Renee Givens-Kane

Renee Givens-Kane is Ben Givens’s daughter and the person he calls after returning home at the end of his journey. Though she appears only briefly in the available scenes, her importance lies in the contrast between Ben’s earlier attempt to protect his family by withholding his suffering and his final act of contact: telling her that he is home.

Identity and Narrative Access

Renee is introduced at the end of Ben’s story through a telephone call rather than a face-to-face meeting. When he dials, she answers by giving her full name, Renee Givens-Kane. That formal self-identification makes the relationship unmistakable, but the scene offers little independent information about her life or perspective. The reader encounters her chiefly through what Ben says about his family and through the call he makes once he is back in the house.

This limited access matters: Renee is not a companion on Ben’s journey, and the narrative does not show her reactions to his crisis directly. Instead, her presence first registers as part of the family Ben believes he must spare, then becomes concrete in the voice answering the telephone. The movement is from an imagined burden to an actual recipient of his words.

The Family Ben Tries to Spare

During the drive toward George, Ben tells Bea Harden the story of how he reached his present condition. He relates the deaths and family relationships that frame his grief, then explains that he had not wanted to burden his family with the prospect of watching him die over nine months. His explanation gives Renee a significant place in his thinking without putting words in her mouth: she belongs to the family whose pain he anticipates and whose suffering he hopes to prevent.

Ben’s reasoning treats silence as a form of protection. He says, "I didn't want to burden my family," presenting his wish to spare them as part of his decision-making. Bea Harden challenges that premise directly. She insists, "It isn't a burden," and argues that seeing Ben die could teach his family compassion and make them more compassionate. Her answer reframes the coming illness: what Ben regards as damage imposed on his loved ones might also become an experience through which they learn and remain connected. Renee is not present for this exchange, and the text does not report her own view; the importance of the conversation is that it contests the assumption under which Ben has kept his family at a distance.

From Withholding to Contact

The final call reverses the earlier logic of concealment. Back in the house, Ben turns up the heat, goes to the bedroom, and settles onto the bed still wearing dusty hunting clothes. Rex lies beside him. After a while, Ben picks up the telephone and calls his daughter. The scene gives no account of what he will tell her about the illness or of how she receives the news. Its decisive change is smaller and more immediate: he initiates contact rather than continuing to keep his family outside his experience.

Renee answers, "Hello," and identifies herself. Ben replies, "Its me," then gives the message that closes the exchange: "I'm home." The words announce his physical return, but they also reach across the distance that his earlier wish to spare the family had maintained. The call does not resolve the future or disclose Renee’s response; its significance rests in Ben’s choice to make himself present to her again.

Narrative Significance

Renee’s role is shaped by this final structural turn. Earlier, Ben speaks of his daughter and grandson while recounting the losses and decisions that brought him to this point, and he explains his wish not to subject his family to nine months of decline. At the close, the story narrows from that general idea of family to a specific act: he dials Renee and tells her he has come home. Her brief appearance therefore marks neither a fully narrated reconciliation nor a detailed account of their relationship. It marks a change in Ben’s relation to the people he meant to protect through absence. The person he feared burdening becomes the person he chooses to call.