Summary

Dell’s parents arrived home about seven in the evening on Friday in Chapter 19. Bev told the twins as they ate dinner that the business trip had been a success, since he has decided not to invest in the “oil wells” he went to look at. They would stay in Great Falls and life would recommence as normally as possible. He would throw himself into selling ranches, Berner and Dell would start high school in two weeks, and Bev and Neeva planned to buy the house from their landlord and fix it up. “All of it was a lie, of course,” Dell says (107). He nonetheless finds it touching that his parents tried to remain “charmed by one last taste of the life they’d tossed away.”

Chapter 20 begins on the following Saturday morning. Bev was not home, and Neeva was distracted. Dell...