Page 41 of So Far Gone

She recoiled a bit, hearing his voice, recalling his dark and doom-filled sermons. She knew that Shane had complained to him

about her, questioning her commitment to the Blessed Fire. She always sensed judgment coming from the church leader—and that

was before she ran off to a psychedelic electronica festival. “Hello, Pastor. Thanks for calling me back.”

He stumbled through his words at first, as if he’d had a prepared script for ministering to her and was rushing through it.

“I-I’ve wanted to talk to you for some time now. I should have called right after your mother’s death and before this business

between you and Shane reached a crisis point. I’m sorry I didn’t. You were new to our congregation and have seemed a little

wary of us at times. But I should have told you how, in our deepest struggles, in times of sorrow and grief, God still has

a plan for us. He calls on a grieving wife to first care for her husband and for her children, even in times of great pain,

as He cares for us even as we disappoint Him. He shows us that we can only begin to heal through His love—” But then he suddenly

shifted to Leah and David Jr., “—but, obviously, we have another situation on our hands right now—”

“Are they with you?” Bethany asked.

“No,” the pastor said. “I had hoped they were with you.”

“No,” Bethany said, “but you think they’re together?”

“Yes. We’re sure of it. David Jr. was supposed to drive home from Tacoma yesterday. But then he called Darlene on his way

and said he was making a detour to pick up Leah because her family—your family—was imploding.”

“I wouldn’t say imploding.” Bethany looked over at Kinnick.

Pastor Gallen went on: “His last text said that something came up and he wasn’t coming home after all. Darlene wrote back,

but Davy didn’t even open the text. She can follow his phone’s location. I don’t entirely understand the technology like Darlene

does, but she says his signal cut out last night somewhere up there. Maybe his battery died, or he turned off his phone, or

drove out of range—”

“In Spokane?”

“Well, no,” he said, “she lost the signal northwest of there. Near a town called—”

In the background, the voice of a woman, his wife, Darlene, saying, “Springdale.”

“Springdale,” the pastor repeated.

Bethany looked over at her father. She covered her phone and spoke in a whisper, “Do you think they would’ve gone to your

place?”

Kinnick shrugged. “I don’t know why they would.”

“Sister Bethany?” the pastor was saying. “Are you there?”

She put the phone back to her ear. “Yes. I’m here.”

“Can I ask—how is your father’s friend? The one who was shot up here.”

“He’s going to be fine,” she said. “We just saw him.”

“Oh, good. I’m relieved. We don’t need that kind of trouble. The young man who accidentally shot him feels terrible about

it.”

Yeah, probably not as terrible as Chuck feels, Bethany thought.

Then the pastor cleared his throat. “And, well... there’s something else that I—that we—well— Um...” He seemed hesitant about what he was going to say next, and Bethany heard the woman’s voice in the background again.

“Go on, David, tell her.”

“I am telling her, Darlene,” Pastor Gallen said, the first indication of weariness in his voice. “I wanted to apologize to you

personally, Bethany. My son is going through a difficult time, as a lot of young people are these days, bombarded with conflicting

information, with a culture that worships permissiveness and debauchery, images that confuse and titillate, that go against

God’s will, and make a mockery of His plans for us, as revealed not only in Genesis and Leviticus and Romans and elsewhere,

but also, Jeremiah, 28:11, and I just wanted to say—”

There was a rustling, and she could hear Darlene trying to grab the phone from him. “Darlene, would you—”

“If you’re not going to tell her—”

“I am telling her!”

“Give me the phone, David. Please.” Then it was Darlene’s voice in her ear: “Sister Bethany, what my husband is trying to

say is that David Jr. is gay.”

“We don’t know that!” Pastor Gallen said in the background.

“Of course we do!” she said to him. “We’ve known it since he was six!” And back into the phone: “He’s never had any interest

in girls. And lately, he’s been talking about this young man at school, who, we recently found out, is gay, and we overheard

Davy say he has feelings for this boy—”

“Darlene!” the pastor said again.

“David. Please.” Her voice softened and now she was talking to her husband. “You know it’s true. Remember the images we found

on his computer? And why else does an almost twenty-year-old boy, when pressured by his father to find a girlfriend, choose

a thirteen-year-old girl that he’s only met twice, someone he can’t even date for two years.”

“Oh,” Bethany said. “I see.” She suddenly felt an ache for Leah, who likely would have fallen for a gay boy at some point in her life, so many straight girls did. But, usually, this kind of thing happened a few years later, at seventeen,

or at twenty, at theater camp, or in college. To have her first love be gay? At thirteen? This was going to sting. Oh, poor

Leah.

Darlene seemed exhausted. She said to Bethany: “David asked him to come home this week. Yesterday, I found out why. So, I

told Davy why his father had summoned him.”

“I didn’t summon him, Darlene—” the pastor said. “I just wanted—”

“He wants to send Davy to conversion therapy,” Darlene said. “He wants to do it quickly and quietly, before anyone in the

church finds out.”

“Darlene, I want to offer him the opportunity to talk to someone, that’s all,” Pastor Gallen said in the background.

“So,” Darlene said to Bethany, “I guess you can see why Davy didn’t come home last night.”

The pastor said, “Please, Darlene. This is hard enough.”

Bethany thought she should probably let the Gallens work through this by themselves. “Listen, Darlene, I have a pretty good

idea where they are. We’ll look for them there and I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

“Thank you,” Darlene said.

Bethany wanted to say something else, to tell them to go easy on their son, or to have an open mind, but the words failed

her, and she hung up in the middle of Darlene saying, “God Bless you, Beth—”

***

She tried Shane once more, got no answer, and left another message—“Shane, we think we know where Leah is. Please call me

back.”

Then Bethany called Joanie’s number. She handed the phone to Kinnick, who had changed directions and was driving them north out of Spokane, the suburban streets giving way to a straight highway that cut through alfalfa and wheat fields, toward the deeply forested foothills and mountains looming in the distance.

“H-hello?” It felt so strange to Kinnick, holding a phone to his head again, seven years after he’d thrown his own cell phone

out a car window somewhere in Southern Oregon. How ridiculous the whole concept of a “phone” had become over the years—going

from the dedicated oversize receiver of his youth, curved and cupped, fitting so nicely in your hand and covering your ear

so perfectly, to this hard, unwieldy deck of cards that doubled as movie camera, personal assistant, consumer tracking device,

and anxiety crack pipe.

“Hello,” Kinnick said again. He thought he could hear a faint voice but there was no answer. “I don’t think it’s working,”

he said to Bethany.

“You have it upside down,” Asher said from the backseat.

“Oh.”

He flipped the phone over, and there was Joanie’s voice. “You’re talking into the wrong end, Rhys!”

“Yeah, I just realized that.”

He could hear Brian’s voice in the background, too. “For Christ’s sake, he’s like a child.”

Kinnick explained that they were, at that moment, driving back to his place, and that Leah and David Jr. might have gone there

last night.

“Why would they go there?” Joanie asked.

“Go where?” Brian said in the background.

“He thinks they went to his place,” she told Brian.

“His place? Why would they go to his place?”

“That’s what I asked him.”

“I have no idea,” Kinnick said.

“What did he say?”

“He said he has no idea,” Joanie told Brian.

“Does he want us to go?” Brian asked.

“No, he says they’re on their way now,” Joanie told him.

Brian said, “What I’m saying is, since we’re closer, does he want us to drive up there?”

“Do you want us to go since we’re closer?” Joanie asked.

“No, that’s okay,” Kinnick said. This three-way conversation was making him dizzy. “We’re almost to Deer Park already. We’ll

be there soon enough, and if they are there, I think Bethany’s the one to talk to them.”

“He thinks Bethany’s the one to talk to them,” Joanie told Brian.

“Makes sense,” Brian said.

“Brian thinks that makes sense,” Joanie said.

Kinnick said, “I just wanted to make sure it’s okay with you and Brian if we used your car a little bit longer.”

“He wants to know if he can keep the Outback.”

“Here, let me talk to him,” Brian said.

She handed the phone over.

“I don’t want to keep your car,” Kinnick said. “I just want to use it a little longer. Just until tomorrow.”

“No problem,” Brian said. “Use it as long as you need.”

“I’m planning to get my car towed out of the Episcopal Church parking lot and taken to a shop tomorrow.”

“If by shop, you mean junkyard, I think that’s a good move. Hey Rhys, listen,” Brian said, “are you sure you don’t want me

to come up there?”

“No, you’ve done plenty, Brian. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“No, you probably can’t. Okay, well, if you change your mind—”

“You’ll be my first call,” Kinnick said.

It was another thing about phones now; you didn’t get the satisfying closure of hanging up. You just stopped talking. Pressed

a button. So anticlimactic. He handed the phone back to Bethany. “Probably time for me to get one of these things again. I

don’t suppose they have one with a rotary dial?”

“We can check.”

They turned past Loon Lake and drove west, down a steep hill and, eventually, through the town of Springdale, turning past