Page 19 of So Far Gone

“No, but I saw a priest,” Kinnick said, and nodded at the young man again. “Figured I’d skip the middleman.”

“I was a Golden Gloves boxer.” The young priest shrugged. “It’s a very common injury. I tried to take him to the hospital, but he wouldn’t go. He’ll eventually need maxio-facial surgery, but as long as he manages the pain, he should be fine for the time being.”

Lucy looked back at Kinnick’s face, which did not look fine.

“And I’m technically not a priest yet,” the priest added. “I’m a deacon for another month, but our parish doesn’t have a priest, so I’mpracticing.” He fingered the collar. “I mean... I’m not a practicing priest yet, I’m practicing tobeone. Eventually. But people like the collar, so, you know—” Another shrug.

The flummoxed Lucy turned back to Kinnick. “Did... did you at least go to the police?”

He nodded. “My car died at his church, so Reverend Brandon here drove me to the cop shop first. I filed a report. Then I asked him to drop me off here.”

The deacon-priest gave a small wave. “Speaking of which, I should get back. Chess club will be over, and I need to close the abbey.”

“Sure,” Kinnick said. “Thank you.”

“I hope your grandson makes it back to play chess.” And with that, the deacon-priest-boxer left.

Kinnick turned back to Lucy. “I filled out a complaint with the cops, but I only know one of the nutjobs’ names. And it’s not even the one who hit me. The only thing I know for sure is that they’re idiot friends of my idiot son-in-law.”

“Bethany’s still with—”

“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, forsurviving 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 happenedpost-his divorce, butpre-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 havegotten 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 personreallybreak 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 foranotherhalf 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 ofthe 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 infamousaffaire de bureauwith 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.

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