I PICKED NAOMI UP AT TEN ON THE DOT ON MONDAY morning. She was standing outside waiting for me when I drove up to the mission. Next to her feet was a duffel bag packed with whatever clothing the clothes bank had been able to provide. The duffel itself was a big improvement over her paper grocery bag, and I had no doubt that Petey’s hairbrush was nestled safely inside.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked, rolling down the window.
“I hope so,” she said.
For a long part of the trip, we didn’t say much. Then, about the time we started up Snoqualmie Pass, the silence was broken. “You know all about where I came from,” she said. “What about you?”
So I told her. I probably said way more than she wanted to know. I talked about growing up in Seattle in the aftermath of World War II as the son of an unmarried woman who, despite her parents’ disapproval, had refused to give up her out-of-wedlock baby after her fiancé died in a motorcycle accident. I told her how my last name, Beaumont, had come from the Texas town where my father had grown up rather than from his last name.
“I guess girls being in trouble is a long-standing family tradition,” Naomi observed.
I laughed about that. “It’s true,” I admitted, wondering if knowing those stories would make Naomi more or less interested in being a part of her own daughter’s life.
I told Naomi about how my drinking had caused Karen’s and my divorce and how a trip to Ironwood Ranch had finally gotten me to sober up. I also told her that getting sober wasn’t a one-and-done proposition and that I’d come close to having a slip myself that very week.
“Because of me?” she asked. “Were you upset because you found out about me?”
“No,” I said, “I was happy—giddy, almost—because we’d succeeded in nailing Petey’s killer. People don’t fall off the wagon just because bad things happen. Sometimes they go off the rails when good things happen.”
That comment elicited no response.
About that time we pulled in to the parking lot of the Red Horse Diner in Ellensburg, dodging all their vintage automotive kitsch as we did so. Much to my surprise, there was a new-to-me cannabis shop right next to where I’d parked. I was pretty sure that hadn’t been there the last time I stopped by. I noticed it and wondered if Naomi had.
“Don’t worry,” she told me as we hurried toward the diner’s entrance. “Marijuana has never been my thing. I always go for the harder stuff.”
Great, I thought.
Inside, we ordered burgers, ate same, and got back on the road. By the time we arrived at the front gate of the Haven in Moses Lake, I was completely talked out, but I felt I owed her that much—as complete a history of my side of the family as I could provide. When I pulled up in the drop-off zone in front of the building, she hesitated before opening the door.
“Do you want me to walk you inside?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I need to do this myself. Thank you for driving me all this way, and for telling me who you are, Beau. It’s what I needed to hear today.” She sounded hopeful and scared. So was I.
I watched her heave her duffel bag out of the backseat, heft it, and head inside.
“Go with God,” I heard myself saying under my breath.
I filled up the gas tank in Ellensburg and then continued west. I felt completely wrung out, as though I’d been through some grueling, mind-numbing test. I was coming up on the far side of Snoqualmie Pass when my phone rang with Scotty’s photo visible on the caller ID’s screen on my dashboard.
“Hello, Dad,” he said. “How’s it going?”
He’d called me “Dad” rather than his customary “Pop.” So what was I supposed to tell him? Was it time for more BS or time to be real? I went for the latter. “I’m on my way back from Moses Lake,” I said. “I just dropped Naomi off at a rehab place called the Haven.”
“Is she going to be all right?” he asked.
That was unexpected. “I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes rehab takes, sometimes it doesn’t.”
There was a long pause in the conversation. I was tempted to fill it but didn’t.
“I’m calling to apologize,” Scotty said. “I never should have gone off on you the way I did. Cherisse has been all over me about it—told me I was acting like a complete jerk.”
“You’d just been given a whole lot of news you didn’t expect. I think you get a pass—at least you get one from me.”
“Good-o, Pop,” he said. “Love you. I’ve got to get back to work.”
When the phone call ended, I realized that my sins as a father had all been forgiven. I spent the rest of the trip, all the way home to Bellingham, thinking about Melinda Collins and her watchwords—patience and acceptance.
She was right about those—absolutely right!