The Prodigal's Return. Anna DeStefano

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.