Kelley Armstrong - Birthright.pdf

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Birthright
Logan peered out the car window at the long, wooded drive. Then he lifted the sheet of paper
and double-checked the address. He didn’t need to check it. He’d already memorized the entire
note. Easy enough—there were only ten words on it, including the address.
The first contact he’d ever had with his father, and this was all he got. Ten words.
Jeremy Danvers, 13876 Wilton Grove Lane, Bear Valley, New York.
The note had arrived on Logan’s eighteenth birthday, couriered to his college dorm room.
He’d thought it was from his mother, probably a birthday check tucked inside a generic “for my
son” card. He didn’t mind the check—he always needed money—and it was better than the
equally generic gifts she bought when she made the effort.
Logan used to swear his mother bought gifts for her children using the buying guides that
appeared in magazines every Christmas, that she’d just go to the appropriate age group, and pick
the first item on the list. She wasn’t being lazy. The truth was that Susanna Jonsen didn’t know
her children well enough to know what they’d like. She wasn’t a bad parent, not abusive or
neglectful. Some women just aren’t cut out to be mothers, and unfortunately it had taken
Susanna three kids to realize she was one of them.
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Logan considered himself the luckiest of the three. When he was two, his mother had met
his stepfather, who hadn’t wanted to take custody of a bastard of questionable parentage, so
Logan had gone to live with his maternal grandparents, and grew up, if not with much money,
with the kind of love and stability his mother couldn’t offer.
If not particularly personal, his mother’s birthday checks were always generous, usually a
couple hundred dollars. As soon as the envelope arrived, Logan had started planning how he’d
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spend the money. He needed new school supplies, groceries, clothes, all those boring necessities
that, sadly, one couldn’t live without. But he was definitely putting some aside for fun, maybe
taking his buddies out for pizza and beer.
He’d opened the envelope only to find another one inside. On it, written in barely legible
black strokes: “For my son—important medical information.” It wasn’t his mother’s spidery,
precise writing, so it had to be from his father. That
should
be obvious—everyone was “son” to
two people, but Logan had never met his father. He only knew that he’d been
dark-skinned—probably African-American—and only that because, well, it was obvious that
Logan’s year-round tan and some of his features didn’t come from his Norwegian mother. As
for details, his mother refused to elaborate.
“He wasn’t nothing but a sperm donor,” she’d say. “Took off the day I told him you were
coming. Don’t spend another minute thinking about him, because he doesn’t deserve it.”
Of course, Logan did think about his father, and for the past two years he’d had cause to
think about him more and more. Something was wrong with him, medically wrong, something
his doctor laughed off with a slap on the back and a reminder that “it’s puberty, boy, you’re
supposed to be changing.”
Armstrong/Birthright
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There was more to it than that, and when Logan saw that envelope, he knew he’d been right.
What ever “condition” he had, it was the birthright of his long-vanished father.
He’d paused a moment then, envelope in hand, the implications of its arrival suddenly
hitting him. His father knew where he was. Not only remembered him, but knew his birthday,
knew he was here, at college.
Logan had ripped open the envelope then, fingers trembling. He’d reached inside and
plucked out a piece of note paper. On it, a name and address. That’s it—just someone’s address.
This address.
He let the car roll forward, and craned to see through the thick evergreens, but if there was a
house at the end of that winding laneway, he couldn’t see it.
Another look at the paper. The eight could be a six, or vice-versa. Same with the ones and
sevens. He knew it didn’t matter. This was the place. Passing through Bear Valley, he’d
stopped at the doughnut shop, ostensibly for coffee, but really to learn what he could about this
Jeremy Danvers.
They hadn’t been able to tell him much, just that Danvers lived with his cousin and the two
“kept to themselves,” but that Danvers was “good folk,” whatever that meant around here.
Logan hadn’t pressed for more—he could tell they didn’t like chatting with strangers about
locals.
As for the address, the people in the doughnut shop couldn’t confirm the exact number, but
it was “way up Wilton Grove” and “on the left, just past the bridge” and “a big piece of land,
mostly trees” with the house “tucked back in a ways.” So obviously this was the right place, and
the only reason he was still in the car, at the end of the lane, was that he was stalling. He was
afraid of what he’d find at the top of this drive, or what he wouldn’t find. The most obvious
Armstrong/Birthright
answer was the one that sent his heart tripping: that this Jeremy Danvers
was
his father. And if
he was? Logan didn’t know how he’d handle that. Worse, though, he didn’t know how he’d
handle the disappointment if it
wasn’t
his father.
He took a deep breath, then slammed the car into reverse and hit the gas. Dust billowed up
as he zoomed backward on the dirt shoulder, past the mouth of the driveway. One more deep
breath, then he jammed it into drive, veered left and roared into the laneway.
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The first thing Logan noticed as he stepped from the car was the smell of trees. A year ago, if
anyone had told him trees had a smell, he’d have laughed and said “I’ve never gotten close
enough to sniff one.” Raised in the city, with no interest in things like hiking, camping, or
fishing, he’d never even gone to summer camp. Then, almost a year ago, he’d been cutting
across campus and picked up a smell as clear and alluring as his Gramma’s freshly baked
cinnamon rolls. He’d followed it and found himself in a stand of trees, and there’d been nothing
there but the trees.
He’d stood there, drinking in the sharp tang of greenery and the loamy smell of damp earth,
and he’d known this was what a forest smelled like. He recognized the scent from his dreams,
the ones he’d started having almost two years ago. Dreams of the forest, of running.
Sometimes, in the dreams, he was being chased, heart pounding, feet pounding, blood
pounding as he ran, knowing he couldn’t stop, if he did stop they’d— And that was where the
thought always ended. He never knew who they were or what they’d do, only that he had to be
prepared, he had to take shelter, and that shelter wasn’t just a “where,” it was a “who.” Another
elusive “they,”
his
they, that would protect him from
those
they. He chalked it up to anxiety.

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