that the injury was more than a bruise.

  Beth had slid a towel under her heel and wrapped the ends around her foot to keep it still and protected. Charlie had told her knock-knock jokes to distract her. Grace had offered her a cookie from the backpack of snacks she’d brought, but the thought of eating had nearly made Lily throw up, which was more proof she hadn’t just bruised her foot.

  Her father had soon arrived, skidding to a pebble-spitting halt on the dirt road. He’d taken one look at her foot, bound it more tightly in the towel, then carried her to the car and raced back to his office, grilling her about what she’d been up to. “I just fell,” she’d told him, satisfied it wasn’t a lie. “I fell and hit my foot on a rock.”

  As it turned out, she’d broken two bones in her foot. Nothing life-threatening, nothing that wouldn’t heal. She’d had to wear a cast, which meant she couldn’t swim or ride her bike for the rest of the summer, although one of the boys was always willing to let her ride on his handlebars when the River Rats were going anywhere. And, best of all, she’d gotten to quit taking ballet lessons. She’d enjoyed ballet until that final year, when the teacher had made her start dancing en pointe, which she’d hated. It had hurt her ankles and toes and calves, and since she wasn’t planning to become a ballerina, anyway, she didn’t know why she’d had to study pointe.

  Once she’d broken her foot, she didn’t have to study it anymore.

  Sometimes something positive came out of something painful. She’d be wise to remember that.

  Now, twenty-three years after she’d tumbled off the limb, she inched along the shoreline toward it, wondering if she’d be able to find the rock that had liberated her from the agony of ballet lessons. She didn’t see it at first, since it was covered in moss and dead leaves. But the shape was unmistakable, and the way it protruded into the river. This was definitely her rock.

  She touched the furry moss on it and smiled. Perhaps if the rock had had so much moss on it twenty-three years ago, her foot wouldn’t have broken. But if the rock didn’t look and feel exactly as it used to, the atmosphere around it felt the same. The scent of the air was the same, the soothing whisper of the river, the sporadic plunk of some critter moving in and out of the water—a frog, most likely. She lowered herself to sit on the mossy cushion and gazed around her, feeling more content than she’d felt surrounded by friends at the Penningtons’ house. She was surrounded by a friend here, too—the river.

  In the distance she saw a light winking through the trees. She hadn’t remembered a house so close to the river. The only buildings by the river back then had been shacks and fishing cabins.

  Wasn’t the Miller place just upriver from here? It had been a rustic cabin like the others, and the one time she and the River Rats had prowled around it, Old Man Miller had emerged and yelled at them to get away or he’d shoot them. Shrieking, they’d dived into the river and swum like fiends, certain their lives depended on their speed—until they’d reached the limb and started to giggle and argue about whether Old Man Miller would really have shot them. He was such a crabby old geezer, he’d probably derived more satisfaction from scaring them than he would have gotten from shooting them.

  Aaron owned Old Man Miller’s cabin now, she knew.

  That light winking through the trees like a beacon, like a star, belonged to Aaron Mazerik.

  GIVEN THE HEAT, the night wasn’t too buggy. He had a couple of citronella candles burning, and he’d slapped on some insect repellent. The mosquitoes were steering clear of him.

  One of these days he was going to have to consider investing in an air conditioner. Charlie Callahan had given him the name of an electrician, who had upgraded all the wiring in the three-room house to accommodate the electric range, the refrigerator and the hot-water heater. Aaron supposed one of those window units wouldn’t short-circuit the entire place, especially since he couldn’t imagine using it and the oven at the same time. If it was hot enough for air-conditioning, it was too hot to cook.

  In the meantime the temperature was usually pretty comfortable on the deck off the back of the house. Once the sun dropped below the trees, a breeze would lift off the river and cool the deck down. A cold beer helped, too.

  He was sprawled on his hammock in a pair of denim cutoffs, his shirt hanging open and his feet bare. He’d taken a few sips of beer and lost himself in the pages of a thriller. He’d had a long, tiring week, and he didn’t want anything more than a quiet evening and a good book.

  Well, of course, he wanted her. He always did. Which might have been why, when she suddenly appeared at the bottom of the steps that led down from the deck, he assumed he was hallucinating.

  “I saw your light,” she said.

  He sat up slowly, the hammock swaying under him. The light above the back door spilled over her, giving her an almost ethereal appearance. She had on a long white dress with a white sweater over it, and her hair and face were pale. Behind her, the forest was dark.

  Why had she come here? To torture him without even realizing she was torturing him? To tempt him with something he couldn’t have?

  “How could you see my light?” he asked. His house was barely visible from the road during the day. After sunset, no way could she have seen it. The deck faced the river, not the road.

  “I was walking along the river,” she explained.

  “I saw the light through the trees.”

  Walking along the river. At night. In a dress. Either she was insane or something serious was going on. He didn’t think Lily Holden was insane.

  “Come on up,” he invited her, setting his book on the table next to his beer and pushing himself out of the hammock. She climbed the four steps to the deck and hit him with her shy smile, the one that pinched his nerve endings until they stung. “You want a drink?” he offered, gesturing toward his beer.

  Her gaze ran the length of him. He knew he wasn’t much to look at in his grungy after-hours attire, but if she could stomach him all sweaty and breathless in his gym clothes, she could handle this. It was too hot to put on trousers, although he supposed he could button his shirt. But to button it in front of her would suggest that he was embarrassed, which would likely embarrass her. He let it be.

  “A glass of water would be nice,” she said.

  All right. Something serious was going on. She didn’t look hurt or even upset. But her eyes were sad, her smile pensive. She’d taken a potentially dangerous walk along the river at night, and now she wanted a glass of water.

  “Have a seat,” he said, waving at the plastic sling chairs that occupied the part of the deck not consumed by his hammock. They weren’t fancy like her wicker porch furniture, but they were a hell of a lot more comfortable. “I’ll be right back.”

  He entered the house, grabbed a square of paper towel from the spool above the kitchen sink and ran it over his face, hoping he didn’t smell too much like bug repellent. Then he filled a glass with water, added a couple of ice cubes and hesitated. If the bugs started biting, should he invite her inside? His house was really small—a kitchen, a main room and a tiny bedroom and bath. It was plenty big enough for him, and would be big enough for two as long as the second person wasn’t Lily Holden.

  God, she was beautiful. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe he was the only person who was transfixed by her beauty. Maybe his attraction to her was perversely egotistical; maybe he saw something of himself in her.

  In any case, he couldn’t have her come inside. If the mosquitoes started swarming, he’d let them suck their fill.

  He carried the water out to her with a smile. “Thanks,” she said before taking a delicate sip.

  He lowered himself onto the hammock, sitting on the edge with his feet planted on the smooth boards. He’d reconstructed the deck with guidance from Charlie Callahan, and of all the improvements he’d m
ade to the cabin, it was the one that made him the proudest. Insulating the attic, replacing the old windows with thermal windows, putting in an energy-efficient wood-burning stove had all been practical renovations, necessary if he was going to live full-time in the place. But the deck…well, it was his favorite part of the cabin, used more than any room. During the day he could see the river through the trees. At night, he could hear it.

  “So, you were walking along the river,” he said when she didn’t speak. “You like taking nature hikes in the dark, wearing a dress?”

  The candle nearest her flickered, the yellow flame making her cheeks glow like burnished gold. “I was at a party,” she explained, glancing at her dress and picking at the twigs and bits of leaves that clung to the fabric. “I got…I don’t know, sad. I just needed to leave.” She turned her eyes to him and he swallowed, as if he could choke down the keen longing he felt when he gazed at her. “I came to the river because that was where I used to hang out when I was a kid,” she continued. “I hadn’t been back since…”

  “Since your husband died,” he said. Blunt, maybe cruel, but he wasn’t going to sit quietly while she shadowboxed with herself, jabbing and parrying and dancing away from whatever was bothering her.

  Unruffled, she stared at him. “Yes. Since my husband died.”

  He felt contrite. He shouldn’t have pushed her—except that he wanted to push her away, to protect himself from his own inexcusable desire. But she was tough. He’d come at her aggressively, and she hadn’t flinched.

  “You used to hang out with all those other kids,” he recalled. “The River Rats.”

  She nodded and grinned. “Yes, that was what we called ourselves. I don’t even remember where the name came from, other than that we always spent our time together down by the river. This was Old Man Miller’s fishing cabin. He used to yell at us when he saw us.”

  Aaron shrugged. He’d never met Old Man Miller. The guy was in a nursing home near his daughter in Terre Haute now. She’d sold him the cabin through a broker, dirt cheap and worth every penny. The place had been dilapidated, but the location was heavenly.