Page 76 of So Far Gone

Bethany sighed. “Let’s all just... stay calm, huh?”

She sipped the terrible coffee her father had made. She had to breathe through her mouth in here because of the smells in the house. Body odor and dirty clothes and old books. Like the crypt of a mummified philosophy professor. Not exactly how she’d been picturing her own “escape.” Meanwhile, her father could not sit still, and kept moving stacks of books, picking things up, setting them down elsewhere—like someone tidying a compost pile. He smelled his armpit, then changed shirts, then smelled his armpit again. She wasn’t sure she could handle this newgiving-an-effortRhys, who, at one point, went to his pantry and brought out a plate of random canned and dried foods from the kitchen. “Soda cracker? Vienna sausage? Dehydrated huckleberry?”—each offering somehow sadder than the last.

Davy sighed. He picked a soda cracker off the plate and sat back down. “Maybe I should just move to Canada or something.”

“It’s not so great up there, either,” Bethany said, her father giving her a warm smile. “Look, Davy, I’ll help you talk to your parents. I’ll go with you.”

“My dad’s not going to listen to you,” Davy said.

That was undoubtedly true. Especially after what the church believed she’d done, leaving Shane for her old drug-addled, musician boyfriend.

“You know what would piss my dad off the most?” A sly smile crossed Davy’s face, and for the first time, Bethany thought this wispy young man might have a chance in life. “Before they found their new church,Marsh’s parents baptized him in a Catholic Church. I should tell him Marsh is Catholic and that we want to get married in his church. Dad’s head will explode!”

“I don’t think men can marry each other in the Catholic Church,” Leah said quietly, almost to herself, as if it was dawning on her where this was all headed.

Oh, how Bethany wished she were just talking to her daughter about this. She dreaded what was coming for Leah, the teenage years, all that heartache and blooming awkwardness, the cacophonous thoughts and unwieldy feelings. She could already sense her daughter beginning to pull away, slipping into adolescent shutdown mode.

She patted Leah on the leg, and they made eye contact, Leah swallowing hard, Bethany mouthing,It’s okay.

Then Bethany stood. “Listen, Davy, before we do anything else, can we at least let your parents know that you’re safe?”

Davy held up his phone. “No coverage.”

“We can drive back toward town and send them a text.”

There was a sound outside then.

Kinnick looked up. Dust at the far end of the driveway. “Someone’s coming.”

Bethany went to the front window and looked out, Kinnick stepping up beside her.

A black Dodge Ram pickup was driving toward the house.

“Shit,” Rhys said. “I know that truck.” He reached up and touched his yellow-bruised eye, the panic rising in his chest.

The pickup parked right behind the Outback, nearly at its bumper, as if signaling that no one was going anywhere for a while. The driver’s-side door opened and out stepped the man with the goatee. He was wearing a black Kevlar vest, his handgun holstered under his armpit.

“That’s the guy who hit me,” Kinnick said.

Shane got out of the passenger seat, his clean-shaven face gaunt,mouth pinched, as if he hadn’t smiled in months. He, at least, appeared to be unarmed. He looked toward the house, trying to see inside.

And then, from the tree line behind them, out stepped Dean Burris, also in black and in a Kevlar vest, a handgun holstered at his waist. He had a hand on Asher’s shoulder.

Bethany put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no.”

Asher, who was, for some reason, not wearing his boots, ran to the passenger side of the truck, to his father, who bent down and hugged the boy.

Dean Burris stood with his hands on his hips. He walked farther up the driveway and called to the house, “Oh, Mr. Kinnick! You’d best come out now. You’ve got company!”

***

The front door opened and Kinnick walked out alone. He pulled the door closed behind him. Let out a deep breath. He could do this. A light breeze had picked up, and the air had gotten warmer; a fine sifting of dust blew off the driveway. Kinnick walked past the wringer washing machine and down the wooden steps toward the three men, trying to look calm and unhurried.

“Hello, Mr. Burris,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

The three men before him stood in a triangle, Dean out front, Shane behind him to the right, hands on Asher’s shoulders, the goateed man to Burris’s left and slightly behind him, leaning against the front of the truck.

“Well, if it isn’t Rhys Kinnick, staff writer,” Dean said. “You know what? When I asked about you, back in that town where little David Jr.’s cell phone cut out last night, folks said, ‘Kinnick? Oh, sure, he lives up Hunters highway. About eleven miles.’ And look, here you are.”

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