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“Afraid so,” she said.
“But you’ll come back?”
“Sure.”
“I’d like that,” he said sheepishly.
Asher came over with a saltshaker-size hunk of basalt. “Can I have this?”
“Of course you can,” Kinnick said. “Leah, do you want a rock?”
She looked at him like he might be insane. “We have them at home.”
Her father smiled at Bethany. “That sounded exactly like you.”
Bethany felt her face flush as she walked the kids toward the car. Leah got in front and pulled her seat belt across her lap. Asher climbed into his booster seat in the back, and Bethany leaned in and buckled him.
When she straightened back up, Kinnick flinched, as if he were about to come in for a hug, but suddenly remembered the pandemic, and stayed back.
She smiled, said, “Well,” and got in the driver’s seat.
Before she could close the door, he crouched down, careful to stay six feet away. “Bye, kids.”
“Bye.”
“Thanks for the rock.”
“You bet. Come back for more. I’ve got plenty.”
Bethany reached for the door handle but at the last second, turned to her father. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“When I was fifteen, I skipped school one day.”
“Well, that’s okay,” he said.
“No, I know.” She laughed. “It’s just, as we drove back to school, I saw you standing on the porch, and... I wondered if you saw me, too.”
He stared at her blankly. “Jeez... I don’t... I don’t remember that. When did you say this was?”
“It’s okay.” She smiled. “Don’t worry about it. Bye, Dad.”
“Goodbye, Bethany,” he said. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Also true, that. Of course. And that is what stung so much. She closed her door, started the car, and drove away, watching him shrink in the rearview mirror, standing in the middle of his driveway with his hands in the pockets of his brown suede jacket. At the end of his driveway, she turned, and when she looked once more in the mirror, he was gone.
***
Kinnick stared out the window, pine trees blurring to green and brown bands, like a dull Rothko painting. Brian drove them deeper into the woods, ever closer, Kinnick hoped, to finding his daughter. They had somehow missed the turnoff the first time and were doubling back on this empty two-lane highway.
They’d woken up that morning—Kinnick on Brian’s couch, the kids in sleeping bags on the floor. After breakfast, he and Brian had climbed in his Bronco, stopped at Rhys’s house to get his passport, then started out for the border, leaving the kids with Joanie. They crossed into Canada above Metaline Falls, drove north and west, passing through pristine forest alongside a series of rivers and streams, past farms and ranches, quaint little towns. And now, according to the vague directions they’d gotten from a gas station attendant in Montrose, they were getting close to Paititi.
Apparently for the second time, since they’d driven past it once.
“I don’t see how you missed it the first time,” Brian said.