He looked at the Topps cards again, only this time he picked up the package. He looked around, studying the faces of the checkout girl, the woman at the film counter. He had a feeling there was probably a really great card in this deck. Roger Maris, maybe, or Whitey Ford. He was due some good luck.

He fingered the cards and checked the cashier one more time, but she was bagging. He hunched his shoulders, to make the sleeve of his jacket hang down over his hand. Suddenly he was someone else, someone he’d never been before, the kind of person who takes things from stores without paying.

He slid the pack of cards inside his sleeve. Simple as that, they were his.

“Know what?” Junie said. “I’m going to start filling these out just as soon as we get home.

“Hurry up, you slowpoke,” she called out to him.

“Coming,” he said, calm as could be.

Back at home Nate’s grandparents were in the kitchen. Pork chops were frying on the stove, potatoes were baking. Junie—who always loved it when there was company, even if it was just Poppa and Grandma—immediately began unwrapping her party invitations to show them. Clowns with balloons in their hands.

Nate’s mother set the table, then brought over the food silently. As Poppa said grace Nate pushed the ugly words about his father from his head. Instead, he thought about the cards in his jacket pocket. In his whole life he had never stolen anything before.

“So, son,” his grandmother was saying to him, “how’s school been treating you?”

Nate looked at the faces at the table, moving their lips. He could almost see his father sitting at the head of the table, wiping a napkin across his mouth and saying, You know, Helen, a man could die and go to heaven and feel life was complete once he’d had a piece of that pie of yours.

“School’s okay,” he answered. “There’s a science fair coming up. I’ve been looking for a good idea for my project.”

“You and Larry working on it together, I suppose?” his mother asked. Her voice didn’t rise above a flat monotone.

“Maybe not this time. I was thinking I might do this one on my own.”

If she had any interest at all, she would have said something then—knowing how it was with him and Larry, how they always did everything together. But all she said was “More potatoes for you, Dad?”

Except for Junie, who wanted to talk about her birthday, nobody said much more. Poppa remarked on a particular cow that didn’t seem to be producing like she should. “Sure would be a shame to put that heifer down,” he said.