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The Prodigal's Return
Anna DeStefano


Does going home mean living with the past–or living down the past?The death of teenager Bobby Compton shocked the community of Rivermist, Georgia. It also destroyed the lives of Neal Cain and Jennifer Gardner. Neal was sent to prison, and Jennifer' s life spiraled out of control until the birth of her daughter forced her to grow up.Now, eight years later, Neal has come home to help his ailing father. Jennifer, a single mother, is also back, trying to make a go of things. Neal and Jennifer were in love when they were teenagers, and those feelings haven' t gone away. But they' re different people, shaped by everything that' s happened. They can' t change the past. Can they still have a future?









Now Entering Rivermist, Georgia


The faded sign was the same one that had been there for as long as Neal could remember. He was hands-down the most unwelcome person ever to enter Rivermist. But somewhere between his apartment and the office that morning, he’d accepted the inevitable. He had to make sure his father was all right.

He’d been so certain staying away the past three years was the right thing. He’d finally faced his mistakes and he’d moved on. But second thoughts had hounded him the entire drive over.

Neal shoved the transmission into Reverse. Gripping the steering wheel, he fantasized about turning around and barreling back to Atlanta and the people he could actually help. Then with a curse he yanked the gearshift back to Neutral and set the hand brake.

“Jennifer Gardner.”

There. He’d said her name, and it hadn’t hurt a bit. With the discipline that came from years of practice, he refused to let her face materialize in his mind. But as always, the perfection of her crystal-clear laugh haunted him.

What if she was still in Rivermist?


Dear Reader,

You can never go home again, or so the saying goes. You can look back and yearn for a simpler time, or wish that things might have been different, but rewriting the past is beyond man’s power.

But since yesterday plays a hand in our future, in who we are now, gazing back is about so much more than longing and reminiscing. We see ourselves most clearly sometimes in our mistakes and failures, and in the journey we take as we make our way back home.

In The Prodigal’s Return our hero and heroine face what they’ve fought for years to outrun and learn to find strength in how far they’ve come. To claim the freedom of accepting what is broken and in letting that weakness guide them to their second chance.

The weakest thing inside us often holds the promise of our greatest strength. And the lowest man in our midst can be the key to others soaring to their greatest heights—if only they can see that unconditional love is the source of forgiveness, and that it is in the heart that second chances are born.

Whether your dream is to return to a life left unfinished, or to reclaim a loved one let go too soon, I wish for you the acceptance and understanding and hope you’ll need along your journey. Trust your heart to lead the way, and what you are seeking will come back to you.

Blessings,

Anna DeStefano

PS. I love to hear from readers. Come join me at my Web site and in my daily journal at www.annawrites.com.




The Prodigal’s Return

Anna DeStefano





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For my editor, Johanna Raisanen.

Your touch flourishes in so much that I do,

but The Prodigal’s Return more than others is yours.

This story was years in the making,

but I can’t imagine not having taken the journey,

or not having you there at each turn.

I pray others, as they read, see what I see:

your glorious patience and wisdom shining from every word.

For my agent, Michelle Grajkowski.

You are generosity and strength and grace personified.

You believed in the heart of this story

long before anyone else, even I, did.

It’s your confidence and encouragement

that helped me find my own faith.




CONTENTS


PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE




PROLOGUE


“DO YOU SWEAR to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” a courtroom officer asked sixteen-year-old Jennifer Gardner.

“What?” She blinked at the bailiff who stood before the witness box, tearing her gaze away from where Neal Cain slouched beside his father at the defendant’s table.

Tell the truth.

That’s what Neal wanted her to do, or so his dad had said.

He knows the prosecutor’s going to call you to testify, Mr. Cain had insisted as he’d prepped her that morning. He’d been more a surrogate father at that moment than the county’s top defense attorney. Don’t be afraid. Just answer the D.A.’s questions, and everything will be fine.

But normally fun-loving Mr. Cain had looked worried. After his wife’s death ten years ago, he’d built his world around his son and his law practice. Now, Neal was on trial for involuntary manslaughter.

Mr. Cain didn’t believe everything was going to be fine any more than Jenn did.

“Miss Gardner?” Judge Pritchard’s voice dragged her attention to where he sat on a dais beside her. “Even though this is merely an arraignment to determine if a trial is warranted, you are required to speak the full and complete truth, under risk of perjury. Do you understand?”

She nodded, and the legal proceeding began, with every eye in the room locked on her—all of them but Neal’s. She fought not to throw up as the district attorney took the bailiff’s place and forced her to relive the worst night of her life, one painful memory at a time. Like a vulture, he kept circling the fact that she’d allegedly chosen to leave the homecoming dance early, to walk the mile and a half home, alone, in her formal gown.

“Did you by any chance arrange to meet Bobby Compton at his car?” The ugly suspicion in D.A. Burnside’s question echoed what many in town had been thinking for weeks.

“No!” Jenn said to the entire courtroom. “I was going home. That’s all.”

Good little Jennifer Gardner, her father’s secretary had whispered to Mary Jo Reece last Sunday. She hadn’t noticed Jenn and her mother sitting only a pew away, so why bother with the charity and tolerance Jenn’s pastor father expected from his staff. I just can’t believe it. The preacher’s daughter, making out in the school parking lot. Drinking. Lord knows what else. And those two boys fighting over her. She was leading them both on, everyone thinks so. What else could it have been…?

“I didn’t know I’d run into Bobby when I left,” Jenn said, her tears blurring the D.A.’s face.

“Your statement to the sheriff says you became angry with Bobby Compton at the dance.” Mr. Burnside made a show of reading notes from a file.

“Yes, because—”

“Yet you left early without your date, so you could have a private moment with the boy in a deserted parking lot? A boy the defendant had just been fighting with.”

“Yes—no! I left early, but not to talk with Bobby. It wasn’t like that.”

The D.A.’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “You told the sheriff you got into Bobby Compton’s car.”

“I couldn’t let him drive home the way he was.” She glanced at her dad.

Concern filled Joshua Gardner’s eyes. Sadness. Disappointment that she’d never seen, before a few weeks ago. Never thought was possible. Not from the man who’d been her hero. Her rock.

“Drunk, you mean?” the lawyer asked.

“What?”

“You stopped because you thought Bobby was drunk?”

“Yes. I…I’d seen him drinking at the dance.”

“And were you and Neal drunk as well?”

“No!”

Her parents and their pricey Atlanta lawyer had insisted that she not speak with anyone about that night, not even to defend herself against the rumors flying all over town.

“But you had been drinking with the deceased?”

“Y-yes.” Her father closed his eyes, crossed his arms, as the courtroom’s attention shifted his way. It had sent shock waves through the county, the preacher’s child admitting to the police that she’d been drinking since she was thirteen. “Bobby, Neal and some of the other football players snuck some beer in. A lot of us were drinking it, but Neal and I weren’t dru—”

“But Neal and Bobby had been fighting before you decided to leave the dance?”

“Y-yes.”

“Because Mr. Compton kissed you on the dance floor?”

“Bobby… He’d just broken up with Stephie Blake. He was upset. I was talking with him, trying to make him feel better… To get him to stop drinking. He said I was being so sweet, that Neal was lucky…Then…I’m not really sure how it happened, but—”

“Bobby Compton kissed you?”

She chewed her lip, shuddering at the memory of the argument that had followed. Bobby trying to shrug off Neal’s hand, hauling her even closer. Neal’s accusing glare as it shifted between her and his best friend. Her plea to Bobby to stop it. To let her go.

“Miss Gardner?” the D.A. pressed.

“Yes.” Neal wouldn’t look at her, no matter how long she stared. He hadn’t spoken to her since the night Bobby died. “He kissed me.”

Shock whispered through the room.

“And he and the defendant fought?”

“They… Neal was angry, and Bobby wasn’t thinking straight.”

“How long have you and the defendant been dating?”

“Almost two years.” The most perfect years of her life.

“Yet, you kissed his best friend right in front of him?”

“Bobby kissed me—”

“Would it surprise you to learn, that I have eyewitnesses from that night who would testify to the contrary? Maybe you wanted your boyfriend to see you kissing—”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Mr. Cain shot to his feet. “Miss Gardner’s behavior is not on trial. It’s irrelevant to these proceedings who kissed whom, or why.”

It took several pounds of the judge’s gavel to settle the room.

“Mr. Burnside,” he warned. “Keep your questions focused on the defendant’s actions.”

“So,” the prosecutor continued with a nod, “the defendant and Bobby Compton fought over you at the homecoming dance. Mr. Compton left. Then you followed him.”

“I didn’t follow Bobby.”

The D.A. laid his folder on the witness box’s ledge. It was open to a report that ended with Neal’s signature. “The statement the defendant gave the sheriff says that when he found you, you were inside the car with Bobby.”

“Yes. I took Bobby’s keys away so he couldn’t drive home. He asked me to sit with him while he cleared his head.”

“You sat together?”

“Yes.”

“In his car?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

Jenn swallowed the lump her breakfast kept making in her throat. “Bobby grabbed me again.”

“Your Honor!” Mr. Cain was on his feet once more. Neal stayed seated, his fists clenched on the tabletop.

“I tried to stop him,” she insisted.

“Get to your point, Mr. Burnside,” Judge Pritchard warned.

The D.A. placed his hands on his hips, every speck of friendliness gone from his unsmiling face.

“Miss Gardner, please describe for the court Neal Cain’s reaction when he found you trying to stop the advances of his best friend.”

“Neal was angry. He was hurt.”

A hollow weight settled on her chest. If Neal would only let her close again, maybe then she could survive everyone else deserting her, even her parents. She searched his downcast features, desperate for any sign that he hadn’t given up—on both himself and on her.

D.A. Burnside retrieved the folder from in front of her. “The defendant pulled Bobby Compton from the car?”

“Yes.” Her stomach took another threatening roll upward.

“And they began to fight again.”

“Yes.”

“And the defendant hit the victim.”

“They were hitting each other.” She brushed at her tears. If only there were some way to wipe away the memories. “I tried to stop them—”

“You tried to stop the defendant?”

“Yes… No! Both of them. I tried to stop them both.”

“But you couldn’t.”

“No. And then Bobby fell and he… He hit his head against the curb.”

After a long pause, the D.A. plucked more papers from his briefcase. “The police report states that while Bobby Compton received a blow to the head—one we now know was the contributing cause of his death—the defendant escaped the confrontation with little more than a black eye. If they were fighting each other, as you say, how do you account for the defendant’s lack of injuries?”

“I don’t know.” She gripped the edge of her straight-back chair. “Maybe because Bobby was drunk, and Neal was—”

“Angry?” the D.A. offered.

“Neal didn’t mean to hurt him.” She turned to address the judge directly. “They were best friends.”

“But Bobby Compton was hurt,” the D.A. interjected. “He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, where he later died. While Neal Cain spent that night, and every night since, sleeping peacefully in his own bed.”

“But he hasn’t. I don’t think he’s slept at all.” And anyone who thought differently didn’t know him. Neal had already convicted himself for Bobby’s death—so had the rest of the town. But she couldn’t. She never would. “He’s devastated by what happened. He’s lost his best friend.”

“And Bobby Compton lost his life,” D.A. Burnside added softly, his words carrying through the now-silent room.

A stifled sob drew everyone’s attention to the back, to the very last row of benches. Mrs. Compton, her face partially buried against her husband’s burly chest, was shaking, clinging to him.

Jenn closed her eyes against the sight of the same shock and grief that were eating her and Neal alive. She looked to her father for… For what?

Understanding? Forgiveness?

Not a chance.

Not for her.

Not now.

It was as if her parents had become strangers to her.

“Please, stop this,” a heart-breakingly familiar voice begged.

Her head jerked around to find Neal on his feet beside his father, pulling away from Mr. Cain’s grasp.

“Sit down!” Mr. Cain bit out.

“Stop it, Dad.” Neal faced the judge. “Your Honor, for the sake of Bobby Compton’s family, please, call this off.”

“Neal!” Mr. Cain looked ready to deck his son to keep him quiet, but Jenn knew he loved Neal too much to ever hurt him.

She’d always marveled at the bond, the honesty, between them. At how much they even looked alike, despite the difference in their ages. They shared the same blond good looks, the same height and effortless athleticism and dreamy dark eyes. The same intensity when they were determined to have their way, as both were now.

“Your Honor,” Mr. Cain pleaded. “My son’s distraught over his friend’s death. He doesn’t understand—”

“I do understand.” Neal’s voice was the scariest calm Jenn had ever heard. “And I want to plead guilty.”

“No!” Jenn and Mr. Cain cried in unison.

The room burst into a sea of babbling voices.

“That’s enough.” Judge Pritchard’s gavel rapped. He leveled an accusing stare at the spectators. “I’ll have no more outbursts, or this courtroom will be cleared.”

When silence returned, it was harder to bear than the gossipy confusion it replaced. Because in the room’s quiet, nothing remained but the end that Jenn knew she’d never survive.

Judge Pritchard returned his attention to the defendant’s table.

“Have a seat, Mr. Cain.”

“But, Your Honor—”

“Have a seat!”

“Son,” the judge said when Neal was standing alone. “Do you understand the consequences of what you’re saying? You’re not being charged as a juvenile. You’ll serve your sentence in an adult correctional facility.”

“Yes, sir. My father’s explained everything to me. I’m pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, and I’m going to prison. It’s where I belong. We all know that. Don’t put Bobby’s parents through the motions of a trial that won’t change anything.”

“Neal.” Mr. Cain’s voice sounded too old, too lost, to belong to the fearless defense attorney prosecutors all over the state dreaded facing in a courtroom. “Please, we can find another way.”

Please.

Jenn wanted to run to Neal. To beg along with his dad. But she couldn’t move. Worse, nothing she said would make the tiniest difference.

“I told you this morning, Dad.” Neal shook off his father’s touch one last time. “I have to do this.”

His gaze finally connected with Jenn’s, his dark eyes at first apologizing, then emptying of every promise and dream they’d shared.

“Bobby’s gone because of me.” He continued to stare, through each awful word, as if to be sure she understood most of all. “There is no other way. It’s over.”




CHAPTER ONE


Midtown Atlanta, Georgia

Eight years later

“YOUR DADDY WOULDN’T call you himself, Neal, but somethin’s not right.” Buford Richmond’s slow Southern drawl blended into the phone’s staticky connection like a bad omen. “I’d bet money the man’s sick.”

Since Buford had laid down good money on the Birmingham races every Saturday for the past twenty years, the man not betting might have been more cause for concern. Still, Neal gave up pretending to work.

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 slamming 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.

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.”

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.

There was too much of Neal still here. So much more than should still be able to touch her. Emotional ties to an idealistic past she’d thought she’d put behind her. Did he know about her? Did he even know about his own father?

Stop it!

She helped her daughter into the car. The beautiful child whose creation had been Jenn’s rock-bottom. The child who had also been the reason she’d finally taken a stab at living, rather than praying for an end.

She started the car’s cold engine. Neal was gone, and she was here, trying to carve out a new beginning. To live the life she had now, rather than wallowing in the past she couldn’t undo. Isn’t that what she’d just finished telling her father she wanted? Why she was headed for the Cain place later today?

Memories or no memories, she had a job to do. She couldn’t turn her back on Neal’s father any more than she had on her own.

Better than anyone in Rivermist, she understood the pain still ripping at Nathan Cain. Pain she was more than a little responsible for. A responsibility that she wouldn’t ignore a single day longer just because she couldn’t handle remembering the boy her heart would never let go of completely, no matter how many miles and years separated them now.




CHAPTER FOUR


“JENN, YOU’VE HAD BOYFRIENDS, right?” Traci Carpenter asked over the plate of fries she and Jenn were devouring. At seventeen, Traci probably saw Jenn’s twenty-four years as so far over the hill, boyfriends would be a distant memory.

“It’s been a while.” So much for putting Neal Cain out of her mind. “But I think I remember boys.”

The church’s youth activity that weekend was a trip to Freddy’s, Jenn’s favorite place to eat in Rivermist. She was the leader of this sprawling band of youth and energy, so she got to pick where they met. Freddy’s had a laser jukebox, cheap junk food and plenty of booths for the teenagers to commandeer. The perfect way to kill a few hours before a handful of the kids had to dress for that afternoon’s varsity basketball games.

She’d volunteered to revamp the church’s floundering Saturday activities after it had become clear there was no chaperoned place Rivermist’s teens would be caught dead hanging out in. The church leaders, fresh out of creative ideas, had agreed to let Jenn give it a try—as a lay leader only, they’d tripped all over themselves to point out.

Now under her leadership, the kids were opening up to the idea of being part of a crowd that had something more constructive to do than cruising or partying the weekend away. And the satisfaction of working with them had Jenn hooked in a way she should have seen coming.

Traci Carpenter had been shadowing Jenn for a couple of Saturdays now. Always there, always angling to sit closer. Always the last one hanging around when things wrapped up. The signals weren’t that tough to read. The girl had something to say, something to talk about. She just hadn’t worked up the nerve before now.

“So, how long did it take before your boyfriends…” The teen twisted the straw in her milk shake. At Traci’s insistence, she and Jenn were sitting several booths away from the rest of the kids. “I mean, once you’d gone together for six months or so…”

“Haven’t you and Brett Hamilton been dating for a lot longer than six months?” Jenn swiped a fry through the ketchup, using her best girlfriend voice. At least she was pretty sure that’s how girlfriends gossiping about boys sounded.

“This isn’t about me and Brett.” Crimson flooded Traci’s cheeks.

“Of course not.”

“I have this friend,” Traci whispered. “And she’s seeing this older guy. You know, older. More sophisticated.”

The fry halfway to Jenn’s mouth stalled. “And…your friend and this sophisticated guy are doing what, exactly?”

“Well, you know….” The girl’s nonchalance clashed with the way she nervously kicked the table leg between them. Blond and blue-eyed, she was wearing a high-fashion ensemble no doubt bought on one of her mother’s shopping excursions to Atlanta. “What do you think they’re doing?”

Jenn popped the fry into her mouth. Kept her expression free of anything but casual interest. The label of church leader fit her social-worker training like a sweater shrunk once too often in the dryer. But giving teenagers a back door into discovering what they believed was right up her alley.

This conversation, if nothing else today, she could handle like a pro.

Another look across the restaurant, and Traci leaned closer. “So, some of the girls and I were wondering. If my friend needed some advice, or maybe something like birth control, or…whatever…could she come to you?”

Jenn silently processed the complications and conflicts this conversation was headed for. Information, she reminded herself. Never make a decision without all the information you can get your hands on.

She cleared her throat. “Can your friend talk with her parents?”

“Not about stuff like this. Her parents are stuck in the dark ages. They’d never let her see this guy if they knew how old he is.”

“How much older are we talking?”

“He’s in college.” The plate of fries was the only thing Traci would look at now. “Well, he was.”

“He graduated?”

“Not…not exactly. He dropped out.”

Of course they were talking about Traci and not a friend, and her “older guy” was probably in his early twenties at most. But it still sounded as if she’d set herself up for some huge disappointments if Mr. Wonderful didn’t pan out. And something already had the girl worried. Teens didn’t just up and talk to adults about stuff like sex and protection. Jenn never had when she’d been in Traci’s shoes, not until it was too late.

“I’m not sure how much I can help your friend, since I don’t know her,” she reasoned out loud. “But I do know what I’d tell you or any of my girls if I learned you were getting into a relationship like the one you’re describing.”

Defensiveness crept across Traci’s expression. “If you’re going to tell me that good girls wait and that I’m…that my friend’s going to hell if she doesn’t, don’t bother. I’ve heard it all before.”

“No, I’d be the last person to preach that to you.”

Qualifying what it meant to be good was one of the most overused weapons adults wielded. Guilt and recrimination didn’t get the job done. That kind of moral certainty pushed kids away, instead of teaching them to honor themselves and the responsibility that goes along with making their own decisions.

When she’d been Traci’s age, hadn’t she gone out of her way to do the exact opposite of her parents’ by-the-book vision for her life? Culminating in getting herself pregnant in an alcohol-induced haze with a boy she couldn’t even remember.

Honesty. Information. Trust.

That’s what Traci needed from someone. And it looked as if Jenn had just been volunteered.

“I’d ask a good friend like you to be very careful.” She weighed each word before she said it. “Teenage boys, even older guys, don’t always see relationships the same way teenage girls do.”

“He’s not just interested in sex.” Freckles stood out in sharp contrast with the flush spreading down Traci’s neck. “He’s not that kind of guy. It’s just that…”

“All I’m saying is that he might not have as much at stake in this as your friend does. I’d want her to think carefully before she did anything she couldn’t take back.”

“And if she’s already thought it through?”

Traci’s certainty geared Jenn into action. “And she doesn’t want to talk with her parents?”

“Not a chance.”

“Then your friend has to protect herself. I’d like to have the chance to talk with her. Very real consequences come with what she’s doing. But nothing’s more important than making sure she protects herself.”

“What…what if her guy doesn’t want to use protection?”

“That’s a deal-breaker, sweetie.” Jenn’s hands curled into fists above her knees. She was advising the only child of one of her father’s senior deacons about safe sex. Nothing like jumping off a cliff without a parachute.

But conversations like this were exactly why she’d chosen the work she did. They were unpredictable. Priceless. Life-changing.

“That would leave you…” she began. “It would leave your friend unprotected from infectious disease. Things like AIDS.”

“What about the pill?”

“The pill doesn’t protect you from disease, Traci.”

“But, what if he’s sure he’s clean?”

“What if he’s lying?” Jenn managed not to snort. Barely.

“He’s not.”

“How can you be sure?”

“He says he’s never been with anyone but her, okay!” Traci pulled her legs up, drew her knees to her chest and locked her arms around them. “He says she’s his first.”

“And you believe him?” Jenn blurted out before her brain overcame her shock at the girl’s naiveté.

Her social-worker mojo couldn’t have picked a worse time to bail.

“Fine. Forget I asked.” Traci scooted to the edge of the booth.

“Wait.” Jenn caught hold of her arm. “I’m sorry, all right? But you’ve got to admit, you’ve laid an awful lot on me for a Saturday lunch at Freddy’s. Give me a chance here.”

Tension trembled down Traci’s arm.

“I don’t want to see you or your friend get hurt,” Jenn pressed. “And if you weren’t a little worried about that happening, why did you come to me for advice?”

“Are you saying you’ll help me?” The teenager looked every bit the scared seventeen-year-old she didn’t want to be. “You’ll help me, and you won’t tell my folks?”

“So, we are talking about you. Not a friend?”

“Yeah.” Traci’s head dropped. She slid back into the booth.

“But we’re not talking about Brett?” Jenn’s stomach churned.

“No.” Traci shook her head and stared at her lap. “He still thinks…I mean, everyone still thinks we’re together. But it’s over.”

“Then why are you still dating him?”

“This other guy, he lives in another town. It’s not like we can get together here. If I broke up with Brett, how would I explain where I’ve been when I…you know…”

“When you’re with your other guy?” This upstanding, almost virginal college dropout who was letting Traci lie and sneak around, but who only had her best interest at heart.

“I…I’m afraid to keep sleeping with him without protection, but my mom knows every doctor in town, and he doesn’t like condoms.” Traci’s expression begged Jenn to see the sense in her desperate, messed-up logic.

“So you’re already having unprotected sex.” Jenn held her breath and hoped for a miracle. “For how long?”

“A month—” Traci picked lint from the paper napkin she’d wadded into a ball “—maybe two.”

It was all too obvious, suddenly, what they were really talking about.

“When was your last period, Traci?”

Tears welled in the teenager’s eyes.

Well, damn.

“Have you taken a home pregnancy test?”

“N-no.” Traci wiped at her eyes. Chewed on the corner of her mouth. “I…I didn’t want to…”

“You didn’t want to know?”

If only blissful ignorance were as effective as prophylactics.

“Are you going to help me?” the teenager asked, her voice full of a little girl’s fear. “I don’t know what to do. And I thought you of all people would…you know, understand. Will you help me?”

Contradicting impulses left Jenn speechless while she did some of the fastest thinking of her life. If she tried to talk Traci into going to her parents, she’d lose this battle before it began. That was a discussion for another time, when the girl didn’t already look ready to bolt for the door. She could tell the Carpenters herself, but to the teen that would be the worst kind of betrayal. And that would blow Jenn’s shot at damage control.

And let’s not forget my father and my sparkling new fresh start. And what he and his congregation would expect her to do as the sensible, conservative, levelheaded leader she’d agreed to be when she’d taken the volunteer position with the church’s teens.

Helping Traci on her own meant breaking the trust of everyone around her. Keeping the girl’s secret, even for a few days, might cost Jenn a whole lot more than her job working with Teens in Action.

But none of that could compete with keeping the girl and her baby safe. And if Jenn were the only adult Traci was asking for guidance, that meant the next words out of her mouth could only be—

“Of course I’ll help.” She covered Traci’s hand with her own. “I’ll do whatever I can, on one condition. You leave the door open to talking with your parents.”

“If you tell them, I’ll run away. I can move in with my guy anytime I want—”

“I’m not going to tell anyone anything. But you might need to, if—”

“Jenn, Traci.” Brett Hamilton headed toward them from the other side of the restaurant. “We’ve got to get ready for the game.”

Giving her watch an annoyed glance, Jenn squeezed Traci’s hand. “I’m going to set up an appointment for you with a friend of mine who works in the free clinic in Colter. I’ll get you in first thing Monday. They open at ten.”

Traci pulled her hand away as the all-state center she’d gone steady with since freshmen year drew closer.

“Promise me you’ll keep the appointment.” Jenn scribbled her cell number on a napkin and shoved it into the teenager’s hand, in case the girl had lost the card she’d given all the kids their first Saturday together. “You can call me anytime you need to. I’ll even take you to the clinic if you want.”

Traci glanced nervously at Brett.

“Promise me you’ll see the doctor,” Jenn pressed. “We have to be sure—”

“Okay, I promise.” Traci shoved the napkin into her jacket pocket a second before Brett reached their table. “But I’ll go myself.”

“You ready?” Brett gave Traci’s cheek a noisy kiss.

“Yeah.” Traci edged around him and headed for the door without looking back.

With a wink and a shrug for Jenn, Brett trailed after her.

Jenn lagged behind as the kids paired up and piled back into their cars. She paid her bill and tried to swallow the bitter taste of French fries and foreboding. Just once, couldn’t she catch a break in this town?

Some in the church had been concerned, her father had said, when she’d taken on the floundering teen group.

Concerned.

After all, given her history, was she really the kind of person they wanted influencing their impressionable children? The facts were what they were. She’d been a runaway. An unwed teen mother. She was only a slightly older version of the girl who’d turned to the parties and addictions to obliterate the self-hatred and emptiness she’d only made worse. She’d destroyed her relationship with her parents and had almost cost her father his church.

She’d come back home determined to live down her past and make a fresh start for her daughter’s sake. Now with one simple offer to help a reckless teenager who reminded her too much of herself at seventeen, she was angling for trouble all over again. The kind of trouble that made being seen taking a few bags of food to Nathan Cain a nonissue.

Wrestling open the rusted door of her car, she slid inside and stared at the picturesque world on the other side of the windshield. Fought the childish urge to pick up Mandy at Ashley’s and drive away from Rivermist and the past that seemed incapable of letting her go.

She’d felt a shining moment of strength when she’d stood up to her father that morning. With a snort, she pulled out onto North Street and headed for the Cain place. Had she really grown up and grown stronger over the last seven years, or had she simply gotten better at faking it?



NOW ENTERING RIVERMISt, GEORGIA, the faded sign read in the midday sun. The same faded, beaten-up sign that had been there for as long as Neal could remember.

He was hands down the most unwelcome person to ever enter Rivermist. But somewhere between his apartment and the office that morning, he’d accepted the inevitable. He had to make sure his father was all right. It was time to settle things with the man and this place. So Stephen had taken the Martinez meeting solo after all, and Neal had settled for a soul-searching, two-hour detour down I-75 South.

A part of him hated Nathan for making him care this much again. Another, desperate part needed to see the old man so badly it made no sense. Nothing good could come from letting himself be sucked back into this place. He’d bet his restored ’65 Mustang GT Fastback on it—one of the few luxuries he’d indulged in since regaining control of his trust fund.

Neal winced.

He’d been so certain staying away the last three years was the right thing. Most of him still was. But what if…

Damn.

There was no room in his world for what-ifs. He’d finally accepted his mistakes and he’d moved on. He’d been determined that as much good as possible would come from Bobby’s death, his prison sentence and the lives both had shattered. What-if wasn’t going to make that happen. But second thoughts had hounded him the entire drive over.

Medical what-ifs—all likely candidates for a man his father’s age—that Doc Harden hadn’t confirmed nor denied. What the cranky old doctor had said repeatedly was that Neal should get his black-sheep self home and ask his father what was going on in person.

Neal shoved the transmission into Reverse. Gripping the steering wheel, he fantasized about banking into a steep turn and barreling back to Atlanta and the people he actually could help. Then with a curse, he yanked the gearshift back to Neutral and set the hand brake.

Nathan had refused any but the most basic medical intervention for whatever ailed him. Maybe Neal could talk his father into doing more, the doctor had suggested.

Maybe.

The one useless thing Neal despised more than what-if.

His life was about cold, hard reality. No more destructive emotions. No grand gestures. No time for wishing things were different or looking back to what had been. Now maybe had brought him to a screeching halt on the outskirts of town, unable to keep going for more reasons than just Nathan.

“Jennifer Gardner.”

There. He’d said her name, and it hadn’t hurt a bit.

She’d no doubt moved away years ago. Gotten on with a life that could never have included him. She’d have missed him. Mourned for him. But she’d have moved on by now. And that’s what he’d wanted for her, why he’d refused to answer the letters she’d written to him in prison. Thirty of them in all. Precious ties to the beautiful girl he’d once loved. Letters still kept in the back of his bedroom closet.

Unopened.

Unread.

Impossible to throw away.

With the discipline that came from years of practice, he refused to let her face materialize in his mind. But as always, the perfection of her crystal-clear laugh haunted him.

What if she was still in Rivermist…

With a curse, he revved the idling Ford engine, hating the rush of helplessness that came with the sound. Only a coward would turn back now, but that’s exactly what his instincts told him to do.

Run.

Run just one more time, and leave these people in peace.

Flipping his hometown’s welcome sign the bird, he revved the motor again. But he stayed put, same as before. Not able to move forward or head back. The man he’d become didn’t run. He fought until he found a way to get through whatever was facing him.

So why did the reality of finally being back here have him spinning his wheels and going absolutely nowhere?




CHAPTER FIVE


FACING THE CAIN kitchen door and the layer of rust covering its outer screen, Jenn mentally counted backward to her last tetanus shot. A ridiculous excuse for stalling, but now that she was here, she needed time. Just a moment to shut out Traci’s bombshell at lunch and refocus on the next Hallmark moment of her day.

The rickety front door had been locked and no one had answered the bell. So she’d snaked around back through the overgrown yard she’d once turned cartwheels in, and the reality of the run-down place, of all that had been left broken for too long, hit home.

Broken.

What a way to describe the chasm yawning between her and this man she’d once loved like a father. The Cain and Gardner families had shared holidays, birthdays and summer barbecues. Winter ski trips. She and Neal had run with the church youth group while their parents chaperoned—a euphemism for keeping the youngsters out of trouble while the adults acted like kids themselves. Their families had been inseparable, intertwining, planning for a shared future, right up until that night. That awful night.

A blast of wind tugged at her coat and her second thoughts. This wasn’t about what they’d had, or what they no longer meant to each other. This was about helping Nathan Cain now. Spending a few minutes letting him know someone still cared. Just a few minutes. Was that too much to ask?

She pulled back the screen and knocked. After the fifth knock, her dread at seeing Nathan again gave way to concern. She tried to peer through the curtains covering the center window. But there was nothing to see but dust and shadows. Then, from out of nowhere, one of the shadows moved toward her.

She screamed, her bags dropping in a heap on top of her foot.

“Ouch!” She leaned on the door and massaged her foot through her tennis shoe.

Okay! She got it. She wasn’t welcome here.

Then the lock clicked and the door jerked away. Her balance shifted forward. Squealing, she tipped into a mountain that smelled of stale beer and way too little personal hygiene.

“Damn it,” Nathan Cain grumbled as she righted herself.

He was dressed in the same filthy, torn jeans as the other night. No shirt, no socks, nothing to combat the morning temperatures. His blond, gray-streaked hair stuck out in more directions than should be possible in a three-dimensional world. And his brown eyes, so dark they were almost black, were swollen and bloodshot. One of his grimy hands lifted to block the afternoon sun.

He still wasn’t exactly sober.

“What the hell are you doin’ here at the crack of dawn?” groused the man who’d once led Jenn’s junior-high Sunday school class. “I’ve got a good mind to—”

“I—It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Cain.” The stench of him made it difficult to speak. “I—I—”

“I, what?” He gave her a vague perusal, then a twisted smile. “Well, if it isn’t little miss Jennifer Gardner. Thought I’d seen the last of you when you sprinted out of here weeks ago.”

“I—I wanted to bring a few things over….” She bent to gather the scattered groceries. “I mean, when I dropped you off, the—the kitchen, it looked so…”

Repulsive?

She stooped and reached for a box of macaroni and cheese. Nathan’s hand made it there first. Hers recoiled before she could stop herself.

He crouched beside her and handed her the box.

“What business is it of yours what my kitchen looks like?” he asked in little more than a whisper, as if talking in a normal tone hurt.

“I—I just want to help.” She stood and put the distance she needed between them, a bag of store-bought guilt hanging from each hand. “Just trying to help a friend.”

“Friend?” He straightened, too, his knees cracking, his balance wavering, until all six foot three of him loomed over her. He half collapsed against the door-frame and crossed his arms over his chest. “What gave you the idea I needed help?”

He looked so much like his son even in his rundown state, Jenn caught herself staring.

“I almost ran over you the other night, Mr. Cain. And you didn’t— You don’t look well.”

“Well, isn’t that neighborly of you to notice.” His stare reinforced his sarcasm.

Then an odd sort of confusion slipped through his antagonism. He inched backward into the house, his motions unnaturally slow. Gone was the grace and coordination of the man who’d once given the teenagers in town a run for their money on the basketball court.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, manners from another time making a brief appearance. “I’m in the middle of something…something important.”

He began closing the door.

“But the groceries.” She shuffled the bags to one hand and laid a palm on the door, knowing that pushing him was a bad idea, but completely unable to stop. “I was thinking I could cook you something. Eating might help you feel a little better.”

“I feel just fine. And you’ve got no business here.”

His soulless eyes flicked from her hand to the pitying frown she hadn’t swallowed fast enough. She was staring at the closed door before she could say another word. Without a second thought, she turned the knob and pushed the door back open.

Nathan was standing in the middle of the kitchen, a can of beer in his hand. He didn’t look a bit surprised at her intrusion. He didn’t even look angry. Instead, he tipped the can back, happily on his way to inebriation.

“You’ve got no business here.” He drained his beer in the time it took him to reach her.

He attempted to shut her out again, but just keeping his hand from slipping off the doorknob seemed to get the better of him. Jenn had plenty of time to scoot farther inside before the door closed. Oblivious, Nathan barreled straight into her.

“Get the hell out of my house!” He jerked away. “Or I’ll call the sheriff.”

“No, you won’t. The sheriff’s probably the only person in town you want to see less than me and my father.”

Mr. Cain had nearly killed Glenn Hamilton, the former sheriff’s deputy who’d arrived at this same door eight years ago with a warrant for Neal’s arrest. That was the last time she’d stepped foot in the Cain house. The last time anyone from Rivermist had.

She juggled her shopping bags, searching for an uncluttered flat surface to set them on. Finding none, she spotted a relatively clean patch of linoleum beneath the wall-mounted phone and dropped the groceries to the floor.

“How can you bring yourself to eat in here?” The place was downright revolting.

“That’s none of your business. Now get out.” He was no longer yelling, but his eyes had filled with every awful emotion he had a right to feel toward her.

“I can’t do that.” Another glance around the room, and her resolve to simply drop off the food, reclaim her daughter and head home for a stimulating evening of worrying her heart out about Traci Carpenter evaporated.

The kitchen table seemed as good a place to start as any. She collected a stack of plates covered with half-eaten food and headed for the sink, moving a pile of empty beer cans to make room to work.

“Are you an alcoholic?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Not yet.” There was a long pause. “But I’m working on it.”

She’d been prying a burnt hamburger off a plate. Dropping it, she whirled to find him guzzling another can of beer.

“That’s not funny! You’re killing yourself.”

“Not exactly.” He saluted her with his can. “But close enough.”

“What are you saying?” Afraid she already knew the answer, her heart sank.

“I’m saying I want to be left alone.”

“Maybe no one else in this town remembers the man you used to be, but I do. And I can’t stand to see you living this way, not when I can help.” She spotted a pyramid of prescription bottles on the counter across the room and headed toward it.

Nathan followed, stumbling precariously close to the stove. He caught himself and struck out again, marching toward Jenn as she read the name of a narcotic pain reliever off one of the labels.

“Put that down.” He yanked the bottle away and threw it across the room. A swipe of his hand sent the rest of the medicine flying. “I still have more money than God. If I wanted things clean, if I wanted a nurse, I’d hire one.”

“You are sick.” She peered closer, through the booze and the bluster. Her pulse pounded. “Is that what the drinking’s all about?”

“I’m not sick!” he shouted, his voice sounding clearer by the second. He stretched himself to his full height, then he gifted her with a creaky bow. “I’m dying.”

“Wh-what?”

“I’m dying. And if I want to drink myself into oblivion, or live in a pigsty, or eat off the floor, it’s none of your damn business. So kindly take your food and your condescend…condes… Take your pity, and get out of my house!”

Jenn walked back to the sink, choking on her denial. A myriad of images assailed her. The gentle, funny man she’d loved to listen to classical jazz with. The broken man who’d watched his son escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs. The threadbare bum who’d stumbled into her car just two weeks ago, calling for his wife’s favorite cat.

Nathan Cain was dying.

Alone.

Oh, Neal. Where are you?

She picked up a crud-encrusted plate that had once been pristine bone china and began scraping, ashamed by the quick getaway she’d planned.

A stick of dynamite couldn’t budge her now.

“Stop it!” Mr. Cain shoved the dish from her hands. It fell to the countertop and splintered. Shattered pieces tinkled onto the hardwood floor. “Now look what you’ve done…those are Wanda’s favorite dishes…she’s gonna holler to bring the house down when she gets home. You’re gonna explain it to her, not me.”

He stepped through the broken china on his way to the refrigerator, his mildewed tennis shoes grinding the pieces into the floor.

Jenn picked up the shattered pottery and watched him pull another beer from the nearly-empty fridge, trying to get her head around the idea that the man was expecting his dead wife home any minute.

“Mr. Cain.” She tossed the remains of the plate into the trash, where the bits slid off the teetering pile of waste. “Don’t you think—”

“Think what?” He looked her in the eye and popped open the can.

“Why don’t I make you a cup of coffee?”

“Coffee’s not going to fix what ails me, girl.” He chugged half the beer in one swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “And don’t think my brain’s so addled you can sweet-talk me into your version of turning lemons into lemonade. I know my wife is dead, damn it! I may be drunk, but I’m not an idiot. Not yet anyway.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot.” She reached deep for the social worker inside her. For the honesty and detachment that made her so good at her job. She gave the filth around her a pointed stare. “What I think is that this place should be hosed down by a Health Department SWAT team.”




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