Naomi was quiet for a long moment. “I heard what happened,” she told him. “I’m really sorry.” Of all the kids at school, she was the only one who did that. Just looked him in the eye and said it.

•  •  •

The library closed at five. He got a ride home from Naomi’s father, Reverend Torvald, who cleared a pile of pamphlets off the backseat to make room for him. Nate had heard that the reverend gave them out door-to-door, telling people how they could keep from going to hell. Nate would never have imagined that Naomi, with all her crazy cartoon drawings and eager, excited bouncing, would have a dried-up old guy like Reverend Torvald—who talked in a monotone and had a “Prayer is the Answer” sticker on his bumper—for a father. The apple could fall far from the tree in some cases, evidently.

Nate told Naomi’s dad that it was okay to drop him off at the end of the driveway. “Remember, Nathan,” Reverend Torvald said as Nate climbed out, “Jesus loves you.”

It was lucky Naomi’s father hadn’t driven right up to his house. For the second time that week, a police car was parked out front.

Ten

THE OFFICER SITTING IN THE KITCHEN HAD SET UP A portable typewriter on the table. The box of chocolates Nate’s grandparents had brought over sat on the lazy Susan—open, with several chocolates missing and pieces of the gold foil Junie liked to use for art projects scattered over the table. Across from the policeman, his mother sat in her apron, her back very straight.

“This is Officer Scruggs, Nathan,” she said quietly.

“I’ll just change my ribbon here,” Officer Scruggs said, stuffing another one of his mother’s special chocolates in his mouth. “Maybe your son can go watch TV with that little girl of yours. If he’s anything like my boy, all he wants to do is sit around the boob tube, anyway, right?” He made a sound like a laugh.

Nate moved to the refrigerator to get a glass of milk, his daily after-school snack. He reached for the jar of chocolate powder to stir in—imagining, for a second, that he was brave enough to throw the milk on the police officer and laugh back. Instead, he walked out of the kitchen, without comment, in the direction of the TV room. But just because he’d left didn’t mean he couldn’t hear. He stood in the hall, listening.

“Let me get this straight, Mrs. Chance,” the policeman said. “You claim that your husband was depressed about some kind of crop failure and that it didn’t entirely surprise you that he’d want to take his own life. And how would you describe your attitude toward your husband in the weeks and days leading up to the shooting?”

“My attitude?” she said. “I don’t know what you mean.”