The Prodigal's Return

by Anna DeStefano

  Your daddy wouldn’t call you himself….

  That was the God’s honest truth.

  There’d been no contact between him and his father for ages. Not since their last fight a year into his eight-year sentence. He’d refused, again, to file for early parole, still naively determined to do right by Bobby. As if pissing away his own life would bring his friend back, or give the boy’s family a speck of peace. Exactly his father’s point. But Neal hadn’t been ready to hear reason then, and his father had shouted that he wouldn’t be returning.

  Not for the next month’s visitation. Not ever. If Neal wanted to give up, if he thought rotting in prison would somehow make up for Bobby’s death, that didn’t mean his father had to watch.

  You’re a selfish sonovabitch, Nathan had railed. Thinking of the man as Dad hadn’t been possible after that day. You don’t know how to do anything but quit. And you don’t care who you’re hurting by giving up. Well, I’ve hurt enough. I can’t do this anymore.

  And neither could Neal.

  Nathan giving up had been the right thing for both of them. A fitting end, leaving all ties neatly severed.

  So why had Neal’s heart slammed into his throat at the suggestion that the man might be sick?

  He shoved aside the papers on his desk. Focus on the here and now—that’s what he’d promised himself after that final argument. Let go of Nathan. Let go of Bobby. Let go of the past.

  Survive.

  Never look back.

  That’s what had gotten him through the remainder of his sentence. Nothing much had changed three years after his early release—parole garnered by model behavior, instead of his father’s legendary briefs. Briefs Neal studied religiously now, to learn everything he could.

  He wasn’t a lawyer like his father. He never would be. But kicking legal ass consumed his time all the same, the way studying law books had those endless days and nights in his cell. Giving back, making up, it was a decent enough life. It made forgetting possible. At least it had until Buford’s call.

  His father’s ex-law partner, Neal’s only remaining contact to Rivermist, touched base from time to time to discuss financial matters. Rarely by phone. A registered letter from prison was all it had taken to give Buford temporary power of attorney over Neal’s mother’s sizable trust, set up for Neal after her death when he’d been only five. Ever since, they’d had an understanding. If Neal wanted to talk about his father, he’d ask. And he never had.

  “My father’s a very wealthy man.” Neal rocked back in his secondhand desk chair, in the shabby office that was more a home than the tiny apartment he rented. Rubbed at the tension throbbing at the base of his neck. It was late in the afternoon. He’d cast off his suit coat and rolled up the starched sleeves of his dress shirt hours ago. And a long, solitary night of work stretched ahead—exactly the way he liked it. “If Nathan’s sick, he’ll find himself a doctor and get it taken care of.”

  “How much do you know about your daddy’s situation?”

  “I know he’s alive. That he wants me out of his way. He has the means to take care of himself. There’s no reason for me to be involved.”

  “I’m not sure Nathan wants to take care of himself—hang all that money he has in the bank.” Buford, a litigator skilled at finessing juries into believing whatever version of the truth he represented, sounded a bit like a man feeling his way barefoot through shattered glass. “I wouldn’t have called you if I thought he was doing okay, or that he’d listen to anyone else.”

  “Have you even talked with him since he dissolved your law partnership?”

  “I tried.” Buford chuckled. “The bastard actually challenged me to a fistfight the one time I stopped by the house.”

  One of Buford’s first letters to Neal had explained the breakup of his and Nathan’s friendship, as well as their law practice. He’d asked if it made a difference in Neal’s feelings about Buford handling his money. Since Neal had stopped feeling anything by then, he’d assured Buford it hadn’t mattered a bit.

  The more distance, the better.

  “So why involve yourself in his life now?” he demanded, needing every bit of that distance back.

  “Nathan’s and my history isn’t the point, son. When your daddy lost you, he did some terrible things out of grief. I forgave him for that years ago. That man introduced me to my wife. He’s godfather to my two girls. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him, even if he is too stubborn to ask for help. He’s lived alone all this time, and I was happy to leave him be. But that don’t mean I think he’s been taking very good care of himself. And now—”

  “Buford, I…” Damn it, looking the other way hadn’t hurt this much in years. Nothing had. “I can’t get involved.”

  His chance to make amends with Nathan…with anyone else…was long gone. Cutting the people who loved him out of his life had been a conscious choice. The horror of prison would have been unbearable if he hadn’t moved on. And afterward, inflicting himself on the people he’d left behind, would have been cruel.

  Some mistakes shouldn’t be fixed. Opening a door to the past now, just a crack, meant unraveling everything. Every rotting memory he’d buried, worming its way back to the surface.

  And for what?

  “I know you’re busy.” Buford’s tone inched perilously close to wheedling. “And the work you’re doing there is important. But, if you could just see how bad the man looks, what little Nathan comes to town anymore—”

  “I can’t.” An image of his father’s devastated expression as he’d walked away that last time escaped the pit Neal had banished it to. Fast on its heels came the echo of Jennifer Gardner’s sobbing on the witness stand, the heartbreaking picture she’d made as she’d listened to him finish destroying what they might have had together.

  Jennifer.

  He no longer felt anything for her most of all.

  “There’s nothing I can say to change your mind?” the lawyer asked.

  “You knew the answer to that before you called.” Neal squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Yeah. Guess I did.” The pause that followed conjured up a picture of Buford kicking back in his own beaten-up chair. “Don’t hold it against an old man for trying. Can’t help it if I think it would do both you and your daddy some good if you made your peace before it’s too late.”

  Before it’s too late…

  Warning bells stopped tickling and began clamoring at the back of Neal’s mind. He was being played by a crafty attorney, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  “I’d better let you get back to it.” The master manipulator sighed. “I hear you’re busting judicial balls in Atlanta. If your daddy only knew what you’ve been up to with your mama’s money, he’d bust a gut—”

  “Buford,” Neal said through clenched teeth, biting down hard on a curse. He never cursed. He never lost his cool. To the world he now ruled, he was buttoned-down, spiffed-up professionalism at its best—with just enough of the hardness he hid deep edging through, to keep people conveniently off balance at work, and happy to leave him to his privacy everywhere else.

  “Yeah?” The lawyer’s faceless reply was hope at its gotcha best.

  Neal stared at the folders sprawled across his desk. Paperwork representing the lives of people he barely knew who’d turned to him for help because they’d exhausted all other possibilities. He was their last hope. Atlanta’s prince of saving lost causes. All of them but his own.

  Damn it!

  “Give me the name of my father’s doctor,” he heard himself say.

  “Doc Harden’s the only one your daddy would ever go to.” Neal could hear the sly smile that warmed each Southern-tinged word. “But even if Doc knows something, I’m not sure he’d talk it over with you. He certainly wouldn’t with me, the closed-mouth son of a gun. Whatever’s going on, someone’s pretty much going to have to bust your daddy’s door down to get to the bottom of it.”

  “I’ll make a few calls, that’s it,” Neal said. The phone sla
mming into its cradle cut off Buford’s next sentence.

  Just a few calls, that was all. One to the doctor, one to his father. Simple enough, and he’d be done. Except contacting his old man would result in the kind of backlash no one wanted, him least of all.

  He’d had his reasons for shutting down. Shutting the world out. Damn good ones. And his old man had bailed, too. If Nathan was lonely now, it was by choice, same as Neal. And alone suited Neal just fine.

  The arguments were solid. Logical. Best for everyone.

  So why did he suddenly feel like a class-A bastard for allowing the silence between him and his old man to drag on for seven years?

  Whatever it takes, that had been his mantra in prison. He’d been a vulnerable kid who hadn’t a clue what he’d set himself up for. A pretty boy, and everything his father had feared would happen had come at him like a demented welcome party as soon as he’d been placed in general population. He’d learned fast to do and say and fight however he’d had to, until the filthy predators with filthy hands, and the memories screaming how much he had lost, finally let him be.

  In a matter of months, the pretty boy had died and the man he was never meant to be had taken the kid’s place.

  A man rumored to have no emotions, no fear. Only here he was, turning chicken-shit at the thought of making a couple of phone calls to check on the father he supposedly hadn’t cared about for years.

  Rivermist, Georgia

  JENN GARDNER nearly ran over the old man before she saw him wandering down the middle of the road. Screeching to a halt mere inches away, she tracked his unsteady, weaving journey across North Street.

  “Critter,” he yelled into the evening’s darkness. “Where the heck did you get off to this time? Crrritterrrr…”

  She glanced at the clock on her ancient Civic’s dashboard. She’d only been back in Rivermist for three months, and she hadn’t yet gotten acclimated to how early things shut down in small Southern towns. By nine-thirty, most of Rivermist was already in bed, or at least at home in their pajamas. But there was still enough intermittent traffic on the road that the bum she’d almost made roadkill might walk headfirst into oncoming traffic if he weren’t careful.

  Since he looked about a fifth-of-scotch past sober, careful seemed a long shot.

  Grateful she was alone—that she’d just dropped her six-year-old, Mandy, off at a sleepover—she locked her doors and lowered her window enough to talk through the crack.

  “Sir, do you need some help?” she asked, pulling alongside him.

  “Gotta find Critter,” he mumbled, walking right past her in his search for what sounded like a lost pet.

  Something in his voice, something about his threadbare plaid coat, seemed oddly familiar.

  That in itself was nothing new. Déjà-vu moments lurked behind every corner of this place she’d sworn as a teenager never to return to.

  So why was she rolling forward, lowering the window a little more?

  “Are you looking for your dog, mister?”

  “No, damn it. Got no use for dogs. Crritterrr…” he groused, stumbling into her fender, then shuffling off again.

  Got no use for dogs.

  The phrase churned up more unwanted memories. Another man, sitting on a porch swing, had said exactly the same thing to her when she was a little girl. He’d been holding a cat named—

  “Critter?” she said out loud. “Mr. Cain?”

  It was hard to tell, looking through the darkness and the unkempt hair that partially hid his face. But as she drove closer and set the hand brake, the resemblance was unmistakable.

  “Mr. Cain!” She rolled the window the rest of the way down and grabbed him by the arm. Good Lord. “Mr. Cain, Critter’s been dead for over ten years.”

  “What?” He rounded on her. Bleary, bloodshot eyes glared. “Who are you, and what the hell do you know about my Critter?”

  “It’s me. Jennifer Gardner.”

  The man who used to jokingly refer to her as his daughter didn’t recognize her. Little wonder. His and her father’s friendship hadn’t survived the first year after Neal’s sentencing. It was as if he hadn’t been able to look at her anymore, or spend time in her home, with her parents. With anyone, really.

  “I was there when you and Neal buried Critter, remember?” she prompted.

  “What?” A tear trickled down his cheek, breaking her heart. “Critter’s dead?”

  She pulled to the shoulder and got out. Hurried to his side, the frigid night air blasting away at the lingering warmth from the Honda’s rattling heater. “It’s freezing out here. Why don’t I take you home? You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “No!” From the smell of his breath, beer had been his best friend tonight, not scotch. He wiped his eyes and looked wildly about. “I’ve got to find Critter.”

  She steadied him as he stumbled, steering him toward the car. “Why don’t we check your house? Critter’s probably waiting at the back door, wondering why you’re not there to let her in.”

  “You think so?” Hope spread like sunshine across his face, pushing away the sick pallor of too much alcohol and years of dissipation. “You think she went home?”

  “I bet she’s there now, crying for her dinner. Why don’t we get her some milk?” Jenn opened the passenger door and turned him until he fell backward into the car. He cursed when he bumped his head on the way down.

  “Critter loves milk. That’s what Wanda started giving her when she was just a kitten. Critter was always Wanda’s cat.” His voice roughened, and his tears made a return appearance at the mention of his long-dead wife. “I’ve gotta take care of her. I promised Wanda.”

  Jenn made sure his arms and legs were out of the way and shut the door. Shivering, she slid behind the wheel and reached over to secure his seat belt. “Don’t worry, Mr. Cain. We’ll take care of Critter.”

  “You’ve always been such a good girl.” He patted her hand. Then seconds later, he began to snore.

  Wealthy, indomitable Nathan Cain, the Howard Hughes of Rivermist, was sleeping it off in her car. Her heart turned over as she absorbed his deteriorated condition.

  It was an unwritten rule that she and her father never discussed the Cain family, not after her parents’ final falling out with Nathan only a few months after Neal’s conviction. And she hadn’t exactly pushed the issue since moving home for the first time since she’d run away at seventeen. She and her dad had enough to deal with, just trying to learn to live together again. They didn’t interact with or discuss the Comptons, either, except for the odd runins she kept having with Bobby’s younger brother, Jeremy.

  All that avoiding took a buttload of work in a town this size. Only in Mr. Cain’s case, it had been easy. He’d been holed up in his empty mansion for years, she’d heard, grieving his son, angry at the world. But nowhere near as angry, she knew from personal experience, as he probably was at himself.

  And she of all people hadn’t even bothered to stop by and check on him. She glanced at the bum beside her. Panic attacked as swiftly as the rush of shame. She couldn’t look at Nathan Cain, she realized, even in his current condition, and not see Neal.

  Cut it out! Give the smelly man a ride home, and be done with it.

  Squaring her shoulders, sliding the heat lever to High, she checked for oncoming traffic and made a U-turn across the center line. The Cain place was at the other end of town, amidst the avenue of homes that had been built before the Civil War, yet somehome survived destruction.

  No doubt her dad would still be up, keeping track of her comings and goings as carefully as he had her last year at home as a teenager—the year she’d been hell-bent on destroying her and her parents’ lives. The year before she’d ditched the memories and the nightmares, and everyone who came along with them.

  He would want to know why she was home late. There’d be no point in dodging his questions. By morning, Rivermist would be abuzz about her giving the town pariah a ride home. Heaven knew how the news would
spread at this late hour, but it would. And Reverend Gardner was going to freak.

  But easing Mr. Cain’s mind about a long-dead cat was the least she could do for this man she’d run from the longest. A man who’d lost everything and, just as she had for too long, chosen to give up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “NO,” NEAL BARKED over the cell phone, about twenty minutes before the butt crack of dawn. “I don’t want anyone talking with Edgar Martinez but me. I’ll be there in half an hour to go over your notes. But I’m taking the meeting.”

  He’d be there in half an hour? Since when did Stephen Creighton get into the office first?

  Since Neal had started falling further and further behind, his everyday caseload turning into one unheard-of delay after another. Since he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, from thinking about the nonconversation he’d had two weeks ago with a certain Dr. Wilber Harden. Then Nathan had hung up on him the one time Neal had gotten through to the man over the phone, saying nothing but a few choice curses.

  And what did Neal have to show for the aggravation? Finishing his Friday morning run with the added bonus of the wet-behind-his-ears lawyer he’d hired a year ago chewing on his ass.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, man,” Stephen said, taking another bite. “This case is a no-brainer. If you don’t have time for it, let me take over. Edgar Martinez—”

  “Martinez is my problem until he goes to trial. And if I thought it was a no-brainer, I would have advised him to settle.”

  “The D.A.’s offer is a gift.” Not intimidated by Neal’s ex-con rep, Stephen plowed forward where other colleagues treaded more delicately. The kid had the pedigree of a philanthropist, but the guts of a street fighter. Neal’s kind of guts. “The public defender wanted Edgar to take the plea a week ago.”

  “It’s a crap offer, and we’re not taking it.” Neal’s legal-aid center, funded first by his mother’s exceptionally well-invested money, then by grants and donations from several silent partners from Atlanta’s legal community, had become the bane of Georgia’s prosecutors. He took the cases of people who couldn’t afford pricey defense attorneys, and he never plea-bargained until he’d squeezed the last ounce of concession from the district attorney’s office.