“A cloud chamber,” he said. “I always wanted to build one of those. Did you get to see the tracks the ions make?”

“Yes.” Nate this time. His voice came out deep and low, almost like a man’s.

“We had to give Bucky away,” Junie told him. “I’m seven now. Nate got picked to be starting pitcher. I got a new pink bike and a model horse called Palomino Pal and another one that’s named October Sky.”

“How’s your mother doing?” he asked. “I hope I didn’t turn her hair gray.”

“No, it’s red,” said Junie.

All those hours Nate had spent on the highway today . . . all those days and weeks before that he’d yearned to see his dad ... and now here he was, standing right across from him, and he couldn’t think of one thing to say.

“You know about the Beatles, right, Daddy?” Junie went on. “I’ll sing you one of their best songs: “In the town where I was born,” she began, her voice high and strong, “lived a man who sailed to sea . . .”

She sang the whole thing straight through, and their dad joined in on the chorus.

“Remember that time we made a campout?” she said. “Remember the shooting stars? Remember Ursa Major and Ursa Minor and Cygnus the swan and the Big Dipper?”

“How could I forget?” their father answered.

“Don’t be sad,” she said. “But we had to sell our house. We don’t have any cows anymore. We sold your tractor, too.”

“I wasn’t a very good farmer,” he told her.

“That’s okay,” she said. “Nobody’s perfect. We’re moving to Billings. But we had to come see you first, so you’d know how to find us.”

“I’ll be leaving this place soon,” he told her. “I don’t really need to stay here anymore.”

“You’re better now?” she asked.

Nate was afraid to ask the question that came next. Somehow his father seemed to know what Nate was thinking, though.

“I’m going to college,” his father said. “I’ve been working things out so I can start in the fall, once I move into a rooming house over by the campus. I’m learning a way to read where you put your fingers on bumps on a page, called Braille, so I can study along with the other students.”

“So all three of us will be going to school at the same time,” Junie said. “I thought you knew everything already.”

“Definitely not,” he said. “I’m going to study physics. And lots of other things besides.”

“We might not see you for a while after this,” Junie told him. “I don’t think our mom will let us.”

“How did you get here, anyway?” he asked.

“Nate drove.”

His father smiled. “Good for you, son. Don’t make a habit of it just yet. But good for you.”