Page 65 of So Far Gone

“What?”

“Doe? Your sign says, Doe lies. And Midnight mine and Dawn something.”

“Oh, not doe. DOE. Department of Energy. You know what, I’ll tell you about it on our walk.”

It seemed to take an hour for them to leave: Asher used the bathroom, Joanie switched her sweater for a jacket, then changed her shoes, then went back to the sweater. Asher used the bathroom again, and finally, the trailer door opened, but before they could leave, Joanie went back in for the jacket again.

Leah simply moved the cursor back and forth until they were finally gone, then she opened her Gmail again, to write Davy back and apologize for sending a half-finished email, and to say she would love to see him this weekend, though it might be hard—when, right there, at the top of her Gmail account, wasanotheremail from Davy, sent this time, it said, from his iPhone, just a few minutes ago.

Leah—

I was driving back and saw your email. You’re in Ford now? I’m on I-90, at a rest stop, less than two hours from there. I just talked to my mom again, too. My parents are losing it. Youwon’t believe why they want me to come home. Can I drive up and see you? Write me back and I’ll cut off on Highway 231 and find you.

Davy

Leah typed back frantically.

Yes! There’s a little church in the town of Ford. I saw it when we drove up. I will be waiting behind it! I can’t wait to see you!

Leah

She hit send and looked at the clock. Had she answered in time? She waited for a moment to see if he wrote back. How far back up the highway was that church? How long would it take to walk there? And what if Davy didn’t see her message? She knew it didn’t matter. She needed to see him. Should she leave a note? She pulled a pen and notebook from her backpack and wrote:

Joanie,

I went to get some air. I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t worry.

Leah

She checked her email once more, but Davy hadn’t responded. She didn’t want to wait, in case Asher tripped and fell on his dumb head again, or needed to pee for the hundredth time, and came back with Joanie. So, she left the note on the counter, closed the laptop, put it back on the bookshelf, and started out. In the post-Apocalyptic series of books that she wanted to write (a trilogy for sure, maybe more!) the young couple would travel across a decimated country in the end-times (after a plague and civil war), facing all kinds of adventures andhardships as they brought thetruegospel to these far-ranging places, and taught them to let go of their fear. Some of these communities would be lawless, and would have no faith, while others would be like fortresses, operating under the dark, violent cloud of false prophecies and misguided sanctuaries like the Rampart. The young couple would preach a peaceful and simple Christianity, built around sacrifice and helping the poor refugees from the civil war. She’d had the idea evenbeforeshe met David Jr., who, beneath his thick glasses, had the loveliest celery-green eyes. After she’d told him about her book idea last summer at Bible Camp—and he’d told her that he was beginning to disagree with the way his father ran his church—she could only ever imagine the rebellious boy in her book as Davy, and the courageous girl as herself. She grabbed her backpack, stepped out the door, and started out on what she couldn’t help thinking of as their first adventure together.

***

It took Brian, Bethany, and Kinnick nearly four hours to cross back over the border and pick their way south, through the forests of Eastern Washington, all the way to Brian’s place in Ford. It was well after dark by then, and Joanie was frantic. She and Asher had gone on a walk to the creek before dinner, and when they came back, Leah was gone. Joanie and Asher looked around, but they couldn’t find her anywhere.

Kinnick read Leah’s note and then handed it to Bethany, who was strangely calm—just as she had been with Shane when she’d called him from Brian’s car, on the drive back from the Paititi Festival.

That conversation had kept cutting in and out, in the middle of one furious Shane rant or another, first through southern British Columbia (“—you have to be the worst mother in the—”), and then after they crossed the border (“—any idea how humiliating this is for me—”),and again as they skirted the Colville National Forest toward Ford (“—and if you think I’ll ever trust you again—”).

Even with the spotty reception and Bethany holding the phone to her ear, Kinnick had heard the gist of Shane’s blistering take on recent events: Bethany was a harlot, a lying, probably cheating Jezebel who had brought nothing but shame upon their family! And that everyone in the church felt sorry for him, being married to such a woman! And that Shane had been so worried he’d driven all the way to Grants Pass to look for her! And that he’d also looked in Portland, because he “knew you were still in touch with that druggie creep!” And that he couldn’t believe she would run off with her ex to a pagan music festival, and how DARE she have the neighbor take the kids toher father, of all people “—who you don’t even like or respect—” (Kinnick wincing in the front seat). And how dare Rhys come and steal the kids from the very men Shane had chosen to watch them while he was gone—good, protective men, “men of Christ, unlike your sucker-punching father—” and how dare Rhys bring “some kind of crazy, armed cop with him,” and if the FBI raided the Rampart, “it will be your fault if good people get hurt,” and that, as far as Shane was concerned, she had failed in her role as a mother as surely as she failed in God’s eyes, andhewas the only reliable parent now, so she should bring the kids to him immediately, and it was only near the end, when Shane was softening a little, that he said if Bethany was telling the truth, and she hadn’t slept with Doug, and hadn’t gotten back on drugs, and if she vowed to bring the kids home to him this very minute, and to repent, to submit to her husband as God commanded her to, that shemightstill have a path to salvation, and if Christ could forgive her, who was he to withhold forgiveness, and anyway, he’d missed her—only then did Bethany say to Shane, “Listen, Shane, I have something else to tell you. Leah may have run away.”

The ranting and yelling started all over again.

Throughout this exhausting in-and-out phone call—sometimesthey went twenty minutes of driving without reception—Kinnick had marveled at the way Bethany handled Shane’s eruptions, never raising her own voice, saying things like “Yes, I know,” and “Of course you’d feel that way,” and “Well, to be fair,” and “The Bible says a lot of things, Shane,” and “Let’s talk about that after we find Leah,” but he also felt a great deal of sadness, too: that she had grown so adept at keeping the peace, at deflecting Shane’s crazy bullshit. It was as if Kinnick barely knew his daughter now, and all she’d been through the last decade, and shame crept back into his chest. He and Brian kept making worried eye contact, and, as he listened to the muffled yelling from the other side of the phone, Kinnick had the urge to punch his son-in-law again—but, of course, that hadn’t worked out so well the first time.

“That’s got to be exhausting,” Kinnick said after Bethany briefly lost phone service near Onion Creek, the phone dropping to her lap. “I hope you know that you don’t have to put up with his crazy talk.”

Bethany didn’t say anything, just looked out her window and waited for the phone to come back into service again. Then, before she took another call, she answered her father, her voice remaining steady and unruffled. “You know what’s exhausting?” And, not waiting for an answer: “Your constant disappointment in me.”

This landed like a roundhouse to Kinnick’s sore face. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. He and Brian made eye contact again, Brian mouthing the wordWow.

And when they finally arrived at Brian and Joanie’s trailer, Bethany still seemed to be miffed with her father as she calmly processed the day’s events. She held Asher against her waist as he filled her in on his version of the last few days (“—and I fell in Grandpa Rhys’s creek and we went to my chess tournament but we had the day wrong, and we found out there’s another tournament next month, and then Brother Dean took us to the Rampart and we stayed the night there, and I slept in the chapel, but Grandpa Rhys came and got us the next day and brought us here and I slept in a sleeping bagand Billy pulled me down the stairs and in Salish did you know I’msix-nutyears old—”).

Brian volunteered to drive around again, looking for Leah. There were only three directions she could’ve gone, southeast, toward Long Lake and Spokane, north, toward Springdale, and the least likely direction—west, onto the Spokane Indian Reservation.

“We didn’t look that way,” Joanie admitted, Brian grabbing his jacket, about to drive to Wellpinit to look for her, when Bethany glanced down at Asher.

“And what do you know about all of this?”

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