The Prodigal's Return Read Online Free

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.”
    â€œYou 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?”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œCritter 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.”
    â€œYou’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
    â€œN O ,” N EAL 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.