Page 12 of So Far Gone

“Shithead Shane. Yeah. Anyway, the police seemed pretty dubious of my position as concerned grandfather.”

Lucy nodded. She practically bit her tongue to keep herself from saying the next part: So what the fuck are you doing HERE, Kinnick? Language, Lucy!

But he’d never needed her to say things out loud anyway, and Kinnick answered her unspoken question by putting his hands out.

“Lucy, I need your help.”

***

You look amazing. Was that really the first thing Kinnick could think to say?

So many other sentiments he could’ve led with—maybe, How are your kids?

or better yet: Hey! Congratulations on becoming city editor , for surviving the constant purges, RIFs, and defections, for succeeding in a career that spat out so many good people, for putting out a newspaper with a playpen full of interns and twentysomethings.

Instead, what were the first words out of his mouth?

You look amazing. He cursed his male shallowness, which even seven years locked in a cabin with great works of philosophy, science, and literature

apparently hadn’t cured.

But! In his defense! She did! Look amazing! Slender and fit, formerly short black hair grown out past her shoulders, pulled

away from her apple-shaped face, and those runner’s legs, and, sure, there were maybe a few more lines around her mouth and

next to her eyes—but oh, those dark, patient eyes; one look into them and a rush of feelings had surged through Kinnick’s

sore body. The old desire heating up the furnace.

The affair between them had started harmlessly enough, as flirty professional admiration—Lucy the young, eager criminal justice

reporter asking questions of the veteran environmental reporter thirteen years her senior, a man with a seemingly endless

knowledge of bureaucratic work-arounds and records searches and Freedom of Information Act requests: all the boring paper

parts of the job that, for a certain ambitious breed of nerd-reporter, were practically foreplay.

They’d danced around their attraction for a while, going to flirty lunches together, exchanging long glances, finding reasons

to have drinks after work. Then, one night at an investigative journalism conference in San Diego, they got drunk and made

out after his presentation ( Document Dump: How to Go Beyond the Abstract ). They both wrote that night off as a booze-filled mistake—a mistake they reprised three years later at the company’s Christmas

party. Then, a year after that, they began making the mistake on the regular, meeting once or twice a week at Rhys’s downtown

apartment for breathless, rather intoxicating sex.

This severe escalation had happened post- his divorce, but pre- hers, and so, when Lucy’s husband, Paul, a skeezy high school teacher and volleyball coach, found an alien sock in the laundry (it must have gotten tangled in her tights as she’d hurriedly dressed at Rhys’s place) the jig, as nobody said anymore, was up.

You broke up that poor girl’s marriage! was how Celia had put it, lovely, quick-to-judge-but-not-wrong Celia, who wanted to hear none of Kinnick’s evidence of the

questionable character of Lucy’s ex, Creepy Coach Paul. Celia’s profound disapproval, even after their divorce, had remained

the most powerful force in Kinnick’s universe.

I mean , Rhys had pleaded, can one person really break up a marriage?

Celia had given him her usual sweet, knife-blade smile. If that one person has sex with one of the two persons in the marriage, then, yes.

Of course, what Rhys had meant to ask was more complex than that— Isn’t infidelity more a symptom of a failing marriage than the cause? Or a symptom of something else? But pressing such a weak, clearly self-serving case with Celia would only deepen the hole he’d dug—or cause her to reflect

back on the details of their own breakup, and so he’d clammed up.

Even now, years later, with Celia dead (and the lump returning to Kinnick’s sore throat) he feared her judgment from the grave

more than almost anything he could imagine.

After the office scandal came the space: Rhys giving Lucy some so that she could go to counseling with her husband; Paul giving

Lucy some space by filing for divorce and moving to Costa Rica with a former player on one of his volleyball teams. The newspaper

gave Rhys some space by including him in a round of layoffs that left the then-fifty-five-year-old reporter rootless and depressed

and living off his small severance. Kinnick gave both good judgment and decency some space by diving whole-liver into a six-month

bender that saw him closing downtown cocktail bars at 2 a.m. and following the waitresses and bartenders who’d just overserved

him to industry joints that could overserve him for another half hour.

And not long after that, of course, Rhys gave his family some space by punching his loony son-in-law in his conspiracy-spouting face and surrendering to the idiotic whims of the 46 percent by moving off the grid into a little cinder block house deep in the woods. Lots of space up there.

And now, here was Rhys Kinnick, eight years after the infamous affaire de bureau with Lucy Park, having tried to heal his soul alone in the woods, back on a familiar barstool a few blocks from his old newspaper

office, bruised left eye swollen almost shut, broken cheekbone throbbing with pain from the beating he’d taken earlier that

day, frantic to find his grandchildren and his daughter, and waiting for Lucy, who promised to come meet him here after she

dropped off tacos for her son.

But that was almost forty minutes ago. Where was she?

Kinnick slow-sipped his soda water. He needed to be sober to talk to Lucy. Sober to find Leah and Asher. Sober for Bethany.

Even for Celia, bless her heart. He’d managed sobriety for most of his time in the woods, before lapsing a few times, most

recently with Brian and Joanie. Sober was the way back from the edge, back into the world. And that lump in his throat? Maybe

permanent.

“Another, boss?” The bartender had a faint Spanish accent and a tightly trimmed beard. He pointed to Kinnick’s glass.

“What do I owe you so far?”

“Four bucks.”

“For soda water?”

“Heat and lights, my man.”

“Still seems like a lot for soda water.”

“If you were the designated driver for your party, you’d get a discount.”

“What if I’m my designated driver?”

“Doesn’t qualify.”

“What if I have a friend on the way?”

“You need at least three to be a party.”

“Seems random.”

“Not at all. Three’s a party. Two’s a date.”

“This will definitely not be a date.”

“That’s what they all say. Right after they swipe right.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Means soda water is four bucks.”

“And how much is soda water if I qualify for the designated driver discount—”

“Three-fifty.”

“You know what? You win.” Kinnick threw up his hands. “I’ll pay the two quarters.” The bartender swept away his glass and

returned it full, Kinnick taking this opportunity to look around the bar, an old newspaper haunt. It had taken him years to

believe that the world was not a series of rooms like this, crowded with people and their cultural noise, their agendas and

desires. To remember that the world was the world, and we merely passed through it: twenty-some thousand sunrises, each one

with the power to renew us.

It was surreal, being back here again. Everything felt a little bit different, but not as different as he might’ve expected,

after so long in the wilderness. The flat-screen TVs were maybe a little flatter. There were QR codes on coasters instead

of menus. Granted, it had only been a few years, and he’d only been hiding sixty-some miles away, and he had been in a few bars in Springdale and other small towns since then, and he had seen a little bit of television at Brian and Joanie’s house, but the changes he noted had a strange quality to them. Not

only did they seem broadly unimpressive, but, in some cases, they seemed like steps backward. Like, not only were there no

flying cars, there seemed to be more big pickups and SUVs than ever.

At home right now, the crickets would be singing their first flat notes, that lone creek bullfrog calling him out ( Kinnick! Kinnick! ) as the Milky Way began its smear across the night sky. And here he was, sitting on a barstool out of his past, paying four

bucks for soda water.

Finally, after almost an hour, Lucy landed with a sigh and the thunk of a giant purse, and a jailer’s jangly key ring. “You know, Kinnick, if you had a phone, it’d be a lot easier to text and tell you that I changed my mind about helping you.”

“Reason number sixty-eight to not have a phone.”

The bartender came over and she ordered a dry gin martini. “You want one?”

He held up his glass for a third soda water, and the guy left to make their drinks. Rhys turned to her. “So, your kids—”

“Anna and Kel.”

“Right. How old—”

“Anna’s twenty-two, a senior at the University of Washington. Kel’s nineteen.”

“Unbelievable. And is Kel in school, too?”

She let out a breath as the bartender set their drinks in front of them. When he was gone, Lucy took a sip, set her glass

back on the bar, and turned to him. “I can’t small talk like this, Rhys.”

“Lucy, I didn’t mean to—”

She put a hand on his forearm and stopped him. “Look, I don’t blame you. For anything. It wasn’t even about you, really. Paul

was a shitty husband. I was a shitty wife. It’s fine. We were headed for divorce with or without your sock.” She took a deep

breath. “But I’ve spent the last eight years as ‘that cheating wife whose kid ended up on drugs.’ Like some kind of morality

tale. So, forgive me if I’m not in a place where I can just sit here and catch up. Reminisce about the old days.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Kinnick said. “I know I fucked everything up.”

“And now... what?” Lucy turned and faced him. “You think you can just drop in and unfuck everything?”