It was nearly nine and DeAnne was about to send Stevie to bed when Step finally got home. He knew he had let them down and felt terrible about it. "I'm so sorry. Is he still up?"

"Playing Kaboom," she said.

He went to the family room and knelt down beside Stevie. "Son, fm so sorry I was late. It wasn't my car, and we kept finding new bugs in the program, and I kept saying I had to get home, but he'd say, 'Let's just fix this one thing and try it,' over and over again, and it was his car, what can I say? Even as it is he's mad at me for leaving the thing unfinished."

Stevie said nothing, just kept swinging the paddle left and right to catch the little bombs as they dropped from various points along the top of the screen. Then he missed one, and all the bombs on the screen at that moment exploded.

"Stevie, your mom said you were upset when you came home from school today. Do you want to tell me what happened?"

Stevie just stared at the screen, until finally he said, "I don't want to talk to you about it."

That slapped Step hard, DeAnne could see it. "Well, then, who are you going to talk to?"

"Mom," said Stevie.

DeAnne could not believe what she was hearing.

Step stood up. "He's punishing me for not getting home soon enough," he said. "And probably for not taking him to school this morning." Step did that-stating out loud how he interpreted the kids' actions, so that they would see that he wasn't fooled, or correct him if he was wrong.

Stevie didn't correct him, so Step went on. "As long as you'll talk to one of us, that's all right. And if you were trying to hurt my feelings, then you've succeeded. I really am sorry that I wasn't here when you needed me, but we explained to you that this is the way it's got to be for a while. Most fathers have to go to work, and when you go to work, you can't always be home when your kids need you. That's the way it is, if we're going to have food on the table and a roof over our heads."

Stevie said nothing. DeAnne had never seen him so unforgiving. In fact, she had never seen him act unforgiving at all. Maybe what happened at school today really was awful, so awful that Stevie couldn't forgive his father for not being there to protect him.

Well, she'd find out soon enough now. "Come on, Stevie," she said. "Let's go to your room and you can tell me what happened."

"Not in front of Robbie," he said.

"OK, we'll go to my room," she said. "Step, if you can't wait for supper, fix yourself something, but if you wait I'll poach some eggs or something."

Step nodded, leaning against the bookshelves. As she followed Stevie out of the room, she thought she had never seen Step look so bent, so broken, in all the years she'd known him. It made her want to go to him and hold him and comfort him ... but she knew that Step would understand, would agree that it was more important for her to be with Stevie. The child's needs always took precedence over the adult's. That was the way it had to be, when you had children. That was the contract you made with the kids when you chose to call their spirits from heaven into the world, that as long as they were young and needed you, you did whatever you could to meet their needs before you did anything else for anybody else.

They sat next to each other on her side of the queen-sized bed that Step's parents had given them as a wedding present. "What happened today, Stevie," said DeAnne.

Almost immediately, his face twisted up and the pent-up tears flowed again as they had flowed in the car.

"I couldn't understand them, Mom!"

"What do you mean?"

"I couldn't understand what they said! To me, I mean. I could understand them mostly in class, when they were talking to the teacher, but when they talked to me I didn't understand hardly anything and so I just stood there and finally I said, I can't understand you, and they called me stupid and retarded."

"Honey, you know you're not stupid. You know you're a straight A student."

"But I couldn't understand anything." He sounded fierce now; much of his anger, she realized, must have been from the frustration he had felt, being unable to communicate with the other kids. "I asked them what language they were speaking, and they said 'American,' and then they started making fun of the way I talk, like I talked wrong or something. But I didn't say anything wrong!

"Honey, you've got to understand, this is a school in a fairly rural part of Steuben. A country school. They just have thick southern accents."

"Well they understood everything I said."

"Because you talk normal American English. Like on television. They all watch TV, so they're used to understanding the way you talk."

"Then why don't they talk that way?"

"Maybe in a couple of generations they will. But right now they talk in a southern accent. And besides, you did understand some of what they said, or you wouldn't have known they were calling you retarded and stupid."

He began to cry harder. "I made this one girl write it down for me. That's how I knew. And then they all wrote it down. Retarded and stupid. They wrote it on papers and gave it to me. All day. I didn't read them, though. I mean after the first couple."

"That was very wise of you," said DeAnne. "And very cruel of them."

"But when I was leaving at the end of school I left all those notes on the table and Mrs. Jones made me go back and pick them all up and take them with me." The humiliation of it made him shudder. "So I picked them up and threw them in the trash and then she yelled at me."

"She yelled at you?"

"She said that I had an unfriendly attitude and a chip on my shoulder and I'd better learn some manners or I'd never get along."

She put her arm around him. "Oh, son, I'm so sorry. She should never have said anything like that."

"They're all against me there, Mom," he said. "Even the teacher."

"Stevie, I know it seems that way ='

"It doesn't just seem, it is!"

"Mrs. Jones just didn't understand what those papers were, or what the other kids had been saying."

"She talks just like they do, Mom," he said. "They just hate me because I'm from Utah!"

"Kids are cruel," said DeAnne. "You knew that-the way they treated Barry Wimmer." She remembered back to her own childhood, to her parents' words to her. "Not all the kids were making fun of you, were they?

Weren't most of them just standing around watching?"

"They didn't stick up for me, either," said Stevie.

"No, they just watched. They just watched, and that made you feel like they all agreed with the mean ones.

But they don't, not really, Stevie. They just-they just hadn't decided anything at all. So if they see you tomorrow standing tall and-"

"Don't make me go back, Mom!" cried Stevie. He was trembling. "Don't make me go back to class! Not Mrs. Jones's class! Don't make me!"

"Son! Calm down, please, calm down." She had no idea what to do about this. Every natural instinct told her to say, Yes, Stevie, you're right, that class is the last place in the world I'll ever send you, and you can stay home with me and be safe for the rest of your life. But she knew that, however much she might want to say that, she couldn't. It wouldn't be right. "These things aren't under my control-I can't keep you out of school, and I can't get you into another class unless Dr. Mariner agrees."

"Don't make me go back," he whispered.

"Son, you'll see-tomorrow they'll probably still be mean, but it won't be new anymore and so they'll get bored and do some thing else. And in a few days the nicer kids will start being friends with you. Plus you'll get used to the way they talk and you'll understand them and things will be fine."

"They'll never be fine," he said, and he got up and stalked out of the room. It was sadly funny, his furious walk, the way he tried to be forceful as he opened the door, but ended up fumbling with the door handle because he was still small enough that door handles weren't easy. One thing was certain, though. She could not let this go without talking to Dr. Mariner.