“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 BOB AND BETTY CARPENTER 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.”
Her thundering heart felt as if it were shaking her from the inside out. Nothing he could have said would have meant more to her.
He cleared his throat, then turned to stare into the den’s fireplace.
“Bob said you’d counseled the girl to have an abortion. That you’d been talking with her during some of the youth activities. I assured him that couldn’t be true.”
“I…” Her father defended her to Bob Carpenter? “I tried to talk her out of making a hasty decision about terminating the pregnancy.”
“Bob’s also convinced you know who the father is.”
“I wish I did. She barely says anything about this other guy she’s been seeing—”
“It’s really not Brett Hamilton?”
“No.” Memories of Traci’s bruised eye collided with images of Brett’s lopsided, homespun grin. “She wouldn’t tell me who the father was, and she didn’t want to see a doctor in town. The best I could do was bully her into going to see a friend of mine at a nearby clinic.”
“Instead of calling her parents?”
“She promised to keep talking to me as long as I didn’t. Otherwise, she was going to move in with the guy.”
“And this boyfriend is where now?”
“Out of the picture.”
“Before or after she got that bruise on her face?”
“They both happened right about the same time.”
Her father’s frown deepened. He was holding himself together, she realized. Getting all the facts. Erring on the side of believing her until she gave him a reason not to. She longed to throw her arms around him again, despite how terribly serious the situation was for both his career and the teenager sleeping upstairs.
“At least I know what’s been on your mind the last few days, besides Nathan and Neal Cain.” He sank wearily onto the couch. “How did you talk Traci into telling her parents?”
“I didn’t.” She shook her head as she sat, too. “I told her what I thought, how I’d felt in the same situation, but that she had to make her own decision. She went to her parents on her own. Traci’s starting to take responsibility. Forcing her to go back home now could ruin that.”
“You can’t keep her from Bob and Betty forever, Jenn.”
“I’m not keeping her from anything.”
“That’s not the way people around here are going to see it.”
“Then I’d suggest people start looking at things a little differently. This is a woman with a lot to deal with, I don’t care how young she is in years. She needs our support, not her community passing judgment on what she’s done. Why is it so hard to consider what Traci needs first, rather than what everyone else is going to think about it!”
She was wringing her hands. Staring at her lap. So unlike the professional she was supposed to be. Only the leftover frustration and pain of the misunderstood teenager she herself had been wanted to have its say. She looked up to see the w
orry on her dad’s face.
“If Traci really wants to run away, you can’t stop her,” he said.
Jenn bit the corner of her lip against the fear that, come morning, that’s exactly what Traci was going to do. “She already has a plan for where to go. I either convince her to stay with me, or she’s on the next bus out of town.”
Her dad rubbed his fingers across the fraying edge of one of the cushions her mother had covered herself. From out of nowhere came a deep, rumbling chuckle she hadn’t heard in years.
“It definitely hasn’t been boring around here the last few days.” His smile washed over her. “I already knew it was going to be a challenge to make this second chance with you and Mandy work. But as usual, you’ve exceeded my expectations.”
“Dad…” It was a priceless compliment. She had absolutely no idea what to say.
He leaned back into the couch.
“Your mother and I didn’t listen to you when you were in trouble, did we? We couldn’t stop wanting things back the way they should have been. Instead, we let them get more and more messed up.”
“You and Mom did the best you could,” she said, really meaning the forgiveness she was offering for the first time. “But we have a chance to do it differently for Traci. To help her and the Carpenters make better choices. And to do that, we have to do whatever we can to keep Traci and her baby safe.”
Just a week ago, her father had said the exact same words, when he’d spoken about what he and her mother had wanted for Jenn. She held her breath. Said a silent prayer for the first time since she’d stopped believing prayer could make a difference in her life.
Her father stared for several long breaths, then his head gave a small nod.
“Keep the girl here for as long as you can,” he said. “I’ll call Bob back. Deal with him and Betty. Maybe after they give Traci a day or two to cool off, we’ll be able to get the three of them together and figure something out.”
He wanted them to stay.
He was saying we.
“But what about the church? This council meeting Bob is threatening…” The rumors were no doubt flying all over town. “Helping me means messing things up for you all over again.”
“Oh, there’ll be a mess.” Her father’s philosophical tone gave way to a wink. “But sometimes the biggest messes are the ones that finally show us our way.”
She couldn’t be sure, but she could have sworn he’d just called her his biggest mess.
A mischievous smile slipped out, the smile of a little girl goofing around with the father she loved with all her heart. “Glad I could help you out, Dad.”
His chuckle wound down into a long pause. “Since we’re exorcising the past and laying down bets on whether we’ll handle now any better than we did then, you should know that Neal was here earlier.”
Jenn found herself standing, not even sure why, except that running suddenly sounded like a fine idea. “He’s back to see Nathan?”
“I got the impression he was here to talk to you,” her father countered.
“He wants me to get involved in things between him and Nathan.” She shook her head. “I told him I can’t.”
“But you wish you could?” Understanding filled her father’s eyes. “Are you taking on the responsibility for fixing that relationship, too?”
“It’s not that simple, Dad.” Clearly, nothing between her and Neal Cain could ever be simple again. Certainly not how connected she still felt to him and Nathan after having nothing to do with either of them for years. “But I’ve got all I can handle with Traci. Neal will have to figure things out for himself.”
The peal of the doorbell made them both jump. Her father’s knowing expression as he left to answer the second ring said they’d made the same guess about the identity of their visitor.
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” he said as he led Neal into the den. “I have some phone calls to ma—”
“Mommy!” The sound of tiny feet thundering down the carpeted stairs was all the warning Jenn got. “Who’s at the door?”
She felt herself falling into the startled depths of Neal’s eyes, then she was enveloped in the sweet smell of her little girl’s hug.
She’d dressed Mandy in a pink nightgown.
The color of spring.
Of eternal hope and renewal.
She cupped Mandy’s tiny shoulders and pulled her beautiful child closer.
“Neal,” she said to the one person she’d wanted to share her past with least, “I’d like you to meet my daughter.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NEAL COULDN’T TEAR his eyes away from the picture of Jenn’s daughter he’d found on the mantel above the fireplace. Reverend Gardner had hustled the child into the kitchen for a snack, but not before Neal had seen how perfect a reflection the little girl was of her mother.
“Your daughter must be at least…” He couldn’t complete the sentence as he returned the framed photo to the mantel.
“Six,” Jenn finished for him in a quiet voice. “Mandy will be seven in February. I had her about a year and a half after you left.”
She sat on the edge of the paisley-printed chair, her shoulders drooping.
She’s been through enough, Buford had said.
The investigator’s report had noted a teenage pregnancy, the birth in a clinic in North Carolina. There’d been no real details beyond that and the extended break with her parents and the wild rebellion that had started soon after his conviction.
“And the father?” Neal flinched at the sound of the child’s laughter from the other room. Another man’s child. “Does he live in Rivermist?”
“There is no father.” Her voice took on a cool edge, worlds more jaded than the Jennifer Gardner he’d once known. “At least none I’ve ever been able to pin down. I was a little—” she shrugged “—lost, for a while after you left.”
Neal glanced once again at Mandy’s picture.
“I know,” he said. He knew the facts at least.
But nothing had prepared him for seeing Jennifer Gardner’s child. Now knowing only the facts about her life wasn’t nearly enough. Neither was just standing there, when he could hear the pain in her voice.
“You know?” She looked confused, appalled. “So you did read my letters. But I thought…I guess I figured since you never responded to any of them…”
“No, Jenn. I’ve never read the letters.” Lying might have been kinder, but she deserved the truth.
“Oh,” she replied, as if that settled everything. “I mean, I understand completely why you didn’t.” Her quiet, no-big-deal understanding cut through him. “You had every right to be angry, to blame me for what you were going through—”
“Blame you?”
“For being in that car with Bobby. For you going to prison.” At his incredulous stare, she sat a bit straighter in the chair. “You stopped talking to me weeks before the hearing, Neal. You wouldn’t even look at me. Take my phone calls. And I never heard from you after you left. If you didn’t bl—”
“I loved you, Jenn.” He said the words to her daughter’s picture, unable to look her in the eye as he forced out the explanation she deserved. “But I was going to prison. I was too messed up about what I’d done to deal with anything else. I didn’t know how to think about you, want to be with you and survive the rest…. I wasn’t thinking about you at all. I had no idea what you were going through. That’s why I came here tonight, to say I’m sorry. For everything you’ve been through. I never meant to hurt you.”
“You still loved me?” Her mouth actually gaped open. “You’re sorry?”
It was a toss-up which revelation had shocked her more.
“I’m not sure I was that aware of anything but surviving my first couple of years inside.” The memories hardened his voice. “By then, my father had washed his hands of me, and I’d stopped getting your letters, and…I’d changed. I figured it was kinder to leave you two alone.”
“Kinder! How could you have been so�
�so stupid!” Her eyes heated from pain to something else, then acceptance cooled them. “I died when you left. I lost everything, piece by piece. Threw it all away, because you were gone. Because it was all my fault.”
“Stop saying that!” He knelt in front of her, longing to will into reality the peaceful life he’d always wanted for her. “None of it was your fault.”
Her laugh was full of the kind of bedrock honesty he used when he told clients about his felony conviction.
“I was a whore, Neal. Why do you think Jeremy Compton was sniffing around me yesterday?”
“Don’t say that!”
“I drank,” she continued in a determined voice, as if she needed to purge the memories. “Did drugs. Slept with everything in pants. Took whatever I could get my hands on. Tried a hundred different loser ways to kill myself, because I was too much of a coward to end it cleanly for everyone. If I hadn’t turned up pregnant with Mandy, I doubt I’d have survived.”
“I know,” he said again. “I have a file on all of it.”
All she did then was blink back at him.
It blew most everyone’s minds, her coming back here in the first place, after everything she’s been through.
“I had it pulled together last night, after I got back to Atlanta,” he explained. He made certain there wasn’t a speck of judgment in his voice. He’d be damned if he let her believe he thought any less of her for the hell she’d fought back from. “There was a lot of shit in that file, but there were also notes about you getting your degree. Your social work with kids. You were a kid yourself, in pain and with no one to help you. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for what you went through, but look at all you’ve accomplished.”
Jenn gulped in several shallow breaths, emerging from the temporary insanity of discussing her past with Neal Cain. Of having him on his knees in front of her, saying he was sorry the same as her dad just had. She could waste energy being angry, but Neal had done what he’d had to do. She should be mortified, but she’d blasted him with everything—everything he’d already known—and he hadn’t turned away. He was still there, trying to make her feel better, his compassion and understanding far worse than if he’d walked out in disgust. Because him staying made her want more. Way too much more.
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