Anna DeStefano - The Prodigal's Return

“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.” Joshua Gardner slouched at the kitchen table, taking the news of Jenn’s plans to visit Nathan Cain about as well as his granddaughter did a second helping of spinach.

Jenn breathed deeply to steady her resolve, then finished cleaning up after the French toast from Mandy’s Saturday breakfast. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched her father shift restlessly in his age-worn chair. Conflict didn’t suit the good reverend. It kinda bit, then, that she’d been rattling his views of the world and his faith since she was sixteen.

He was trying to make her being back work, she’d give him that. And the effort was far more than she’d expected.

“I can’t ignore what I saw any longer.” She turned to the pantry and plucked boxes of macaroni and cheese and instant soup from the lined shelves, making a mental grocery list of what she’d need to replace. “How anyone in this town can look at that lonely old man and not do whatever they can to help him is beyond me. The least people can do is make sure he has something to eat. I’m taking him some food. What’s the harm in that?”

She’d spent two weeks trying to forget. Had accepted her father’s silence as a warning to avoid the topic entirely for the sake of preserving the peace. But the reality of Nathan Cain’s disheveled appearance and deplorable hygiene, and the sty of a kitchen she’d glimpsed when she’d helped him through his rotted-out back door, refused to be ignored any longer.

“The people in this town tried to help him, Jenn. He’s made it more than clear he isn’t interested. The man disowned his own son while the boy was still in prison, he wanted to be left alone so badly.”

“And that makes how he’s living all right?”

“No,” her father boomed in an uncharacteristic shout. “It makes it his choice.”

They hadn’t talked about faith and religion since she was a kid, but her father still held tightly to the beliefs that had stopped comforting her years ago. Beliefs so totally contradicted by his continued rift with his former best friend, Jenn bit her tongue to keep from calling him on it. Having it out with her father about a long-dead relationship that didn’t matter anymore held the appeal of a bikini wax.

Except it did matter. After seeing Nathan again, how could it not? Even if helping him meant letting in more memories that she could frankly do without.

“Nathan’s exactly where he wants to be,” her dad said, inching a bit closer to his calm, reasonable self. “Alone. If he wants to live the life of a bum, leave him be.”

“If you’d only seen how terrible that house looked….”

A spark of concern flashed across her dad’s face, erased all too quickly by a wince of resignation that turned her stomach. She’d had her part in these two men’s estrangement. A starring role.

“I don’t think you should be going over there.” Salt-and-pepper grayed his dark hair now. A flurry of lines were etched across his fifty-five-year-old face, helped along by recent bypass surgery. “And I don’t think it’s appropriate for Mandy to go with you. Why not leave her home with me?”

Because, I’m not putting my daughter in the middle of our problems any more than she already is.

“Are you worried about Mandy because Mr. Cain’s a drunk and hasn’t been to church in years?” she asked. “Or because us being seen there will start even more talk around town?”

“Is it so terrible that I’m concerned what people think about my granddaughter? This is a small town. I’m the pastor of a conservative congregation. I’m just asking for a little discretion while the two of you settle in.”

If only his concern were that simple.

“We’ve been back for three months, Dad. We’re as settled as we’re going to be.” Jenn counted the buttons down the front of his oxford shirt. Anything but looking him in the eye. Nathan wasn’t the only man she’d become a pro at avoiding. “Mandy has the town eating out of her hands. I’m the one you’re worried about, and we both know it.”

Silence was her father’s only response, when she’d give her world for an encouraging you know I trust you, honey.

Her teenage tantrums and public antics—her determination to burn through the pain and the loneliness after Neal’s conviction until she’d felt nothing at all—had turned her father into this careful, cautious man. Because of her, he’d become the patron saint of playing it safe.

She’d come back after all these years to help, because he’d asked her to. He’d actually called her after his heart attack and asked for help. She’d been blown away, and determined to do things right this time. Mandy and her grandfather deserved this chance to know each other. But running into Nathan had shown her there was a limit to how much playing it safe she could stomach, how much confrontation she could avoid and still live with herself.

She crossed her arms and stared down both her father and her moment of truth.

“I’m doing everything I can not to make waves for you again,” she said. “But—”

“Grandpa, Grandpa!” Mandy flew into the kitchen, a colorful bundle of creative energy dressed in the pink and lime-green overalls Jenn had bought in the dead of winter, because they made her think of lemonade and watermelon on a summer afternoon. “Grandpa, guess what!”

The six-year-old hovered in front of the table, her hands braced on her grandfather’s knees. If it weren’t for Jenn’s careful instructions that Grandpa wasn’t to be jostled or bumped, the child no doubt would have launched herself into his lap.

“What?” Jenn’s father smiled down at the living miniature of both his daughter and his late wife.

Green eyes sparkling, golden hair pulled back in a curling ponytail, Mandy held up a wrinkled sheet of paper covered in unintelligible hieroglyphics. “I wrote a letter to read to Grandma tonight.”

He took the paper. Ran a shaking hand across its surface.

“Grandma’s gone, sweetheart. She’s gone to heaven.”

Jenn blinked at the sound of her father’s grief for the high-school sweetheart he’d lost to breast cancer just three years ago.

“Mommy reads my letters to God when I say my prayers,” Mandy replied in a stage whisper. Her hand cupped her mouth as she leaned forward to share her secret. “She says He passes my letters on to Grandma.”

Jenn’s dad looked at her over her daughter’s head. He set the letter aside and hugged Mandy. He started to speak, swallowed, then cleared his throat. “Amanda Grace, I know how much you want to talk with Grandma—”

“I wish I’d met her before she left for heaven.” Mandy’s head dropped. “Mommy says she would have liked me.”

“Of course she would have. And I’m sure she wishes she’d met you, too.” He waited for Mandy to look up. Then his grandfatherly understanding rearranged itself into the earnest gaze of Reverend Joshua Gardner, champion of finding spiritual meaning from any and every situation. “But as much as we want to talk to the loved ones we’ve lost, we need to remember what our prayers are supposed to be for.”

“But—”

“Our talking time with God shouldn’t be about Grandma,” he said with a gentle firmness that had won countless souls.

Jenn couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

He produced a smile she was certain he didn’t feel, then tried to give Mandy another hug. Her stiff little body refused to melt into him this time.

“Grandma’s happy in heaven,” he said. “God’s taking excellent care of her, so we can stop worrying.”

“But Mommy said God talks to Grandma for me.” Mandy pulled away, planting her hands on her little girl hips. “She said—”