The Prodigal's Return. Anna DeStefano
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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