Page 39 of So Far Gone
They tried opening Leah’s email on Joanie’s laptop, but Leah had signed out of the account, and while her username popped
up, they didn’t have her password. After a dozen guesses (Asher: “What about velociraptor?”) they gave up.
Bethany’s cheeks filled with air, and she let the breath go out in a deep sigh. For a moment, Kinnick wondered if she was considering going back to Doug’s Incan paradise, perhaps taking a guided trip with Jefe Jeff.
Instead, she said, “Well, we may not know where she is, but I think I know who she’s with.”
***
Brian said he’d keep looking for Leah around Ford that night, even though Bethany told him that wasn’t necessary. He and Joanie
loaned Kinnick their second car, an old Subaru Outback splattered with road mud and Sierra Club bumper stickers, to take Bethany
and Asher back to Spokane. Kinnick drove to their apartment on the city’s north side, hopeful that they’d find Leah there.
But it was after 11 p.m. when they arrived, and there was no sign of her. No sign of Shane, either. He hadn’t answered Bethany’s
last phone call, when she’d left a message saying that Leah was most likely with Pastor Gallen’s son. She’d left a message
for the pastor, too, but hadn’t heard back from him, either.
They spent a mostly sleepless night at the Spokane apartment, Kinnick curled up on yet another person’s couch, startled by the sounds of the city at night, the cars and voices and barking dogs, the bright streetlights making it feel like an endless dusk out there.
In the morning, he sipped coffee and looked around the apartment while Bethany showered.
Chuck was right when he said the place was tidy.
Comfortable. Lived-in. Hard to believe she and Shane had only been here a few months.
How could the surfaces remain so neat while Bethany’s insides were apparently roiling?
Again, he felt this strange sensation: pride alongside confusion, the sense that his daughter was a kind of stranger, unknowable to him.
On a bulletin board in the kitchen, home school assignments were carefully pinned up next to Bible verses, Asher’s most recent report on Mount St. Helen’s (complete with a drawing in mideruption), and Leah’s essay on the novels of C.
S. Lewis. On the other walls were family photos: of Leah and Asher, of Shane and Bethany and the kids, and one lovely portrait of Celia and Cortland.
No pictures of him, of course. There were also a couple of framed political posters, Kinnick reminded of the tamer religious posters and needlepoints ( This is the house the Lord has made ) on the walls of Bethany’s former home in Grants Pass.
How different this “art” was—in one, a brutalized Jesus had been crucified against an American flag; in another, a cross of
red, white, and blue stood beneath the words: “One Nation Under God,” with the next word, “Indivisible,” covered by what looked
like a red-stamped: “REPENT!”
Bethany came out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a sweater, with a towel wrapped around her head. “My hair was so greasy,”
she said. She checked her charging phone, then set it back on the counter, looking up in time to see Kinnick still standing
in front of the framed “REPENT” poster.
“Shane keeps putting that up,” she said. “I take it down. He puts it back up.”
Kinnick pretended he’d just noticed the poster. “Oh. Really?”
She held up her phone. “Nothing from Leah, or from Shane. Or Pastor Gallen.” She bit her lip. “I swear, if anything happens
to her—”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Kinnick said. But he couldn’t help wondering how Bethany would’ve finished that sentence: — I’ll never forgive myself. Or— I’ll never forgive you .
Kinnick said, “I shouldn’t have left the kids with Joanie. I should’ve stayed with them until you came back.”
“Not your fault,” Bethany said.
“She’s most likely with that boy, David Jr., just like you said.” Kinnick tapped the edge of his coffee cup. “And I’m sure
they’re fine. Do you think they’re at the Rampart, with Shane?”
Bethany nodded. “I hope so.”
“You don’t think they’d try to elope or something?”
Bethany shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. And I can’t imagine any church performing a wedding ceremony with a thirteen-year-old
bride. Even in Idaho.”
Bethany brought out a hand towel, one of Shane’s flannel shirts, and his deodorant. Without a word, she set them on the counter
in front of Kinnick.
“I stink again?” he asked, pinching his arms to his sides. “Have people gotten more sensitive about hygiene in the last few
years?”
“I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” Bethany said. She went to get Asher started in the shower, then walked next door to
talk to Anna. Kinnick used the hand towel to freshen up at the kitchen sink, put on Shane’s deodorant and his flannel shirt,
and walked over to the bookshelves, which were covered mostly with young adult Christian titles. There was a bookmark in one
paperback, and he pulled it out and read a few sentences, putting it back when his daughter came inside and said that Anna
wasn’t home.
Bethany had a thick stack of mail in her hands, and she stood in the kitchen, going through it, piece by piece, unceremoniously
dropping the envelopes into two piles on the little round kitchen table. She sighed and looked out the window.
All night, Kinnick had lain awake, trying to figure out what to say to his distant daughter. Spotting her at the concert,
running through the crowd and climbing the fence, he’d had the insane idea that he was rescuing her, that she needed saving, that all he had to do was reach her, and all would be settled between them. He’d pictured them
coming together in a warm, forgiving embrace. But, of course, he’d ended up in a security guard’s arms instead. And, since
then, it seemed like Bethany hadn’t wanted to meet his eyes, or to talk about anything except how to find Leah. Other than
the thing she’d said about being tired of his disappointment, and the bit about him stinking, they hadn’t really talked at
all.
Kinnick recalled her coming to visit four years earlier, during the pandemic, and the icy, six-foot gap she’d insisted they maintain. It felt like that distance was between them still—and maybe would be forever. He had no idea how to breach it.
While thinking about that earlier visit Kinnick wondered if he wasn’t maybe going about this all wrong. If it wasn’t delusional
to think he could simply come back into her life and say he was ready to be her father again, to jump back into their tangled
relationship without at least trying to untie the original knots.
“Beth—”
She glanced up, a neutral look on her face.
“Look, I don’t know if this is the right time, but please hear me out. I need to say some things.” She didn’t stop him this
time, and Kinnick went on: “I am not disappointed in you. I’m sorry I gave you that impression. And I’m sorry that I took out whatever issues I had with your
partners on you. That was wrong of me. I have wanted to say that to you many times over the last few years—”
She flinched at last few years —as she should, of course, unconscionable he should be out of her life for so long—but Kinnick knew that he had to keep going,
to get it all out. “You know, a friend recently asked what I learned living alone in the woods. When people ask me that, the
only things I can ever think of are quotes from people who’ve said it before. Aristotle. Thoreau. But I’m starting to think
Thoreau might have been full of shit. If we aren’t living for others, maybe we aren’t really living.”
He took a deep breath. “When you came to visit me last time, you asked if I had seen you skipping school when you were fifteen.
Well, I did. I saw you that day. I watched you drive past the house with that boy. And I never said a thing. Because I was
with someone I shouldn’t have been with, too.”
Bethany just stared at him, no reaction on her face.
“But you probably knew that. Bethany... I am so full of regret. And shame. For turning my back on you that way. And not just seven years ago. And not just because of Shane. So... what I wanted to say... is that I am sorry. For so many things. But maybe we could just start with that?”
The breath seemed to catch in Bethany’s throat. She inhaled deeply.
“I’ve been trying to figure something else out,” Kinnick said. “When you were going through such a hard time these last weeks,
after your mother died, why you sent the kids to be with me ? And I could only think of two possible answers. Either you wanted to send me a message. Or you really needed me. And I just
want to say, whichever it is, I’m here for it.”
Still, that noncommittal look on her face. Then, finally, a small nod.
Kinnick took a step toward her. “I know I’ve got a lot of years to make up. And I know I can’t do it in a day. But I’d like
to start now, if that’s okay.”
Kinnick took a few more steps, reached out, and tentatively took his daughter in his arms. She stiffened at first, then shuddered
and began crying, and finally collapsed against his chest.
Kinnick whispered, “I’m sorry,” and “It’s going to be okay,” and “I’m sorry,” again.
She managed to say only, “Dad,” and he squeezed her tighter.
And then he felt smaller arms around his waist, Kinnick looking down to see Asher, out of the shower, hair wet, barefoot,
dressed in sweatpants and no shirt, his arms around them both. “What are we hugging about?”
***
In the car afterward, Bethany felt drained by her brief, cathartic cry.
Ever since the panic attacks at Paititi, or maybe since her mother’s death, or shoot, maybe most of her life, she’d concentrated on breathing shallowly, thinking clearly, focusing on each small step—trying to get through the days without her mother, get through the festival, get back to her kids, talk Shane down from his anger—to keep her thoughts always near the surface, and therefore, keep her emotions at bay, for now, at least until they got Leah back.