In the parking lot outside the five-and-ten a group of women were standing around somebody’s station wagon, talking. A look came over Nate’s mom’s face that reminded Nate of how he’d felt, standing on the edge of a high diving board at the Y pool in Billings. Junie reached up and stroked her mom’s hair under the pink wool hat. “You look so pretty, Mama,” she said.

“Tell you what, kids. Maybe I’ll just stay out here in the car and let you two pick out Junie’s invitations.” She reached over the seat to hand Nate the money for Junie’s purchase. He could see that her hand was trembling.

Nate and Junie headed toward the store alone. Junie started skipping and reached for Nate’s hand. He pushed her away.

“Just because I’m helping you buy your invitations doesn’t mean we’re making a big deal of this, okay?”

Junie headed straight for the party section. “I’ll meet you over where they have the invitations,” he called after her, then wandered over to the magazines and picked up a copy of Mad. He was just flipping through the pages when he heard voices on the other side of the aisle. It took only a few seconds before he realized a couple of women were talking about his family.

“There was always something strange about him,” one voice was saying.

“Myra’s husband works on the police force,” the other one told her. “He was at the hospital when they brought the poor man in. Talking gibberish is what Bill told her. Blood all over the place. Hard to say if it was a blessing or a curse, him surviving a gunshot wound like that. Odds are he’ll be a vegetable.”

“You have to wonder about what drove him to it,” the first one offered. “Sure, they had some hard luck, but so do a lot of people. There had to be trouble in that marriage. A man doesn’t shoot himself for no good reason.”

From where he stood on the other side of the aisle, Nate stared at the magazine—a drawing of Alfred E. Neuman blowing a bubble. Whatever ideas he’d come up with to explain how his father had been hurt, the words he was hearing now had never occurred to him. He looked around to see if anyone else had heard, but all he saw was shoppers going about their business.

“The shame of it’s the children,” the first woman was saying. “They’re the ones who end up paying the price.”

“Of course you’re right, Sheila. It’s not like they brought this on themselves. But still, I wouldn’t want my kids spending time over there. You know what they say: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”