A Family Name (21 page)

"Hey Dad?" Lexi called. "Can we stop at that
homestead place?"

"On the way back," Will promised. They
settled into a comfortable pace and companionable silence. Will
watched as Lexi took in the scenery. He loved that whenever they
rode out onto various parts of the ranch that she seemed to be
memorizing each flower and tree, cataloguing each calf and cow.
Every detail seemed important to her.

Will sat back and puzzled over the very
damaging claim Mark had leveled against Steve. Not that Mark Burton
had any idea what he was saying, but Steve had grown increasingly
distant in the months before his death. He had discussed fewer
things with Will. At first Will had attributed it to the fact that
as they headed into winter there was little need or opportunity to
take groups to the dig site. And as finals had approached, Steve
had been busy with his own courses as Will had with his. If Mark
was right about any of it, if Steve had been visiting the dig site
on his own, what had he been doing? What was he looking for? What
had he found?

That last part made Will nervous, and that
wasn't a feeling he was accustomed to. Steve had always expressed
the same dreams as Will. Making a big discovery was the one thing
that eluded both of them, and even as Will found the disappointment
of his career ambitions fading, Steve never had. Now that Will had
Charlotte and the kids, he was learning what contentment meant for
the first time in his life. He felt better than he ever had in his
life. In fact he hadn't had a migraine in weeks. But Will worried
that this new development with Steve might bring the headaches back
full force.

What could Steve have been looking for? As
Will turned the question over in his mind, he found that he was
coming up blank. The classes had never unearthed anything more than
some prehistoric mammals. Exciting finds to be sure, but nothing on
the scale of national museums. Could Steve have ever found
something more?

The ridge that signified the start of the dig
site came into view, and Will pulled his horse to a stop. "This is
it."

"Wow…" Lexi breathed a satisfied sigh of
amazement.

Will stifled a smile as he watched his
daughter from the corner of his eye. She was leaning forward,
clutching the saddle horn with both hands. The excitement on her
face was visible in the curve of her smile, the crinkle around her
eyes.

"We'll let the horses graze here," Will said,
swinging down from his horse. He helped his daughter off, and set
her lightly on her feet.

The two of them walked up the ridge, both
silent for different reasons. Lexi hovered to his right, and every
time he glanced at her he could see the excitement on her face. He
knew that he should have invited her out here with him earlier, but
he hadn't gotten around to it. After Charlotte, Lexi showed the
most interest in his work at the Institute. It was his daughter's
obvious pride in him that had helped him see, of late, that
discovering the next dinosaur species didn't matter as much as the
things he was already doing in his life.

"We're going to head over to the other dig
site." Will felt like he at least needed to explain some things to
Lexi, even when the girl prided herself in being so grown up. When
he'd been out to get his site ready for his class, he hadn't been
able to bring himself to check on Steve's site. They had always
kept their sites separate as each of them had very different
teaching methods.

"Do I get to see any actual bones?" Lexi
asked as she craned her neck toward the deep pit they were
approaching.

Will chuckled. "I doubt it, sweetie. Steve
usually covered his site pretty well. If there had been anything
exposed he would have transported it back to the Institute for the
winter so he could study it. He liked that kind of thing. The lab
work. He wasn't really one for field work."

As he said the words, unease settled over
Will. He knew that Steve had been impatient about things like field
work, hurrying his students through essential processes in order to
get back to the lab. Will thrived on the work on the site, and he
threw himself into teaching his students to work with the same
passion. At least that was what he always prided himself on. It
struck him that he had never really given much thought to the
difference in their teaching styles because it never should have
mattered. Steve should still be here, as his friend and colleague,
as his teaching partner, but most importantly as a husband and
father. Life seemed imperfectly unfair, and Will felt his throat
tighten. He could have lied to himself and said the dampness in his
eyes was allergies or the wind, but he was sad. Deeply grieved at
the loss of someone so important to him.

Will paused for a moment to collect himself.
Lexi slipped her hand into his and leaned against him. He wrapped
an arm around her shoulder. And for a few beats of time, they stood
there. Will marveled at the fact that his daughter was comforting
him. Another wave of grief swelled and crashed down on him as he
realized he had never been able to share Lexi's existence with
Steve, his best friend, closer to him in some ways than his own
brothers.

"It's okay to be sad, Dad," Lexi said,
squeezing him around the middle. "Charlotte says that grieving
takes a long time, and that we all grieve in our own ways."

"Does she now? That does seem like something
Charlotte would say." Will hugged his daughter back, thoughts of
Charlotte suddenly flooding his mind. She was good at giving
counsel even when it was unasked for. Not once had she made Will
feel foolish for missing Steve and Gretchen or for feeling lost
raising three children. Her forthrightness was one of the many
qualities he admired about her.

"So what are we looking for out here?" Lexi
asked, and Will found himself grateful for the subject change.

Shaking himself from the despondent feelings
that clung to him, he forced a smile. "I just want to check Steve's
dig site. I haven't seen it since early last fall. And… well, since
his classes will be using my site now, it's just a good idea to
know what was going on over there. I'll close it up when I need
to."

"Oh, okay." Lexi kept her hand in his as they
continued the short distance to the pit of Steve's site.

At first glance everything seemed fine. Tarp
covered the bulk of the pit. A few crates of casting materials sat
closed and staked in the southwest corner of the trench. Will
hopped down the three feet, and then turned to help Lexi down. The
dig site was roughly twenty feet by thirty feet, same as Will's.
The two spots had been selected based on fossils Will had randomly
found when he was out riding fence. He and Steve had figured that
at the very least their classes would get a good mock dig
experience. They had gotten lucky with several actual finds, now
housed at the Institute.

As Will and Lexi walked deeper into the site,
Will began to pull back the first tarp. Underneath was a section of
marked dirt, but nothing exposed. Just as it should be. Frowning to
himself, Will repeated the process with the second and third tarps.
Nothing amiss. Lexi followed after him, quiet but ever watchful.
Will began to feel silly and a tad embarrassed for suspecting Steve
of anything dubious. Steve and Gretchen could have simply come up
to check the site and get it ready for the spring semester.

But in the middle of an ice storm? That part
made no sense to Will. In frustration, he pulled another tarp out
of the way. And stopped, his breath caught in his throat. A large
bone lay mostly unearthed. Dropping to his knees beside the massive
fossil, Will's heart raced and his breath came in short gasps. They
had never uncovered anything like this here. The bone was a good
three feet longer than anything dug up previously. The size alone
told Will he was dealing with a different species of animal than
the small deer-like creature they had excavated before.

"Wow!" Lexi said. "What is this?"

Will glanced at his daughter and saw that she
looked like he felt. The awe and astonishment that came with a
furrowed brow. He recognized the kindred spirit in her, like her
mind was struggling to wrap itself around the enormity of what lay
right at her fingertips.

"I don't know." Will took off his hat and ran
a hand through his hair. His thoughts were tumbling one right over
the other. Why hadn't Steve told him about this? Clearly the bone
was a major discovery. "Whatever it is, we need to get it to the
Institute. Letting it sit out here in the elements isn't doing it
any good. We'll have to bring the truck back. You up for a little
adventure?"

Lexi's mouth dropped open. "You mean, you'll
let me come along?"

"Absolutely. You helped me discover it."

His daughter's face turned a deep red. She
looked down at her hands. "I didn't do anything. I mean, you moved
the tarp."

Will laughed. "Doesn't matter. We were here
together. Besides I think you'd find the work at the Institute
really interesting. Let's get this covered back up, and we'll head
back for the truck."

****

"It was amazing." Lexi dropped into a chair
at the kitchen table while Charlotte prepared dinner.

Charlotte shot Will an amused look. Lexi's
tone conveyed just how special and important the trip to the
Institute had made her feel. Charlotte was glad. She'd been hoping
that Will and Lexi would have a chance to cement a deeper bond, but
a small part of her felt left out. She knew she was being silly,
but she couldn't help but wonder if this was the beginning of a new
direction. One that would not involve her. Shaking off her negative
thoughts, Charlotte pulled up a brighter smile.

"So do you have any idea what you found?"
Charlotte kept her tone light but she caught Will's gaze as she
asked. At the clench of his jaw she knew that he understood the
deeper meaning of her question. He gave her a slight shake of his
head. She felt her stomach clench for him.

"The scientists at the Institute hypothesized
that we may have found a mammoth bone like down in Hot Springs. One
of them even said it could be from a triceratops. Further testing
is required." Lexi gave her answer matter-of-factly but she grinned
the whole time.

"That's pretty cool. Hey, Lex, would you mind
running over to Grandma Karen's and getting Shane and Sierra? They
went to bake cookies." Charlotte said.

"No prob. What else would they be doing?"
Lexi grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter on the way
out of the house.

When the screen door slammed shut, Charlotte
turned her attention back to Will. "So what's really going on?"

Will sighed and scrubbed a hand over his
face. He grabbed a chair, turned it around, and sat down. "Here's
the thing, the bone is a big deal. No matter how I look at it, this
is the most major find we've had at this site. I'm inclined to
think that it's a mammoth bone, but one of my colleagues, Dr.
Ryerson, firmly believed that he was seeing a triceratops leg bone.
Regardless, it's huge."

Charlotte sat down at the table across from
him. She folded her hands in front of her. "Okay. So this find is
huge. That's both exciting and confusing. Why didn't Steve tell you
about it?"

"That's what I can't figure out either. I
keep going back and forth. On one hand, maybe Steve was just
waiting. He liked to get the glory first, talk second. But, I keep
coming back to the fact that he and his wife drove up here in an
ice storm without so much as mentioning it to me. That just seems…
shady. I hate thinking that about him, you know? He was my best
friend and closest colleague for so many years. To think that he
would, I don't know, steal from me, my site; it just cuts right
through me." Will ran a hand over his face again. Charlotte could
see the exhaustion lining his face. She reached across the table to
grab his hand.

"Maybe there was a good explanation," she
said. Her thoughts had been going down the same path as Will's so
she tried to see things from a different angle. "Maybe he felt like
the site belonged to both of you. The discovery would have been a
huge coup for the Institute."

Will nodded as he laced his fingers through
hers. "I keep hoping for that, but all the evidence points to the
other explanation. And I just feel so angry right now. I don't even
want to talk about it anymore."

"Okay. We don't need to talk about it. Now.
We need to talk about it eventually. You can't keep it all bottled
up inside, Will. It's not good for any of us." Charlotte stared at
their intertwined fingers, afraid to move and break the contact.
These moments seemed too few and far between for Charlotte's
liking. She wanted more, but she was just too afraid of being
rejected. The thought that this family that they were creating
could get along without her, well, that just tore at her heart.

A moment later, Will let go of her hand, and
stood up. He peered out the kitchen window as if looking to see if
the kids were on their way back. When he turned back to her,
something flashed through his eyes that made Charlotte shiver with
delight. He had looked at her that way a handful of other times,
and each time it had ended in a soul-melting, toe-curling kiss.

"I'm glad you're here," Will said, his voice
raw.

"Me too," Charlotte replied, standing up,
summoning all her courage, and walking to where he stood. She
lifted her hands and placed them on his chest. The rough flannel of
his work shirt snagged on the calluses on the tips of her fingers.
He shifted against her, settling her between his hips. Flush
against him, Charlotte felt herself heat, her limbs turning to
jelly. She was glad Will slipped his arms around her back to help
hold her up.

Charlotte tilted her head back to meet his
eyes. A whole conversation passed between them without a word ever
being spoken. As cheesy as it felt, Charlotte knew that his heart
was speaking to hers and vice versa. When he dipped his head to
capture her lips, Charlotte surrendered to the kiss with her whole
being. His mouth felt warm against hers, and she tightened her hold
on his shirt to pull him closer. Will's hands tangled with her
hair, tipping her head back gently as he nipped at her lower lip
with his teeth. He feathered kisses over her eyes, her cheeks, and
her jaw. This was everything Charlotte had been dreaming of, and
her heart felt like it might explode.