The Prodigal's Return

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.