home.
âArenât you just dying to know if sheâs dead or alive? Her friend, I mean?â asked Scoop.
âDo you think maybe Motherâs never coming home? Like Father?â asked Elsie. âHe never wrote either.â
âNah.â Scoop didnât sound very sure of himself. âMaybe you just havenât exhausted all avenues. Trying to find your dad, I mean.â
âWhich avenues? We looked everywhere.â
âNot those kind of avenues. Itâs reporter lingo for trying everything.â
âWhen Nan went to the police, they said if they had to track down every man who left home without a word, theyâd never catch the real criminals,â Elsie told Scoop. âItâs something to do with the times. Lots of men leave home without a word to anyone. Heâs not in the hospitals. Mother checked. And Uncle Dannell did too.â Elsie bit hard on the inside of her lip to stop herself crying. She had discovered this helped at night when she felt Nanâs bulgy backside against her in the old iron bed, and only cold sheets and drafts on the other side, where Mother should have been.
âIf youâre going to cry, Iâm going home,â Scoop said. âOne of the Noisesâ gentlemen friends has let her down â donât know how, no one will give me the details â but I get enough tears at my house. Donât you blubber on me, hear?â He nudged her hard with his bony elbow.
Scoop must have more bones than anyone sheâd ever met, thought Elsie. They seemed to stick out long past where his body should have ended. At his shoulders. His knees.
Elsie hugged her knees. She could feel the rough gravel poking through the seat of her pants. âNan pretends sheâs not bothered about Mother,â she told him, âbut each time the mailmanâs due, she finds something to do out by the Tipsonâs mailbox. Do you think Father wrote us a letter and they never passed it on? That Jimmy is so mean, I bet heâd do it. Do you think heâs been hiding Motherâs letter?â Elsie rested her chin on her knees and watched Scoop poke a stick in circles along the sidewalk. She looked at him sideways when he didnât answer. âWell? Do you?â
âDo I what?â
âYouâre not listening.â
âWhat I was thinking wasâ¦we need to explore all avenues, like I said. So tomorrow? Thereâs no school, so we can head out to that shantytown. Put the word about.â
âWhat word? The Reverend said those places are dangerous. He said theyâre desperate, some of those hoboes. Though they looked okay to me the other day. Just rough maybe.â
âIâll go then, if youâre chicken,â said Scoop. âI can do the investigating myself. If we find your father, maybe you wonât mind so much about your mother.â
Elsie stared at Scoop. Could he really think that as long as she had one parent at home, it wouldnât matter where the other was? Maybe it was easier for him â his father couldnât come home no matter how much anyone else wanted him to. Dead is dead and done for, as Nan would say.
Elsie felt a chill as soon as she thought the words. Surely sheâd know. Sheâd feel it somehow, if Father was dead. Wouldnât she?
C HAPTER T WELVE
âIâ ll need a description.â Scoop rooted around in his pocket for his pencil.
âYou know what Father looks like.â Elsie didnât want to admit that sometimes she could hardly remember her fatherâs face. She took out a photograph from her back pocket and smoothed it against her knee. âI pinched this from Motherâs suitcase. Sheâd packed it to take on her trip to New Westminster.â
Scoop grabbed it. He peered at it and nodded. âThis will do. Better than a description.â He took his notebook from his overalls, opened it up and carefully laid the photograph between