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Back The Cloud Chamber Save as PDF
Chapters (35)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. Author’s Note
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty

Nate couldn’t touch it anyway. Looking at the old rifle, which had sat in the gun rack for as long as he could remember, Nate felt sick to his core.

Evidently, Larry was having a hard time too, because in the end, it was Naomi who took off her jacket and, with her fingers inside the sleeves, picked the rifle up.

“Be careful with that thing,” Nate said. “Chances are it’s still loaded.” He still had his batting glove in the pocket of his jeans. Putting it on, he signaled to Naomi to put the gun back down on the ground. Then he knelt beside the rifle and emptied the remaining shells.

Larry carried the rifle to the house while Nate held on to the shells. Walking back, he didn’t try to hide his tears. Naomi put her arm around him for a second, then let it hang free again.

“I bet things’ll start to get better now,” she said.

Twenty-Six

NATE’S GRANDFATHER CALLED THE POLICE TO SAY they’d located the rifle, and a little later, a cruiser pulled up to the house to pick it up. The police report, after they’d dusted for fingerprints, revealed that his mother’s were nowhere to be found.

“I’m sorry about what you went through, Mrs. Chance,” Officer Scruggs said when he stopped by the house a few days later to give her the news. “I’m sure you can appreciate that as officers of the law, approaching a felony offense of assault with a deadly weapon, we have to consider every possibility. But I’m happy to report, you are now free of further suspicion in the shooting of your husband, which appears to have been self-inflicted.”

One thing didn’t change. Sam Carter was still foreclosing on their farm. An auction had been announced to sell off most of what the Chance family owned. All that week— the final days before the science fair—Nate and Junie would come home from school to find their grandfather clearing out the barn, oiling the tractor, even—like it mattered now. Their mother moved through the rooms of their house like a sleepwalker, packing belongings into boxes or sometimes just looking out the window.

On Wednesday, Aunt Sal took Nate’s mom to Billings to help her look for an apartment. She filled out applications for secretarial positions and took a typing test. “Maybe after I get my feet on the ground, I can find some piano students again,” she told Aunt Sal. “Someplace new, where nobody knows us.”

Thinking about moving was too much for Nate to take in. If he started counting up the losses, he wouldn’t know where to begin, so he tried to stay focused on the science fair instead.