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He flinched at this. “I mean, I don’t—yes? What makes something a book? You know... can I just bind two thousand pages together and pronounce it, ‘Book!’ I mean, there must be some inherent value to a thing outside its form, or its public recognition, right?” She had noticed this, too, the last time she came up here, the way her father seemed to be debating himself whenever he spoke. “Then again,” he said, “maybe not.”
“Did you say two thousand pages?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“You just said ‘You can’t bind two thousand pages and call it a book.’ Have you written two thousand pages, Dad?”
“Are there fish in here?” Asher turned and asked.
“There were alotof fish when I was a kid,” Kinnick answered. “Little brook trout. About the size of your hand. Not anymore, I’m afraid.”
“Where did they go?” Asher asked.
“Where indeed,” said his grandfather. “People build houses in these hills, and dig new wells, and the groundwater eventually dries up. There isn’t enough water for trout anymore. Or much of anything.”
Bethany smiled to herself. That was not the way you answered the question of a five-year-old. You said something like,They went to another stream, or,They swam to the ocean and turned into salmon, or,They went to fish heaven.
“What grades are you two in now?” Kinnick asked the kids. This question got under Bethany’s skin, too.Does he really not know?
“Kindergarten,” Asher said.
“Fourth,” said Leah.
And they went back to throwing rocks.
“What are your favorite subjects?”
“English,” Leah said.
“Rocks,” said Asher.
And they went back to throwing rocks.
“Good subjects,” Rhys said.
Until that moment, Bethany had been looking for a way to bring up the reason for her visit, the breakthrough she’d had with her therapist, and how the frost between Bethany and Rhys maybe hadn’t started four years ago, but almost twenty, when she’d seen him at the house with that woman. And to ask him: Did you see me? And do you know where it comes from, this desire we both seem to have to escape? Is it genetic? Are we running from each other? And how does it feel—to actuallydo it?
But now, she wondered, what would be the point of any of it? This man didn’t even know what grades her kids were in. He hoped to leave no trace of himself, including, she supposed, his people.Thatwas the answer to her question.
Rhys Kinnick was the personification of selfishness.
“Did you see my solar panels when you drove up?” Kinnick asked.
“No,” she said, “I guess I didn’t.”
They turned back, and he pointed out a single row of heavy, shiny panels mounted on the tin roof of the old house. “Turns out it’s not too hard to put them on a tin roof, even with that kind of pitch.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. The electrical part was tricky, though, as you might guess. There’s a guy who lives up in Ford, this friend of mine, Brian, he was an electrical systems specialist in the air force. He’s been helping me. It’s easy enough to generate electricity, especially in summer. Storing it is the real challenge.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” And he went on for another five minutes like this, about marine batteries and inverters and about how the real trick wasn’t adding more power, but finding ways to have the power on demand, to only use it when you needed it. “I mean a refrigerator, that’s your biggest usage right there.”
As he spoke, Asher came over and took Bethany’s hand. “Mom. Can we go now?”
“Pretty soon,” she said.