The Prodigal's Return

by Anna DeStefano

  The best lawyer he’d ever known had taught him that tactic.

  “Push too hard on this one,” Stephen argued, “and our client’s going to end up with no deal at all. This is a county D.A., and he’s not taking kindly to being put on hold. Neither is the public defender.”

  “And Edgar shouldn’t take kindly to them railroading his son. The public defender wants to plead this one out, to save herself a trip to Statesboro for the court date.”

  “You don’t know that. You won’t even take her calls. I have, and—”

  “Well, don’t! You’re making us look anxious to settle, and that cuts me off at the balls. Be ready to bring me up to speed, then stay the hell away from the meeting if you can’t stick with the game plan.”

  Neal ended the call and flipped the cell phone onto the heap of tangled sheets atop his bed, more angry at himself and his increasingly bad mood than anyone else.

  Stephen was right. He’d let the Martinez case slide. Meanwhile there was an eighteen-year-old kid sitting in a south Georgia jail, counting on Neal to get him out. Only Neal had spent more time away from the office than he’d been there ever since Buford’s call, as he tried to first ignore, and then come to grips with, the reality that his father was sick. Damn sick, even if Doc Harden wouldn’t say any more than it was about time Neal up and paid attention to the man.

  Oh, he was paying attention all right. He was standing there soaked to the skin from the near-freezing rain outside, his teeth chattering for a hot shower, when where he should have been hours ago was in the office doing the job he did better than anyone else in town.

  He kicked off his shoes and peeled out of his sweats. Turning the shower on full blast, he cursed every hour he’d let slip though his fingers since Buford’s call. He should have followed up with Martinez days ago. Should have worked out Juan’s release, and be pushing for a pre trial settlement the D.A. would hate but be inclined to live with. Whatever it took not to be dragged into court to face the very talented, but anal retentive, Stephen Creighton, who was an ace at slow-playing the proceedings, drawing them out indefinitely, if that’s what it took to get their client the best deal.

  Neal caught his expression in the mirror gone hazy with shower steam. On the job, he put himself out there one hundred percent. No holding back. He manufactured Hail Mary deals that changed the lives of those people who got snared in the churning cogs of an overburdened legal system. He cut through the bull, found the truth, then hammered away until the courts bent to his will.

  Only this time, instead of forcing a solution, he’d become part of the problem. One more person Edgar Martinez and his son couldn’t trust to put their interests first.

  Because the battle he should be fighting wasn’t here. And it refused to be dealt with over the phone, no matter much he needed to take care of things long distance. The life he’d made in Atlanta wasn’t working anymore. He’d lost his focus and there was no getting it back. Not until he’d dealt with the sick old man, and all the memories that came with him, that Neal no longer had the option of avoiding.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.” Joshua Gardner slouched at the kitchen table, taking the news of Jenn’s plans to visit Nathan Cain about as well as his granddaughter did a second helping of spinach.

  Jenn breathed deeply to steady her resolve, then finished cleaning up after the French toast from Mandy’s Saturday breakfast. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched her father shift restlessly in his age-worn chair. Conflict didn’t suit the good reverend. It kinda bit, then, that she’d been rattling his views of the world and his faith since she was sixteen.

  He was trying to make her being back work, she’d give him that. And the effort was far more than she’d expected.

  “I can’t ignore what I saw any longer.” She turned to the pantry and plucked boxes of macaroni and cheese and instant soup from the lined shelves, making a mental grocery list of what she’d need to replace. “How anyone in this town can look at that lonely old man and not do whatever they can to help him is beyond me. The least people can do is make sure he has something to eat. I’m taking him some food. What’s the harm in that?”

  She’d spent two weeks trying to forget. Had accepted her father’s silence as a warning to avoid the topic entirely for the sake of preserving the peace. But the reality of Nathan Cain’s disheveled appearance and deplorable hygiene, and the sty of a kitchen she’d glimpsed when she’d helped him through his rotted-out back door, refused to be ignored any longer.

  “The people in this town tried to help him, Jenn. He’s made it more than clear he isn’t interested. The man disowned his own son while the boy was still in prison, he wanted to be left alone so badly.”

  “And that makes how he’s living all right?”

  “No,” her father boomed in an uncharacteristic shout. “It makes it his choice.”

  They hadn’t talked about faith and religion since she was a kid, but her father still held tightly to the beliefs that had stopped comforting her years ago. Beliefs so totally contradicted by his continued rift with his former best friend, Jenn bit her tongue to keep from calling him on it. Having it out with her father about a long-dead relationship that didn’t matter anymore held the appeal of a bikini wax.

  Except it did matter. After seeing Nathan again, how could it not? Even if helping him meant letting in more memories that she could frankly do without.

  “Nathan’s exactly where he wants to be,” her dad said, inching a bit closer to his calm, reasonable self. “Alone. If he wants to live the life of a bum, leave him be.”

  “If you’d only seen how terrible that house looked….”

  A spark of concern flashed across her dad’s face, erased all too quickly by a wince of resignation that turned her stomach. She’d had her part in these two men’s estrangement. A starring role.

  “I don’t think you should be going over there.” Salt-and-pepper grayed his dark hair now. A flurry of lines were etched across his fifty-five-year-old face, helped along by recent bypass surgery. “And I don’t think it’s appropriate for Mandy to go with you. Why not leave her home with me?”

  Because, I’m not putting my daughter in the middle of our problems any more than she already is.

  “Are you worried about Mandy because Mr. Cain’s a drunk and hasn’t been to church in years?” she asked. “Or because us being seen there will start even more talk around town?”

  “Is it so terrible that I’m concerned what people think about my granddaughter? This is a small town. I’m the pastor of a conservative congregation. I’m just asking for a little discretion while the two of you settle in.”

  If only his concern were that simple.

  “We’ve been back for three months, Dad. We’re as settled as we’re going to be.” Jenn counted the buttons down the front of his oxford shirt. Anything but looking him in the eye. Nathan wasn’t the only man she’d become a pro at avoiding. “Mandy has the town eating out of her hands. I’m the one you’re worried about, and we both know it.”

  Silence was her father’s only response, when she’d give her world for an encouraging you know I trust you, honey.

  Her teenage tantrums and public antics—her determination to burn through the pain and the loneliness after Neal’s conviction until she’d felt nothing at all—had turned her father into this careful, cautious man. Because of her, he’d become the patron saint of playing it safe.

  She’d come back after all these years to help, because he’d asked her to. He’d actually called her after his heart attack and asked for help. She’d been blown away, and determined to do things right this time. Mandy and her grandfather deserved this chance to know each other. But running into Nathan had shown her there was a limit to how much playing it safe she could stomach, how much confrontation she could avoid and still live with herself.

  She crossed her arms and stared down both her father and her moment of truth.

  “I’m doing everything I
can not to make waves for you again,” she said. “But—”

  “Grandpa, Grandpa!” Mandy flew into the kitchen, a colorful bundle of creative energy dressed in the pink and lime-green overalls Jenn had bought in the dead of winter, because they made her think of lemonade and watermelon on a summer afternoon. “Grandpa, guess what!”

  The six-year-old hovered in front of the table, her hands braced on her grandfather’s knees. If it weren’t for Jenn’s careful instructions that Grandpa wasn’t to be jostled or bumped, the child no doubt would have launched herself into his lap.

  “What?” Jenn’s father smiled down at the living miniature of both his daughter and his late wife.

  Green eyes sparkling, golden hair pulled back in a curling ponytail, Mandy held up a wrinkled sheet of paper covered in unintelligible hieroglyphics. “I wrote a letter to read to Grandma tonight.”

  He took the paper. Ran a shaking hand across its surface.

  “Grandma’s gone, sweetheart. She’s gone to heaven.”

  Jenn blinked at the sound of her father’s grief for the high-school sweetheart he’d lost to breast cancer just three years ago.

  “Mommy reads my letters to God when I say my prayers,” Mandy replied in a stage whisper. Her hand cupped her mouth as she leaned forward to share her secret. “She says He passes my letters on to Grandma.”

  Jenn’s dad looked at her over her daughter’s head. He set the letter aside and hugged Mandy. He started to speak, swallowed, then cleared his throat. “Amanda Grace, I know how much you want to talk with Grandma—”

  “I wish I’d met her before she left for heaven.” Mandy’s head dropped. “Mommy says she would have liked me.”

  “Of course she would have. And I’m sure she wishes she’d met you, too.” He waited for Mandy to look up. Then his grandfatherly understanding rearranged itself into the earnest gaze of Reverend Joshua Gardner, champion of finding spiritual meaning from any and every situation. “But as much as we want to talk to the loved ones we’ve lost, we need to remember what our prayers are supposed to be for.”

  “But—”

  “Our talking time with God shouldn’t be about Grandma,” he said with a gentle firmness that had won countless souls.

  Jenn couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  He produced a smile she was certain he didn’t feel, then tried to give Mandy another hug. Her stiff little body refused to melt into him this time.

  “Grandma’s happy in heaven,” he said. “God’s taking excellent care of her, so we can stop worrying.”

  “But Mommy said God talks to Grandma for me.” Mandy pulled away, planting her hands on her little girl hips. “She said—”

  “Sweetie.” Jenn turned her by the shoulders. “Go find your shoes and put them on. Mommy needs to be on time for her Teens in Action meeting.”

  Dragging her feet, shooting her grandfather an exasperated, why-won’t-you-ever-listen look, the deflated child walked from the room, her letter trailing from her hand.

  Olivia Gardner’s funeral had been Jenn’s first visit back to Rivermist after she left as a pregnant runaway—and it had only been a day-trip at that. She had found a way to mourn the loss of her mother, as well as the years they hadn’t had together. But she would send singing telegrams heavenward if that’s what it took to give her child as much of the grandmother she’d never known as she could.

  She waited until Mandy was out of earshot, then she rounded on her father.

  “Lay off, Dad.”

  “I was only—”

  “You were turning something special to Mandy into a potshot at my parenting choices.”

  “That’s not fair.” His gaze didn’t quite meet hers.

  “Neither is telling a six-year-old she can’t write letters to her dead grandmother.”

  “The letters are fine, but—”

  “But nothing.” There always had to be a but. “If you have a problem with what I’m teaching Mandy, take it up with me.”

  “I’ve accepted that your ideas about religion and spirituality are more liberal than mine now.” The way he said liberal had visions of defrocked televangelists swimming through Jenn’s mind. “But I won’t apologize for believing differently in my own home.”

  “I never asked you to apologize.” She made herself stand a bit taller, when a younger Jenn would have sunk into a nearby chair and pretended not to care. He was right. She was wrong. Dangerously familiar territory. “But when I moved home, you agreed to let me make my own decisions about raising my daughter. And so far, you’ve done a lousy job of it. You have to stop interfering. Stop the passive-aggressive criticizing every time you don’t agree with my decisions.”

  “So, just like when you turned up pregnant at seventeen, I’m supposed to happily accept how you choose to live your life?”

  “No. I never expected you to be happy about it.” The cleansing breath she took froze in lungs that weren’t the least bit interested. “Happy went out the window when you demanded I put my unborn baby up for adoption.”

  His shock echoed in the silence separating them. They never talked about that final argument. Ever.

  “There was more to it than that,” he said, “and you know it.”

  “The sentiment’s the same, however you look at it. You didn’t approve of me then, and you don’t approve of me now.”

  He pushed up from the table, announcing the end of their conversation by heading slowly into the den. He was steadier on his feet every day, but he still looked so very tired.

  For the first time Jenn followed, pursuing instead of backing down. She hadn’t been ready for this conversation at seventeen. But at twenty-four, she was a pro at managing the past without falling back into it. Rebuilding instead of destroying. Healing.

  “I know I messed up before I got pregnant with Mandy.” She closed her eyes at the memory of the drugs, the parties, the mindless need to escape. “And I know my running away hurt you and Mom terribly. But I did what I had to do.” She’d worked two and three jobs to pay for child care while she put herself through night school. Earned scholarships—whatever it took. “And whether or not you condone how I’ve accomplished it, I created a good life for me and my daughter. I’ve done everything I can to make up for my mistakes.”

  “Yes, by working in that women’s health center in North Carolina, where they dispense free condoms and birth control pills and perform abortions for teenagers without parental consent.” It was a sanctimonious speech. He looked as if he were having as hard a time swallowing it as she was. “You’re enabling other young women to make the same easy mistakes you did, or worse.”

  “Easy?” People who saw women making the kinds of life-changing, life-or-death decisions Jenn had as “getting off easy,” needed to work a month in a free clinic and then get back to her. “A women’s health center is the only reason I survived after I ran away. I was sick and alone, and Mandy came two months premature. We both would have died without that center. Trust me, nothing about the experience was easy.”

  He glanced at his shifting feet. “Your mother and I never meant for you to be at risk. We always wanted you to be here, to be safe. We did what we thought was best.”

  “Well, your way wasn’t best. Not for me.” Her raised hand stopped his next sentence. “But none of that matters anymore. I’m happy to help you get back on your feet. And I’d love for Mandy to grow up in Rivermist. But we can’t stay if you won’t stop interfering with the decisions I make for her. And, whether you approve or not, I can’t not do what I think is right for Nathan Cain.”

  “Even if I know where the mistakes you’re making are leading you?” Uncertainty weighted each word with the kind of doubt that was so out of character it gave her hope.

  “You have to let me make my own way, Dad.” Her fingers itched with a child’s urge to hug his neck. “My own mistakes.”

  Give me a chance.

  Just one more chance.

  “I’m not sure how to do that.”

&n
bsp; A familiar sadness speared her heart. When it came to choosing between trust and responsibility, trust had come in second with her and her father since that night of the homecoming dance, when the sheriff called to say that she and Neal were at the police station.

  “Mommy?” Mandy called from the foyer.

  Jenn sighed and grabbed her purse off her parents’ paisley-printed couch.

  “Don’t worry, I’m dropping Mandy off at her friend Ashley’s on my way to the Teens in Action meeting.” She led a group of local kids who attended her father’s church, a role in his church he’d never fully supported. “I’ll stop by Nathan’s before I pick her up, and we’ll be home around two. I want us to stay here with you, Dad.” It surprised her even as she said it just how much. “And I’m willing to meet you halfway. The rest is up to you.”

  Forcing her legs to move, she fought not to take back the closest thing to an ultimatum she’d ever given her father.

  “Let’s go, punkin.” She knelt in the foyer to tie one of Mandy’s forever dangling shoelaces, laying aside the bags of food she’d packed for another father—the father of the boy who’d left a lifetime ago and taken a piece of both her and Nathan’s hearts with him.

  She stuffed her daughter into the heavy coat Georgia’s mild climate made necessary only in the very dead of winter, and ushered her out the front door. January wind blasted their faces. Just the ticket to keep Jenn’s mind off the young boy she’d planned to spend the rest of her life with, here in this beautiful, historic town that—without him in it—might never feel like home again.

  Her parents and their disapproval weren’t the only reasons she’d stayed away. And her dad’s estrangement from Nathan Cain wasn’t the only regret that had kept her from facing the Cain house and Nathan’s misery.