"Can I get you anything to eat?" asked DeAnne.

"I've already gained about fifteen pounds working at Eight Bits Inc.," said Step. "The candy machines are killing me. The last thing I need is a snack."

"Just asking," said DeAnne. "Are you upset about something?"

Yes. "No. I'm just tired. I wasn't planning on spending tonight home teaching."

"I'm sorry," said DeAnne. "I told you, I wasn't trying to set it up for tonight, I just figured you wouldn't mind if I tried to establish contact with your companion. Are you coming to bed soon?"

"I suppose," said Step. "Is there anything good on Thursday nights?"

"We have forty channels," said DeAnne.

"Yeah," said Step, "but thirty-three of them are Jimmy Swaggart clones trying to heal hemophiliacs with the hemoglobin of the Holy Spirit. Or was that Ernest Ainglee?"

"It was that weird crewcut guy with the crazy eyes," said DeAnne. "Don't stay up too late. You have work in the morning, you know."

DeAnne left before she could see how Step tensed up at those words. Yes, I have work in the morning. I don't have to have work in the morning, though. I could walk in and give notice tomorrow and tell Keene where to stick his Dicky. I could let them fire me and collect unemployment. But no, you won't let me get out from under Dicky's thumb, because you don't trust me to make enough money to pay for the baby, you don't even trust me enough to talk to me rationally about getting a psychiatrist for Stevie. You have to trick me into it.

Step hated feeling such rage toward the person he loved most. And it wasn't the yearning love of young romance, but rather the kind of love that made her feel like part of his own self, so that he couldn't imagine a future without her beside him. To be so savagely angry at her was terrible.

He went to the sink to get a drink of water. Is this how divorce begins? he wondered. A feeling of terrible rage, of betrayal, a sud den discovery that maybe the marriage isn't as real and honest and strong as you thought it was? Then it builds up and builds up and builds up and then you find yourself living in an apartment somewhere and seeing your kids on weekends.

No, he said to himself. No, I forbid it. I will not let it happen, and neither will she. I'll just have to work on being the kind of husband she doesn't think she has to manipulate. Lord, help me to be whatever it is she needs me to be so we can hold this thing together. Just get us through this summer. Through this year. And then we won't need any more help, we'll be OK.

He set down the glass and turned around. There she was, in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed.

"I knew she was a psychiatrist," said DeAnne.

"What?"

"I set up that home teaching appointment for you because her name was on Dr. Greenwald's list, and I thought that if you met her maybe you'd like her and even trust her and then you'd take Stevie to her. I didn't actually lie to you but I still didn't tell you the truth."

The tears spilled over her eyes onto her cheeks. She angrily wiped them away with her shirtsleeve.

"I know you hate me now," she said. "We don't trick each other and lie to each other, ever, and now I did it."

Step walked to her, put his arms around her. "I knew that you knew," he said.

She leaned away and looked up at him. "You did?"

"Not earlier, but here in the kitchen, I realized it. That you set me up."

"And you aren't mad?"

"Yeah, I was mad," said Step.

"But you didn't say anything," she said.

"No," said Step. "I got a drink of water instead."

She gave a little laugh that was almost a sob. "That doesn't make any sense at all," she said.

"I know," said Step. "But that's what I did. And I'm not angry now, because you told me."

Now she cried in earnest. Clinging to him. Tears of relief, of release. "Step, you can quit your job. You really can. It's wrong of me to make you stay. You hate it there, and we'll make it anyway, I know we will. So what if we lose the house in Indiana. It's just a house. It's just money. I can't stand the thought of you going every day to a job you hate just because I'm so scared of things being so out of whack in our lives."

"That's OK," said Step.

"I mean it," she said. "You can quit. And we don't have to take Stevie to a psychiatrist, either. I really don't have to have everything my way, you know."

"I know," he said. And he knew that, for the moment at least, she really meant it. But he couldn't take this capitulation of hers seriously. Her need for him to stay at work till the baby came was real and deep. And as for taking Stevie to a psychiatrist, it was the only solution she had thought of for her sense of helpless frustration with Stevie. He couldn't deny her that unless he could come up with something better, and he couldn't.

"I mean it," she said.

"I know you mean it," said Step. "But I won't quit. For now, anyway. But it means a lot to me that if I just can't take it anymore, you'll understand."

"I will, Step, I really will. It's up to you. I'll just expect that one of these days you'll come home and say, It was time, and that'll be fine with me. I want you to come home! I want you here with me and the kids. Our life was so good in those days."

"It was, wasn't it," said Step.

"And it still is," she said. "My life is still good because you're in it. Everything good in my life comes from you."

Step shook his head. He knew she meant it, but in fact he knew that it wasn't true. Even the good she found in him was really the goodness she had put into him, the goodness he had put on himself like a disguise in order to get her to marry him. He had known that she could only be happy with a husband who was good in certain distinct ways. Like going to church with absolute faithfulness, and fulfilling his callings, the whole nine yards.

And so for her he started going to church again, and she never realized that it was a sacrifice he was making out of love for her, in order to be part of her. She thought it was his own desire, and she loved him for it. But what she was really loving was herself, reflected back to her. And even now, when she clung to him, it was not Step the historian or Step the programmer she was clinging to. It was Step the faithful Mormon, and she had given him that role herself. It was Step the father of her children, and those, too, had been her gift.

"Make the appointment with Dr. Weeks tomorrow," said Step. "We'll start him as soon as school lets out a week from tomorrow. So he never has to leave class to go see his psychiatrist."

She clung all the tighter to him. "You're really something, Junk Man," she said.

Yeah, thought Step. When you get your way.

And then he pushed the nastiness out of his mind and just held her. This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard.