The Prodigal's Return

by Anna DeStefano

  And the hits just kept on coming.

  “Everyone was right from the start about me not being a good fit.” She’d known better, but she hadn’t been able to walk away.

  “I’m not as sure about that as I used to be.” Her dad studied the worn carpet at his feet. “There’s a lot I’m not really sure about anymore.”

  She couldn’t stand it. Not another minute. He was supposed to be arguing with her. Protecting himself and his job. Playing it safe. She was off the bed before she had time to change her mind and hugging his neck. Squeezing even tighter when he brought his hands up to cup her shoulders. It couldn’t last, but for just that moment, this man was laying aside his absolutes and seeing her as she really was, maybe even learning to accept her, disappointments and all.

  “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Dad.”

  And nice had never been harder to hear.

  “YOU’RE PREGNANT, for real?” Shelly Ackerson asked Traci between second and third period.

  Shelly was wearing her new sweater, the one she’d bought from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue she and Traci drooled over every chance they got.

  Traci had told her because she’d needed someone besides Jenn Gardner to help her figure this out.

  “Your mom must be having a cow!” Shelly was finding Traci’s dilemma a bit too entertaining.

  “It’s my dad I’m worried about.” Traci pulled her history book from her locker and slammed the door shut. Her friend did the same. “But I haven’t told them yet.”

  “No wonder the local media hasn’t been alerted.”

  Shelly blew a bubble with the gum school regs said she shouldn’t be chewing. If you got caught smacking the stuff in the hallway, it was detention for a week.

  God! The adults in this town cared about the stupidest things.

  “This might be the one time in the history of mankind that Betty’ll keep a lid on our family’s dirty laundry,” Traci added.

  Surprisingly, her black eye and refusal last night to even open her mouth about where it had come from hadn’t become instant gossip. Betty—the woman had stopped being Mom, right about the time Traci started seeing He-Who-Would-Never-Again-Be-Named—and Shelly’s mom were best friends. But there had been no emergency phone call to the Ackerson house. No request to the community prayer chain for support and sympathy. It was as if her parents knew something worse was coming at their perfect world, and they didn’t want to talk it about any more than Traci did.

  “What does Carter—” Traci’s stare stopped Shelly midsmack. “Sorry. What does the jackass want to do about it?”

  “He wants it, and me, to go away for good.” Traci rifled through her knapsack and pulled out her own chunk of contraband Hubba Bubba. She was really living on the edge these days. Woo-hoo! But chewing made her purple eye hurt even worse, so she stopped. Everything hurt worse this morning. “At least I think that’s what his fist was trying to say when he threw it at me.”

  She rolled the fruity gum around with her tongue, hoping its sweetness would settle the swamp that used to be her stomach.

  “So that’s good, right?” Shelly asked.

  Yeah, it was all good. Just another sunny day in Mayberry.

  Traci headed to American history class, her best friend since preschool fast on her heels.

  “I mean, now he can’t cause any trouble, you know?” Shelly tucked her auburn, shoulder-length hair behind her ear and leaned closer. “Did Ms. Gardner say she’d help you with the…the thing?”

  Her friend’s question ended in a whisper, complete with a lame hand gesture that Traci figured was supposed to be the charades version of an abortion.

  “No,” she whispered back. “But she’s keeping her mouth shut for now. You know, giving me a chance to decide what I’m going to—”

  “Decide?” Shelly yanked her to a stop. “You’re not thinking about keeping it!”

  “It is a baby, Shelly!” Traci pulled away. What was it Jenn had said once, like months ago? That having Mandy had been the best thing that had happened in her life, no matter what it had cost her?

  “How can I not think about keeping it?” Despite the show Traci put on for Bob and Betty’s benefit, the pains she took to look as bored as the rest of her friends did with their parents, she hadn’t ignored everything they’d tried to teach her. “How am I going to face my parents every day once I get rid of it?”

  “It’ll be a whole lot harder to face them with a drooling brat on your hip. Do what you have to do to salvage your life.”

  “Jeez, Shelly. You make it sound like I’m getting my nails done. We’re talking about a baby.”

  Traci rushed past her friend and their history class. Before long, she was running. The sound of her footsteps bounced off the school’s ugly green walls, clamoring in her head as her stomach swam.

  What kind of moron picked green for school colors!

  She flung the door open to the deserted bathroom and stumbled into a stall. Her black-and-white-checked backpack, the one her mother had special-ordered from a boutique in Atlanta, skidded across the filthy floor as she dropped to her knees and retched up the bagel she’d eaten for breakfast. When there was nothing left to hurl, but her stomach was still heaving, she groaned, wishing the bathroom—no, the entire school—would come crashing down and take her with it.

  “God, what am I going to do?” The empty prayer bounced off the walls surrounding her, as if laughing at how lame it was to be looking for that kind of help now.

  Why! Why hadn’t she listened to her uptight parents? Why was the jackass the only person she’d listened to for months.

  She’d been so cool. Too cool to care about who she hurt. Too cool to let anyone or anything rock her charmed life. Not her parents or Brett. And certainly not a baby.

  Yeah, it was so cool to be puking her guts up three times a day. To have the only way she could get back to what was left of her life be killing her unborn baby. She leaned against the side of the stall, the sick taste coating her mouth threatening to make her even cooler still.

  Saturday at Freddy’s, she’d been so sure there was some easy fix. Some answer Jenn could magically produce to get her unpregnant and out of the jam she’d refused to believe she was in. She couldn’t be pregnant, and most definitely not pregnant and alone. No boyfriend. No father for her child. No one else to make the decisions she didn’t want to have to make.

  Except what Jenn had done was tell her to face facts. To face up to her choices. Maybe even face her parents.

  The woman was such a tool.

  The facts were that towns like Rivermist held people’s mistakes up for public viewing. The bigger the fall, the better the entertainment. Every indiscretion was milked for full shock value. What else was anyone going to do around here? Some people, like Jenn, never lived down their pasts.

  But there the woman was, moving back home, loving her kid, facing down her disapproving father and his disapproving cronies. Making things better for Traci and the rest of the kids. Living her life, just to spite how convinced Traci was that hers was over. Even hooking up with that scary old guy, Mr. Cain, and helping him when no one else cared.

  Jenn Gardner, the pariah, was a downright hero to most of the kids. Meanwhile Traci was hiding out like a loser, hugging a Rivermist High School toilet bowl because the woman’s help had made it impossible for her to take the easy way out.

  She grabbed her backpack, grimacing at the sight of her half-chewed gum stuck to its bottom. Digging inside the front pocket, she found the business card Jenn had insisted all the kids take at their first Teens in Action outing. Raleigh Teen and Prenatal Counseling Center, it read, followed only by Jenn’s name and cell number. No pressure. No sales pitch. No, “You have to agree with me!”

  God, why couldn’t the woman have turned out to be the loser so many people thought she was?

  Then maybe her simple, no-pressure advice wouldn’t have wormed its way through Traci’s freaked-out panic. And
maybe Traci wouldn’t be so desperate to do the unthinkable. To get the inevitable over with and see if, just maybe, there was a bit of a hero inside her, too.

  Pulling out her cell phone, she started to cry as she pressed the numbers. She’d never, ever forgive the woman if this only made things worse.

  “Mom?” she said when the cell connected, a very uncool sob breaking free at the sound of her mother’s concerned voice. “Mom, I’m coming home. I want…I need to talk.”

  “CAN I SPEAK WITH JENN, Reverend Gardner?” Neal asked in response to the minister’s Good Lord after he’d opened the door.

  Stephen Creighton had stared at Neal in exactly that same I-must-be-losing-it way when Neal called him into the office last night and told him he was taking an indefinite leave of absence to deal with his father. The lawyer’s shock might have been over Neal having a father in the first place, but most likely it had been his announcement that he was making Stephen lead attorney on all their cases until further notice.

  Keep me in the loop, send me briefs, e-mail me updates, but I need you to take charge. You did fine on the Martinez case last week. I trust you to deal with the rest.

  As a rule, Neal never trusted anyone. But Stephen was summa cum laude from Emory Law, with a head full of too much book sense but better instincts than most seasoned attorneys. Instincts Neal was paying a fortune to temper the single-mindedness he wasn’t completely unaware could interfere with his own objectivity from time to time. The man could more than handle the work solo for a while, and Neal had finally accepted that for now he couldn’t be anywhere but Rivermist.

  “Reverend Gardner? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Is Jenn home?”

  He’d spent all last night pouring over his investigator’s report of the last eight years of Jenn’s life, and he almost wished he hadn’t followed Buford’s offhand suggestion. He knew it all now. Had told himself over and over that the truth didn’t change a thing. But somewhere during the night, seeing her again, trying to understand what had happened, had become just as important as getting through to his father.

  All these years, he’d made himself forget what it was like to simply be there, next to her. He’d managed to make himself forget how to feel altogether. But each time he’d seen Jenn over the weekend, the feelings and the memories had rushed back, as tenacious as they were unwelcome. As was his feeling of responsibility for what she’d been through.

  He’d been a part of the catastrophe that had destroyed her life. He didn’t know how to make up for that, how to make any of it better for her now. But he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try.

  “She’s over with your daddy, I believe,” the aging man before him said. “I’d invite you in to wait, but—”

  “I understand.” Neal straightened the silk tie he’d worn with his best suit for one last meeting in the office that morning. He purposely hadn’t changed clothes before driving out, despite his determination not to care what this man or anyone else in town thought of him now. “I know me being here can only cause problems for you. I was just hoping—”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Reverend Gardner did some fidgeting with his own clothes. “It’s just that maybe if you met up with Jenn at your father’s, then…well, maybe you’d have better luck with Nathan this time.”

  Neal’s investigator had gathered plenty of information on Nathan, too. On this entire town.

  “How’s your luck been with my father lately?” He didn’t miss the tremor in the other man’s hand as the reverend stopped smoothing his cardigan. “Or is your daughter still the only one around here who’s managed to work up the interest to visit him?”

  “I’m the last person your father wants to see, Neal.” There was genuine regret in the admission.

  “I seriously doubt that, sir,” Neal said, turning away. “Somehow, I seriously doubt it.”

  Neal, is your father going to be okay? Stephen had asked as Neal left that morning.

  No, he’s dying, had been his simple response as he’d come to grips with coming back and seeing both Nathan and Jenn again. He’s dying, and he doesn’t think I give a damn.

  “YOU GOT A BURR up your butt, or are you finally wising up and wanting the heck out of here?” Nathan Cain put more muscle behind the scraper and shaved off another chunk of dead paint and rotten window-sill.

  The shutters that looked like crumbling skeletons were next. Like it mattered what the house he was going to croak in looked like.

  “Neither. It’s nothing.” Jenn, all bundled up in her coat, raked more debris from under Wanda’s azaleas. Her motions were as jerky and brittle as her fake smile.

  She hadn’t asked about Neal once since his boy’s drive-by visit, which suited Nathan just fine. Turning his son away and not knowing if he’d ever see the kid again had been one of the hardest damn things he’d ever done. Didn’t seem to be wearing on the girl much easier.

  She’d maneuvered him outside to tackle the yard before he’d known what hit him—simply by picking up that damned rake herself and not caring if he followed or not. Some ridiculous throwback to the gentleman inside him had refused to sit and watch while she broke her back working on his place. So he’d joined her—after she’d cooked him lunch and then watched him eat every bite. Helping fix up the house he’d once taken such pride in would keep his mind off drinking, she’d reasoned, after she’d unearthed a paint scraper in the shed and gotten him started on the windowsills.

  Right.

  A good dose of winter cold was just the refreshing pick-me-up his teeth were chattering for. It didn’t seem to be doing much for Jenn, either, as she wasted the day away on a yard he wouldn’t be around in the spring to enjoy.

  He’d agreed to let her keep coming round, mostly because it seemed so important to her. That and the fact that her Florence-Nightingale-on-steroids attitude was more interesting to watch than anything he’d seen on TV in years. But there was nothing interesting about the sadness of her frown today.

  So, nothing was bothering her, huh?

  Yeah. Him, either.

  “I know nothing, darlin’. I’ve lived off it. And whatever you got on your mind, that ain’t it.”

  “Well, whatever kind of nothing it is, I ain’t interested in talking about it.” She wielded the rake at a new pile of dead weeds.

  “Looks to me—” he scraped and pulled and another shower of paint dusted both him and the scraggly hedges below the window “—like the kind of nothing that could drive a person to drink.”

  Her head snapped up. The rake hit the ground. “I want some water.”

  He watched her go, put everything into the next scrape. Into not following. Into not caring what was eating at her or where his boy was at that very moment. He didn’t care about anything anymore. At least he hadn’t, not for a long time.

  Damn, he needed a beer. He threw the scraper to the ground and jumped off the stepladder. His head screamed in protest. The world shifted off-kilter, and he clenched his eyes against the sharpness of the pain. Once the agony had faded, he stomped off after Jenn, the reminder of how little time he had left nipping at his heels.

  A car screeched up the driveway before either one of them had made it inside.

  “Jennifer Gardner!” A spitting angry Bob Carpenter leapt from the Cadillac. “What the hell do you know about my daughter being pregnant?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I’M SEVENTEEN, DADDY.” Traci pulled another armload of things from her closet and wadded them into her suitcase. She was sniffling like a baby. Daddy’s little baby. “I’m going, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. I can’t stay here anymore.”

  She’d told her mom about the pregnancy as soon as she’d gotten home from school. Betty had promptly called Bob, then had curled up in a fetal position. The woman had been sobbing in her room ever since. Bob had arrived with Jenn Gardner right behind him. And so the interrogation had begun, complete with enough yelling to ensure the neighbors didn’t miss a single sound bite.


  Jenn, whose bright idea it had been to tell her parents in the first place, hadn’t said more than five words. Bob was at his blustering, useless best. Traci’s school rep was ruined—she’d been caught crying in the bathroom, then she’d run sobbing down the hall.

  She’d never be able to face her friends again, especially Brett. God, Brett. What was she going to say to him once he found out? And what about her parents’ friends? The neighbors, most of them members of the church…

  She dove back into her closet for more clothes.

  She was so out of this place!

  “I don’t know what Ms. Gardner said to make you think running away is an option.” Her dad’s glower shifted to where Jenn stood beside the bedroom door, then back. “But you’re not leaving this house!”

  Jenn was following every word, but the woman only looked back at Traci and waited.

  Coward.

  Traci dumped another pile of clothes into the suitcase only to watch her father yank them back out and toss them beside the bed. He looked ready to drape her over his knee and paddle her, or cry.

  The spanking would probably hurt less.

  “You can’t stop me from leaving.” Traci returned to her bulging closet. Like her room, it was full of everything she’d ever asked her parents to get her.

  So why did she feel so empty every time she was home? When was the last time she hadn’t wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else?

  “Where are you going to go?” Jenn finally asked. “Back to the guy who hit you?”

  “No.” Traci threw the woman a shut-up glare as her father flinched. “I’ll never be that stupid again.”

  “Then—” Jenn began.

  “Who hit you?” Bob sputtered.

  “I read a pamphlet at the clinic in Colter, all right!” Traci shouted at the room in general. “There are places I can stay—”

  “Those are shelters for teenage runaways, Traci,” Jenn said, all concerned calm when an impassioned defense would have been more helpful. “We’re not talking about the YWCA. I’ve seen that kind of place, that kind of desperation and poverty. I’ve lived it. Running away isn’t something you want to do on a whim.”