"You're home so early again," said DeAnne, happy to see him.

"Maybe from now on," said Step. "Unless they back down. But I can never be late again in the morning."

He kissed her. Jenny Cowper was standing right there watching, but Step only waved as he kissed DeAnne again.

"Don't mind me," said Jenny. "I already guessed that you two knew about kissing."

"We're still beginners at it," said Step, "so we need all the practice we can get." Jenny la ughed and then went back into the kitchen or somewhere.

"How did things go with Stevie?" asked Step.

"Not what we expected," said DeAnne. "A substitute."

"Ah," said Step. "So she couldn't face it."

"And Stevie came home with his ribbon. Mrs. Jones must have said something to Dr. Mariner, because she came into class today and said something about-"

But at that moment several children charged into the room.

Robbie and two unidentified Cowper children-Step hadn't even bothered to try to tell them apart; they all looked like identical twins of different ages. Stevie followed, carrying a book. Not part of the game, apparently.

But at least he was talking.

"Hi, Dad."

"I hear you had a substitute today."

He nodded. Step squatted in front of him, then realized that his knees didn't respond well to that position anymore, and he knelt on one knee. "Hear you got your ribbon."

"I didn't care about the ribbon," said Stevie.

"Well, I guess Dr. Mariner did."

Then Stevie looked Step in the eye and said, "Did you kill Mrs. Jones?"

"No!" Step said, appalled. "No, of course not! I didn't touch her, I didn't hurt her at all. Son, she stayed home today because she's ashamed."

Stevie didn't look convinced. "Dr. Mariner said she was sick. She said Mrs. Jones wouldn't be coming back the rest of the school year and our substitute would be our teacher from now on."

Mrs. Jones had taken the coward's way out, after all. She could be bold as brass when it came to heaping scorn on a seven- yearold in front of his classmates, but when it came to making up for it a little, she just couldn't face it. Well, too bad.

"Dad," said Stevie, "what did you do to her?"

DeAnne, realizing that they needed some privacy for this, herded Robbie and the Cowper creatures out of the living room. Thanks, DeAnne, Step said silently. "Door Man, all I did was tell her the truth about what she was doing, and I made it clear that if she didn't stop, I was going to tell the truth to everybody else, too. So she stopped. In fact, she stopped so completely that I wouldn't be surprised if she never teaches again, even after this year."

"Wow," Stevie whispered.

"I mean, that's what you do with bad people, when you can. You just name their sin to them. That's what the prophets always did," said Step. "Just name their sins, and if they have any spark of goodness in them at all, they repent. Maybe she's going to repent."

"What if they're bad all the way through? What if they got no spark?"

"Well, it's like Alma and Amulek. The Lord wouldn't let the evil people harm them, even though a lot of other people got killed. They finished giving their message and then they left."

"The bad guys burned Abinadi," said Stevie.

"Yes," said Step. "But not until he finished naming their sins. And that's what eventually stopped the wicked people from doing their wickedness. Telling the truth about them. They can only do their evil when they think that nobody knows."

"But Abinadi was dead."

"Son, I guess he knew and the Lord knew that death isn't the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world is knowing that something really bad is going on and then not doing anything about it because you're afraid. So when Abinadi died, death tasted sweet to him."

"Burning to death?"

"No, I don't think that was sweet. But then it was over, and he went to live with his Father in Heaven.

Anyway, Stevie, that isn't the point. Nobody was going to burn me to death for telling the truth about Mrs.

Jones. I'm no Abinadi, I was just a very angry father of a very wonderful son who had been treated very badly and now it's over. Mrs. Jones won't be able to hurt you ever again, and my guess is that she won't be able to hurt anybody."

Stevie threw his arms around Step's neck and clung to him for a long time. Then Stevie pulled away and took off out of the room, probably a bit embarrassed.

Step got up and wandered into the kitchen and joined in the conversation there. "You're going to sleep on our bed because you're pregnant, DeAnne," said Jenny.

"1'm not," said Step.

"Uh-oh," said Spike. "Hyper-courtesy alert."

"Oh, please," said Jenny. "We all know how this conversation goes. You protest that Step can sleep on the floor while DeAnne sleeps on the couch, only you both know perfectly well that DeAnne would wake up perfectly dead if she did that and we'd feel so guilty we couldn't sleep a wink. Besides, what you don't realize is that Spike and I went camping on our honeymoon."

"There's a way to zip two bags together," said Spike, in a confidential tone. "I'll show you sometime."

"It does not hurt our feelings to sleep in sleeping bags on the floor," said Jenny. "We actually find it romantic, not that anyone who knew our kids would think we needed any more romantic opportunities. So please, let's just skip the arguing part and all agree right now, you on the bed and us in the bag."

Step and DeAnne were laughing, and DeAnne said, "That's just fine."

It wasn't until about nine that night, with the children bedded down, that DeAnne realized that she had never even checked the mail.

"We can always get it tomorrow," said Step.

"Or we could take a walk over there tonight," said DeAnne. "And check on the house while we're at it."

Why not? The Cowper house was so intensely extraverted that Step was glad for a chance to get away for a while.

On the way to the mailbox he told her what had passed between Stevie and him. "So I guess we've finally gotten over the hump," he said. "Stevie's going to be fine."

"I hope," said DeAnne.

"You only hope?"

"Today when he got off the bus, I started to explain to him about the bug spray and how we couldn't get in the house, and finally he says to me, 'I know, Mom. Jack already told me about it. "'

The imaginary friends. "Well, I suppose we couldn't expect them to just suddenly go away."

"I'm worried, Step. He's way too old to have an imaginary friend. And besides, who ever heard of somebody having more than one? I mean, aren't imaginary friends supposed to be like Snuffy on Sesame Street? Just one big strange creature or something?"

"Give him some time," said Step. "As things get better at school, he'll let go of this fantasy life. I mean, let's face it-these imaginary friends got him through what amounts to a concentration camp experience. Let's not be too quick to kill them off!"

"It's not a joke, Step," said DeAnne. "Stevie just absolutely refuses to admit that they're pretend. I think he really believes in them."

"So what if he does? The fantasy wouldn't have done him much good if it hadn't seemed real."

"But these imaginary friends aren't real, Step, and what if they don't go away? What if he insists on having one of these imaginary friends as the best man at his wedding? It's going to start interfering with his social life sometime, you know."

"But not today," said Step. "Give him some slack. He's just come out of hell into daylight, and it takes a while to shake off the shadows."

They were at the mailbox. Step opened it and checked for spiders, as he always did, ever since the black widow had scooted right up his sleeve when he was getting the mail one time in Orem. He had never known that you really could rip all the buttons off your shirt in one smooth movement and tear a whole shirt off your body in less than a second. It hadn't bit him, but he hadn't forgotten, either.