The Prodigal's Return (10 page)

“G
OD 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.

“I…I didn't come here to talk about me.” Neal knew he couldn't take that. Not today.

“God forbid.” Nathan squeezed his eyes shut. Whatever medication he'd taken clearly wasn't making a dent in the pain. “Doesn't matter. None of it matters now. You want to know more about Jenn's life, you go ask her yourself. Whatever, just get out of my house.”

If he'd said it in a rage Neal wouldn't have felt compelled to reach out his hand. Instead, his father sounded tired and lost. The need to touch, to reassure the man when Neal didn't have the first clue how, got the better of him.

“Get away from me, damn it.” Nathan moved beyond his reach. “You came, you saw, now you're off the hook. I ran out on you when you were in prison. Now it's your turn to do the same. So stop yammering at me like we're old buddies. Stop showing up here like it's a reunion episode of
The Waltons
. I'm not wasting the last weeks of my life picking at a scab I can't even feel anymore.”

His father's gasp of pain was what finally pulled Neal from the chair. Agitating the man wouldn't accomplish anything.

“Okay, I'll go for now. But I don't care how much of a bastard you want everyone to think you are, I'm not leaving town this time. I'm here because I care what happens to you, whether either one of us wants to believe it or not. I don't know what the hell we're supposed to do next, but I'll be staying at the Gables Hotel until we figure something out.”

And he was headed back to the Gardners', damn it. He'd seen Jenn twice, and he'd selfishly been focused on his own problems both times. His father wasn't the only one who deserved the chance to tell Neal to go to hell.

He'd come back to Rivermist again to settle all outstanding debts. And if it killed him, that's what he was going to do.

 

“I
WANT
B
OB AND
B
ETTY
C
ARPENTER
over here now,” Jenn's dad demanded.

“What? No!” Convincing Traci to stay the night at her dad's house had taken Jenn forever. Settling her and Mandy in the twin beds in Mandy's room after dinner had taken a half hour or so more. She'd promised the girl no one would force her to talk with her parents. “Traci won't see them. Not tonight.”

“The child doesn't have a choice.” Her father had been supportive up till now, but he'd pounced as soon as Jenn came down from tucking the girls in. “We've let her collect her thoughts. Gave her dinner.
Now it's time for her parents to take over. Bob started calling as soon as one of the neighbors saw Traci come inside with you. He'd be over here now if I hadn't asked him to wait.”

“Traci's not a child. Both you and the Carpenters need to remember that. As far as the law and medicine are concerned, she's an adult who doesn't need permission to make decisions for herself and her pregnancy.”

Hardball had never been Jenn's best negotiating tactic. Playing it tough with her own father felt like taking a turn at Russian roulette.

“Traci was on her way out of town,” Jenn explained. “We either give her some space and the time to figure things out, or that girl's going somewhere else where none of us can help her.”

Her father's hostile expression softened, no doubt with memories of Jenn's own destructive choices. The mistakes he hadn't been able to keep her from making no matter how much he pushed.

“Letting Traci stay here instead of making her go home removes the consequences of the choices she's making,” he reasoned.

“She's pregnant at seventeen,” Jenn shot back. “Trust me, she couldn't be more aware of the consequences she's facing.”

“Bob's furious. He's talking about calling an emergency church council meeting for tomorrow. You're not that child's parent, Jenn. You need to—”

“No, I'm her friend.” She hated that she was causing her father trouble all over again, in his town and his church. “If I betray Traci's trust by forcing her to talk with her parents I'll never get it back.”

“I understand your reasons. And I can even respect them, given what you went through at her age.” He didn't sound as if he wanted to understand anything. But there he stood. A little harried but talking calmly with her, one adult to another. Finally,
finally,
they'd achieved a modicum of mutual respect, and she was blowing it straight to hell. “I'm glad Traci felt like she could turn to you for help. But you can't honestly expect me to agree to something like this.”

“I'll understand if you can't.” Memories swamped her of the last time she'd seen him so unsettled. Of another conversation, full of pain and confusion, when her parents had explained through tears how giving their grandchild up for adoption was best for everyone. “I know this isn't fair to you. I just had nowhere else to take Traci tonight. We'll leave first thing in the morning if that's what you think is best.”

“I don't have the first clue what's best right now,” he admitted, “but I'm glad you felt like you could come here. Whether I agree with what you're doing or not, this is your home, Jenn. You and Mandy are my world. I want you to always feel like you can come to me, no matter what.”