On New Year's Day the family members who had flown from Utah to be with them all flew ho me. The ward members who had dropped all their regular concerns to help the Fletchers now picked them up again.

Gradually life settled back to normal for all of them.

Even for the Fletchers, life settled. Not back to normal, for there was no going back for them. Rather their life settled into a new way, a new road. There was always in Step's mind a sense of someone watching, as if he could always turn at the moment of some triumph and say, See that? Pretty good, hey? And the one who watched would say, Neat. Neat, Dad.

In DeAnne's mind she saw him as a light in the distance, a beacon. If I always look toward that light, she thought, if I always walk straight toward it, then someday, even though it's very far away, I'll reach that goal.

They remembered Stevie on his birthday every year, and told stories about him until Robbie and Elizabeth could almost recite them all from memory. Every now and then Robbie would refer to the Christmas when Stevie's friends came, though the family never actually talked about that night.

One other thing was lost, too, that Christmas Eve. Step no longer called Robbie "Robot" or "Road Bug"; Betsy became Elizabeth to him; and Jeremy was Jeremy. With Step not using them, the nicknames soon died out, except when Robbie now and then teased Elizabeth by saying, "We used to call you Betsy Wetsy, you know." As the children grew up they lost all memory of their parents calling each other Junk Man and Fish Lady. They wouldn't have believed it if you told them; no one told them.

It wasn't that Step or DeAnne actually decided that the nicknames ought to stop. It's just that those names were part of a set, and it didn't feel right to use any of them unless you could use them all. But someday they would use them, they knew. Someday they would use all those old names, when Door Man met them on the other side.