—School year end all right? Emmett asked, setting down his glass.
Billy nodded.
—I got a hundred and five percent on my geography test.
—A hundred and five percent!
—Usually, there’s no such thing as a hundred and five percent, Billy explained. Usually, one hundred percent of anything is as much as you can get.
—So how’d you wrangle another five percent out of Mrs. Cooper?
—There was an extra-credit question.
—What was the question?
Billy quoted from memory.
—What is the tallest building in the world.
—And you knew the answer?
—I did.
. . .
—Aren’t you going to tell me?
Billy shook his head.
—That would be cheating. You have to learn it for yourself.
—Fair enough.
After a moment of silence, Emmett realized that he was staring into his milk. He was the one now with something on his mind. He was the one trying to decide how, or whether, or when to say it.
—Billy, he began, I don’t know what Mr. Ransom’s told you, but we’re not going to be able to live here anymore.
—I know, said Billy. Because we’re foreclosed.
—That’s right. Do you understand what that means?
—It means the Savings and Loan owns our house now.
—That’s right. Even though they’re taking the house, we could stay in Morgen. We could live with the Ransoms for a while, I could go back to work for Mr. Schulte, come fall you could go back to school, and eventually we could afford to get a place of our own. But I’ve been thinking that this might be a good time for you and me to try something new . . .
Emmett had thought a lot about how he would put this, because he was worried that Billy would be disconcerted by the notion of leaving Morgen, especially so soon after their father’s death. But Billy wasn’t disconcerted at all.
—I was thinking the same thing, Emmett.
—You were?
Billy nodded with a hint of eagerness.
—With Daddy gone and the house foreclosed, there’s no need for us to stay in Morgen. We can pack up our things and drive to California.
—I guess we’re in agreement, said Emmett with a smile. The only difference is that I think we should be moving to Texas.
—Oh, we can’t be moving to Texas, said Billy, shaking his head.
—Why’s that?
—Because we’ve got to be moving to California.
Emmett started to speak, but Billy had already gotten up from his chair and gone to his backpack. This time, he opened the front pocket, removed a small manila envelope, and returned to his seat. As he carefully unwound the red thread that sealed the envelope’s flap, he began to explain.
—After Daddy’s funeral, when you went back to Salina, Mr. Ransom sent Sally and me over to the house to look for important papers. In the bottom drawer of Daddy’s bureau, we found a metal box. It wasn’t locked, but it was the kind of box you could lock if you wanted to. Inside it were important papers, just as Mr. Ransom had said there’d be—like our birth certificates and Mom and Dad’s marriage license. But at the bottom of the box, at the very bottom, I found these.
Billy tipped the envelope over the table and out slid nine postcards.
Emmett could tell from the condition of the cards that they weren’t exactly old and weren’t exactly new. Some of them were photographs and some were illustrations, but all were in color. The one on top was a picture of the Welsh Motor Court in Ogallala, Nebraska—a modern-looking lodge with white cabanas and roadside plantings and a flagpole flying the American flag.
—They’re postcards, Billy said. To you and me. From Mom.
Emmett was taken aback. Nearly eight years had passed since their mother had tucked the two of them in bed, kissed them goodnight, and walked out the door—and they hadn’t heard a word from her since. No phone calls. No letters. No neatly wrapped packages arriving just in time for Christmas. Not even a bit of gossip from someone who’d happened to hear something from somebody else. At least, that’s what Emmett had understood to be the case, until now.
Emmett picked up the card of the Welsh Motor Court and turned it over. Just as Billy had said, it was addressed to the two of them in their mother’s elegant script. In the manner of postcards, the text was limited to a few lines. Together, the sentences expressed how much she already missed them despite having only been gone for a day. Emmett picked up another card from the pile. In the upper left-hand corner was a cowboy on the back of a horse. The lariat that he was spinning extended into the foreground and spelled out Greetings from Rawlins, Wyoming—the Metropolis of the Plains. Emmett turned the card over. In six sentences, including one that wrapped around the lower right-hand corner, their mother wrote that while she had yet to see a cowpoke with a lasso in Rawlins, she had seen plenty of cows. She concluded by expressing once again how much she loved and missed them both.