Ashley could remember the exact moment her father told her he had lost his faith.
She was eight. He’d asked her if she wanted to go for a row out in the moonlight, just the two of them, and she’d gone “Yeah!” because they didn’t seem to do things just together any more, and she missed it. But that was what Mum and Dad said this holiday was for – to spend some time together, do some thinking. Jet Lake was certainly good for thinking. It was big and deep and silent, and to all sides the forested hills rose up like a safe, protecting hand.
She ran down to the jetty in her waterproofs and life-jacket, the night feeling tingly and special. They climbed into the boat, and Dad took the oars and rowed them right out into the centre, where the stars were brightest and fiercest and deepest.
Every summer, Jeph Huston used to take his family camping. While Mum toasted sausages, Ashie would sit on his lap and watch the night sky with him. First he would tell her all about the constellations, and that the stars were flaming balls of gas, and that somewhere, far beyond it all, there might be inhabited planets. Last of all, he would point up to the stars and say “Behind all those, honey, behind the deepest stars and the most wonderful galaxies, somewhere out there, watching us, there is God. And He loves us.”
Now he said:
“I’m giving it up, Ashie.”
“What?”
For a moment she thought he meant the house, the lake-side house where they had spent every summer since forever, and she went cold and sick inside. She knew that money was tight, because of Dad’s counselling, but she hadn’t realised…
She’d once asked Mum what counselling meant, and she’d replied “He just needs someone to listen, that’s all.”
“I can listen,” Ashie had said.
Mum had laughed, and sighed, and said. “He needs someone professional, sweetheart. Someone who listens for their job.”
Ashie looked at her father, sitting bent and tired-looking in the shadows, and tried again. “I can listen.” If she could listen properly enough, then Dad wouldn’t have to go for counselling, and they wouldn’t have to give up the lake house.
“Honey, what are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“I’m giving it up. The priesthood.”
Ashie blinked at him. Other people’s fathers were doctors or teachers or businessmen. Her cousin Jack’s father was a university professor. Her father was an Anglican priest. Every Sunday was a special day, where they got to dress up in their nicest clothes and watch Daddy looking smart and handsome in the pulpit, with everyone smiling and happy. He gave the nicest sermons. Everyone said so.
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t do it any more. I can’t pray.” He started making a strange noise, his shoulders shaking, and she realised he was crying. That was the worst moment of her entire life. It wasn’t his shoulders shaking, it was the pillars of the entire earth. It was the boat, the whole lake, the suddenly-threatening forest. She was terrified that the bottom of the lake would drop away and they would be sucked down into a whirlpool and be drowned forever. She started crying too.
Her father reached out a hand to comfort her; his other hand wiped the tears from his own face.
“I’ve lost my faith,” he said.
“It might come back,” she whimpered.
He smiled through his tears, she couldn’t see it but she heard it in his voice.
“I wish it was that easy, honey. I really do.”

She was fifteen now, and no-one called her Ashie any more.
“Come on, Ashie!”
Except Jack, of course.
Ash stopped traipsing through the muddy forest long enough to yell “My name is ASH! It’s been Ash for like five years, you moron!”
Jack paused and leaned on the nearest tree. He scowled at her, his black hair tousled and sweaty. Even though they were only second cousins, everyone said how similar they looked. Most people took them for brother and sister.
“Yeah, well, hurry up! The light’s going!” He rubbed a tanned arm across his forehead. “I thought you were supposed to be rock hard, all that climbing and stuff you do. What’s the matter, the Great Outdoors too much for you?”
“Maybe I might be going a little faster if I wasn’t wearing a stupid monkey suit!” She shook her head, not her own head, but the cycle helmet with fake fur glued onto it that she was carrying. “Why don’t you carry this for a bit, smart-arse? It was your great idea.” She lobbed it at him. It landed short, and sploshed into the mud. Jack uttered a cry of despair and plunged after it.
“That took me all weekend to make!”
Ash sat down on a nearby stump and wiped the sweat out of her eyes. She wished she was swimming in Jet Lake the way she had been that morning.
“Jack, it’s high summer, the mosquitoes are having a party, and I’m wearing a monkey suit made out of discarded carpet, fake fur and coat-hangers. My eyeliner has melted into some kind of primeval soup, and my hair appears to have given up and died. Remind me again why I am doing this for you?”
Jack scrambled to his feet, clutching the recovered helmet and covered in mud. His eyes were bright with excitement – the thrill of the chase, thought Ash sourly.
“Big Foot,” he said solemnly. “There’s something out there, and we’re going to find it.”