The Prodigal's Return

by Anna DeStefano

  “You’re the one who said I need to think through my options. Well, I can’t do that here.” Traci grabbed more clothes, determined to do this no matter how terrified she was that Jenn was right.

  It was time to face the truth.

  “How long have you known she and Brett were sleeping together?” Leave it to her dad to focus on the most pointless thing possible. “If that boy laid a finger on my daughter—”

  “The baby isn’t Brett’s,” Traci said into the closet.

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her around. “What do you mean it’s not Brett’s? How many boys are you sleeping with? Do you even know who the father is?”

  Traci felt every warm thing left in her world evaporate. To her credit she didn’t crumble. But the tears kept right on coming. Being back at school, wrapped around the disgusting second-floor toilet, suddenly didn’t sound so bad.

  She jerked free.

  “This is why I’m leaving.” She wadded the dress she held into a ball and threw it in the general direction of the suitcase. “Mom’s so shocked she hasn’t looked at me since I told her. And you think I’m a slut because I didn’t buy into your lectures about premarital sex and abstinence. I can’t think straight while you’re stalking around glaring at me, and I need to think. I need to get out of here.”

  “And just where exactly do you plan on going? One of your friends? Every parent in this town will send you right back here. Count on it. The hotel will, too.”

  “See? You never listen to me! There are shelters, Daddy. I read about them at the clinic Jenn sent me to. You can’t make everyone turn me away.”

  She glanced at Jenn, begging silently for backup.

  “A free clinic!” He was in Jenn’s face this time. “You sent my child to a free clinic? Just where the hell do you get off encouraging children to sleep around and defy their parents’ choices.”

  “Stop yelling at her.” Traci shoved aside the childish anger she knew deep down Jenn didn’t deserve. “She’s been my friend. Without her help—”

  “Sounds like your help,” he said to Jenn, as if Traci weren’t in the room, “was the last thing my daughter needed. She doesn’t need another friend, Ms. Gardner. She needs responsible adults to keep her from throwing her life away. Did you know she was seeing this other boy?”

  “Yes, I knew.” Jenn stood toe-to-toe with the man when Traci couldn’t even look him in the eye. Traci’d bet there wasn’t much of anyone who could make the woman back down. “I tried to get her to talk with you and your wife. When she wouldn’t, all I could do was make sure she had the information she needed to protect herself and her baby.”

  “All you should have done was inform Betty and me about our daughter’s reckless behavior. Especially when you found out she was pregnant.”

  “If I had, Traci would have run away. Take my word for it. As it is, I’ve been able to get her to agree to counseling and prenatal medical care. And I’ve been able to talk her out of having an abortion until she’s thought through her options.”

  “An abortion!” There was that look again. As if Traci were some slimy alien who’d invaded his home. “After everything we’ve taught you, you’d kill an innocent, unborn life?”

  “What about my life?” She couldn’t believe Jenn had said that. She wedged the lid of the suitcase closed and struggled with the zipper. “Don’t I have any say in it?”

  “No, not if you’re considering an abortion. You can’t be, honey….” So now she was his honey.

  At least calling her a slut had been honest.

  He tried to keep her from lifting the heavy case, but Traci sidestepped him and slid the bag to the floor. He reached to take it away, hesitated at her glare, then let his arm drop to his side.

  “Don’t do this,” he said, sounding like her dad for the first time since he’d walked in the front door spoiling for a fight.

  Traci stared at her trendy, high-top sneakers until her tears cleared. Then she rolled the suitcase toward the door. “I can’t stay here, Dad.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, young lady.” All that gentle persuasion became cold, hard threat. “And you’re not taking that car we bought you for your birthday. It’s registered in my name, and I’ll be damned if you’re driving off in it like this.”

  “Fine! I’ll walk.”

  “Please,” Jenn begged as Traci passed by.

  She didn’t grab for her the way her dad had. She wasn’t yelling. She’d always treated Traci like a grown-up old enough to make the decisions her parents thought they’d be in charge of for the rest of her life.

  So Traci stopped.

  “Wait in my car,” Jenn pleaded. “Wherever you want to go, I’ll take you. That’s got to be better than walking in the cold.”

  Traci could have fallen at the woman’s feet in gratitude. She glanced over her shoulder. Her father’s anger and shock were gone. His confusion and hurt were worse.

  “Okay,” she said to Jenn, not wanting to go anymore but still unable to stay. “I’ll be in the car.”

  And then what?

  She ignored the internal jab. Blocked out the sound of her mother crying behind her parents’ bedroom door. Thumping her suitcase down the stairs, she grabbed for the determination to get this over with. To finally not be hiding who she was from the people who were supposed to know her best. Good or bad, her parents knew the truth now.

  Hadn’t that been the whole point from the beginning of this six-month walk on the dark side? To push through the rules and their small-town beliefs, until her parents finally saw her. Dealt with her. Confronted the person they never dreamed she’d turn out to be.

  She’d wanted to be treated like a grown-up. To experience the real world.

  God, she was such a loser! They all were.

  Winter slapped her in the face as she rolled her little-girl suitcase out her mom’s custom-made-to-perfection front door. Her parents were so sure they’d taught her the important things.

  Why hadn’t they gotten around to telling her how much the real world sucked!

  “WHO IS THE FATHER?” Bob Carpenter demanded. “Who did this to my daughter?”

  “I don’t know.” Jenn’s heart went out to the man. She’d seen that shocked, devastated anger in her own father’s eyes. “I can’t get Traci to tell me.”

  “What about all this help you’ve been giving her? You’re supposed to be her new best friend or something!”

  “I’ve been trying to advise Traci as much as she’ll let me, without running her off. I can’t make her take my advice any more than you can.” She had to get Bob Carpenter to listen to reason, before Traci was gone for good. “Trying to force her to listen or to talk before she’s ready will only make things worse.”

  “But you can tell her that sleeping around before marriage is okay, is that it? As long as you’re respecting Traci’s right to choose, it’s okay to condone how she’s lied to me and her mother.”

  “I’ve encouraged her to talk with you from the start, and I tried to get her to stop seeing this guy as soon as she told me about him. Sometimes teenagers have to make their own mistakes before they’re ready to listen to anyone else.”

  He glanced to the soft sound of his wife’s tears.

  “Forgive me if I’m not impressed with the wisdom of your pop psychology, Ms. Gardner. Your negligence in not telling us what our daughter was up to makes you as responsible as this boy for what’s happened to Traci. I intend to speak with your father about this. Your work with this town’s youth is over. Mark my word.”

  “I already told my father I’m stepping down from working with the youth group.”

  “Joshua knows, too! Did no one stop to think that Betty and I should be involved?”

  “He only knows that I thought it best for everyone that I not work with the Saturday group anymore. He doesn’t know why.”

  Did Bob even realize he was blaming his daughter’s situation on everyone but Traci? As if the girl wasn’t capable of making any of
the decisions she had—good or bad.

  Jenn turned to leave.

  “Jennifer…” His eyes pleaded, his expression lost. “Please. Talk my daughter into coming back home.”

  “I’ll do the best I can. I promise.”

  She made herself walk away.

  The Carpenters had to make their own choices, the same as their daughter did. The same as Neal and Nathan Cain did. She didn’t know these people any better than she did the Cains anymore. She had no business doing anything but giving each one of them a chance to work their relationships and problems out for themselves, then getting herself out of the way.

  Even if “out of the way” was a more excruciating place to be than ever.

  Why you? Neal had asked yesterday. And he really hadn’t known. Just as she’d always expected, he hadn’t wanted to know anything about what her life had become, or what was important to her now.

  Her heart felt like it was curling in on itself.

  Get on with it, Jenn. Put yourself and your stuff on the shelf and find a way to keep Traci Carpenter in town. Do what you’re good at. Stop torturing yourself by wanting more!

  CHAPTER TEN

  “GOD DAMN YOU for coming back here,” Neal’s father snarled after Neal let himself in through the unlocked kitchen door. “I didn’t throw you out Saturday just to go through the trouble of doing it all over again.”

  The man was clean and sober today, but he’d lost a good twenty pounds in the years since Neal had last seen him. It would have been easier to spot on a smaller frame, but nothing about Nathan Cain had ever been small.

  Certainly not his bitterness.

  “And I didn’t let myself get talked into coming back to this godforsaken place—” Neal used the dead-calm voice he reserved for condescending lawyers who assumed that since he was an ex-con, he’d crumble in the face of legal authority “—just to turn tail and run before we’d finished things.”

  “Oh, we’re finished.” When his father pushed away from the counter, his balance seemed to stay behind.

  Neal caught him and helped him to a chair, mildly shocked when nothing apocalyptic happened because they’d actually touched. Bolts of fire came to mind. Simmering brimstone, sparked by the unholy reality of the two Cain men sharing the same spot of earth again. Nathan was sweating, so Neal stepped to the refrigerator and pulled out a soda, popped it and handed it over.

  His father looked at the can instead of at Neal. Drank and scowled at the taste of it. While he caught his breath, Neal glanced around the clean but threadbare kitchen. Every second in this place made him want to stay a thousand more.

  “Why are you back here?” Nathan finally groused.

  “This is still my home, isn’t it?” Neal chuckled at the irony of his words.

  Home.

  The word had his mind leaving behind the familiar surroundings and thinking instead of golden hair and green eyes. Eyes that were a bit sadder now, worlds older than he’d expected, but no less beautiful than the girl from long ago. The girl he’d never really been able to stop wanting, needing, in a way he didn’t want to need anything anymore. Especially now that he knew that the last eight years of her life had been an all-out sprint for survival, same as his. It bothered him more than it should that she wasn’t there again with his father.

  “This ain’t no one’s home no more.” Nathan tore open the lid on an oversized bottle of prescription medicine. With trembling hands he shook out two capsules and swallowed them dry.

  He grimaced, then looked Neal dead in the eye for the first time. “You got something to say, then say it and get the hell out.”

  It was the same nasty tone the man had used in prison, when he’d given up and left for good. Igniting the same denial in Neal as before.

  His father couldn’t be dying. It all couldn’t be ending. Not like this.

  Don’t let him shut you out again.

  “So, what is it?” he asked, matching the man’s cold stare. He was comfortable with cold, if that’s what his father needed. “Cancer?”

  Nathan cracked an honest-to-God smile. “That’s what I always liked about you, son. You know when to can the sweet stuff and get right down to it.”

  It wasn’t exactly a hug or a bygones pat on the back, but a weight subtly eased between them. They could do this ugly, or they could spare each other the melodrama. The ancient kitchen creaked, as if releasing a sigh of relief at their unspoken agreement to settle for plan B.

  Neal eased into another chair and linked his fingers together, waiting for his father to make the first move. Same as he did with skittish clients who weren’t sure they could trust anyone, least of all him.

  “Brain tumor,” Nathan finally admitted. “Inoperable. Terminal.”

  “A year?” Sorries or sympathy clearly weren’t expected, no matter how desperately Neal needed to offer them. “Two?”

  His father’s head shook slowly from side to side. Something that looked like compassion flickered across his face.

  “Months,” he said. “Maybe weeks. No one knows, really. And I’m done with the pointless tests they wanted to keep running, just so that quack Harden can dig out all the gory details.”

  Damn.

  Neal had almost put off this second trip back. Like he’d put off everything else he hadn’t been ready to face. Still wasn’t ready to face. What kind of man let the break between him and his father go on indefinitely, because absence was easier to deal with than repairing what they’d broken?

  Now he could see the neglect he’d recklessly perpetuated for what it was—an appalling void he’d give anything to fill before it was too late.

  “And Jenn Gardner?” Swallowing the question was impossible. “What’s she doing here if there’s nothing anyone can do?”

  “Maybe there’s something I can do.” The tired, sick old crank his father had become disappeared. For just a moment, Neal was looking at the man he’d once known. His dad. “Maybe helping me will finally convince her to let herself off the hook.”

  “Off the hook for what?”

  “What the hell do you think!” And just like that, their Hallmark moment was over. The palsy in his father’s hands was worse as he shoved his shaggy hair away from his eyes. “Oh, that’s right. You’ve been too consumed with surviving your own nightmare to take a look at the ones you created with that stunt you pulled in the courtroom.”

  “I thought a trial meant weaseling out of taking responsibility for Bobby’s death.”

  “That guilty plea was the most cowardly load of bull I’ve ever seen in a courtroom. And then you wouldn’t let me file an appeal, or petition for early parole—”

  “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  It was the same old argument, and with it came the same flashes of nightmare. Bobby’s head striking the cement curb. The blood. Neal’s dad’s tears, when he had quietly broken the news that it was over. That Bobby was dead.

  Night after night. The same images had attacked him as he slept, until he’d finally stopped letting himself sleep at all.

  “You took the easy way out!” his father shouted. “Thinking it would kill the guilt. Like if you beat up on yourself and the rest of us enough, bled enough, you’d be free of it. How’s that been working for you?”

  Neal’s jaw hurt from the restraint it took not to yell back. Yelling wouldn’t change the fact that his father was right. He’d been a stupid, naive kid. He’d needlessly hurt himself and everyone who cared about him even more than they already were. Now his father deserved his say. And maybe they both deserved what he hoped would be possible next, after Nathan worked the pain and disappointment out of his system.

  “Did you know she went and got herself pregnant?” his father asked. “That Joshua and Olivia tried to make Jenn give her baby up for adoption?”

  Neal nodded his head, still reeling from all he’d read in that investigator’s report.

  “She’d been in trouble even before that.” Nathan looked away. “Ran off about a
year after your trial. Had the baby on her own. She somehow managed to put herself through college, I hear. Only came back for her mother’s funeral, then after Joshua had a heart attack.”

  Drugs… Pregnancy… A teen runaway…

  His Jennifer.

  “She couldn’t stand being in Rivermist after the trial, could she?” Neal felt physically ill. “So she kept doing whatever it took, until she finally had her excuse to get out….”

  “Starting to sound familiar?” his father asked rhetorically. “Lord knows you could read the guilt all over her face in that courtroom. And when they handcuffed you and led you away, I’ve never seen anyone look so alone. She just sat there, poor little thing. Didn’t move an inch. Her parents and everyone else got up and left. I couldn’t stay anymore, either. Went off on a four-day binge, as I recall. But Jenn just kept staring at the closed door they’d taken you through. She was never the same after that.”

  “And now?” Neal couldn’t keep himself from asking, couldn’t keep the answer from being far more important than it should be. He slid to the edge of his chair. “How is she doing now? Is she… Is she okay? Is she happy?”

  Nathan studied him, his full attention a startling thing. If Neal hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn he saw a glimmer of approval in those eyes that looked so much like his own.

  “She’s got herself mired in another hell of a mess, if I don’t miss my guess,” his father said. “Seems to have a unhealthy attraction to lost causes. Buford tells me you do, too.”

  Neal’s silence earned him a raised eyebrow.

  “I called the man to chew him out for getting you down here,” his father sputtered. “For over half an hour he wouldn’t stop talking about you and that legal-aid center of yours.”

  And for over half an hour Nathan had obviously listened instead of hanging up.