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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’s mom didn’t reply. Nate hated that about her— that she would just sit there and let the police officer treat her this way.

“I’m asking you to think back again to that morning, Mrs. Chance,” Officer Scruggs said. “Maybe you followed your husband out to the field? Let’s say the two of you got in an argument. He had the gun with him, maybe, and things got out of hand. It wasn’t like you planned it or anything.”

“Nothing like that happened.”

“So how do you explain the fact that the gun hasn’t turned up?” he asked her. “If a guy shoots himself, he sure doesn’t hide the gun after.”

“I could no more tell you where that gun is than I’ll find a million dollars in this cookie jar,” she said.

Sixteen

THE FARM WAS SLIPPING AWAY FROM THEM. WITH SAM Carter demanding payment on the loan note, Nate’s mother and grandfather were trying to figure out a way to pay it back and still hold on to the place. When he got down out of his truck and came in the house now, Poppa had the air of a person headed to a funeral. Grandma brought food over. Uncle Harold stopped by and told corny jokes that everyone pretended were funny, while Aunt Sal rolled her eyes. Junie wet the bed almost every night. Nate spent all his free time walking their land, looking for the rifle, and working on the cloud chamber.

Mostly it was Nate who got Junie up in the morning, stuffing her damp sheets in the dirty clothes hamper. Their mother had lines above the bridge of her nose all the time, like a pair of parentheses, and even Junie knew not to expect anything of her. Junie’d given up asking her to bring her to Brownie meetings.

These days, even driving to the grocery store was more than their mom could manage, it seemed. When the box of Cocoa Puffs gave out, Nate took to fixing things like toast or fruit cocktail from the pantry or chocolate pudding for breakfast. Sometimes their mother would still be in bed when the bus came, and Junie would call out to her, “Have a good day,” like she actually believed it might happen. On the mornings they didn’t see her, Junie would leave a drawing—of herself, usually, and sometimes of their whole family, including their dad. Love, love, love, she’d write on the bottom.

“Oh, Junie,” their mom said once, when she came in the kitchen and found one of the pictures. “I know I’ve let you and your brother down.”

“No, you haven’t,” Junie said.

Yes, you have, Nate thought, bitterly.