Elizabeth came into the room in her diaper, carrying her swimsuit. DeAnne laboriously sat on the couch to help her get it on. "I can't just put it on you like I used to, Elizabeth," said DeAnne. "I can't reach over my tummy. You have to step into the suit."

It took about a dozen tries, but Elizabeth was finally standing in her swimsuit and now DeAnne could pull it up and tie it behind her neck. "Are you going to come out into the sprinkler, too, Stevie?" she asked.

Stevie didn't stop playing even for a moment. "No," he said.

"You used to like to," said DeAnne.

Robbie ran into the room, wearing not only his swimsuit but also the Superman cape that DeAnne had made for him two Halloweens ago. "Ta-da!" he shouted. "Ta-da!"

"Here you are to save the day," said DeAnne.

"Turn on the sprinkler, Mommy!" shouted Robbie.

DeAnne leaned to the side and sort of rolled up onto her feet, supporting her weight on the front of the couch as she did. She felt like an elephant she had seen once in a movie, wallowing in the mud.

"Stevie, " she said. "You used to like to play in the sprinkler."

"It wouldn't be fair," he said.

"What wouldn't be fair?" she asked.

"Cause I can and they can't."

She knew the answer, but still she had to ask. "Who can't?"

"Scotty and Jack and those guys."

She curbed her frustration and spoke in what she hoped was a reasonable tone. "Well, they can't play computer games with you, either."

"Yes they can," he said.

She opened the back door and Robbie and Elizabeth burst out into the sunlight. She turned back into the dark cave of the family room, where Stevie now seemed to be only a shadow in the corner, his head silhouetted against the bright screen, where a train sped along a track.

"Stevie, even if they can't play with you in the sprinkler, if your friends are really your friends, they'd want you to play in the sunlight. Real friends wouldn't stop you from playing with your brother and sister sometimes.

Your brother and sister need you, too."

She couldn't believe she was talking to Stevie as if his imaginary friends were real.

But if these imaginary boys were at the center of Stevie's life, then shutting them out would mean shutting Stevie out, too. She had to try to reach him, and if this was the only door he held open, then she would reach in through that door.

Stevie reached behind the computer and switched it off. "OK," he said. "I'll get my suit on."

She felt weak with relief as she turned the water on.

The sprinkler began its sweep back and forth across the lawn. Elizabeth ran through it, screaming. Robbie, however-the one who had suggested this-hung back. "Go on!" DeAnne said. "Just run through it and get wet.

The water won't hurt."

Robbie still hesitated.

Then Stevie came out, walked over to where Robbie was, took him by the hand, and said, "OK, they're about to drop the bomb on us, let's run!" And, screaming, he and Robbie ran through the water.

DeAnne went back in the family room and brought out the folding chair she always used when she sat in the back and watched the kids play. She sat there, watching, and thought, Somebody wants me to think that he's watching, too. Somebody wants me to sit out here in my back yard and be afraid.

Well, it's working.

Step knew that something was bothering her, so when he woke up at three in the morning and found her side of the bed empty, he was not surprised. He knew why she couldn't sleep. The letter from the mortgage company had laid things out in no uncertain terms. "Your single payment was insufficient to keep this account open. If we do not receive in our office all back payments and late fees, along with the July payment currently due, for a total payment of $3,398.40, by 22nd July, we will begin foreclosure proceedings against the property." It was only then that Step discovered that DeAnne had not paid the back payments in June, when the first check from Agamemnon arrived. She hadn't spent the money on anything else; it was still there, ready to be paid. But it had been strange, to say the least, for DeAnne simply not to pay. It wasn't as if they didn't owe the money. It was their moral obligation to pay it. They had decided together that they would pay it. And yet the money still waited in the bank.

DeAnne had obviously been unwilling to discuss it with Step last night. She agreed at once that she would send the payment tomorrow, but she seemed distracted, as if she wasn't paying attention. She told him twice about Stevie playing with the other kids in the sprinkler, and she seemed jumpy. Now she couldn't sleep. Well, neither can I, thought Step. He got up and went in search of her. He found her in the family room and started reassuring her about the mortgage.

"It's not the house, Step," she said. "But you were so worried about it tonight that I didn't want to pile on anything more."

"You were protecting me? That's not how it's supposed to go."

"I'm sorry," she said. "We depend so much on your being able to concentrate on your work. But I can't handle this alone." She gave him the record and the envelope it came in. "It was waiting at our front door."

As soon as it started playing, he recognized it. He had the car--radio habit as DeAnne did not, and the song was hot right now. He had even liked it, the cleverness of it, the nastiness. But not when someone sent it anonymously to his family. He took it off the stereo before it finished playing. Then he broke it in half and carried the pieces outside to the garbage. There was nothing he could say that would reassure DeAnne. He could only take her to bed and hold her until finally she fell asleep.

He slept badly the rest of the night, and the next day at work, the question kept nagging at him. Who could have sent it? Who would want to disrupt their lives, fill them with fear?

DeAnne had figured that whoever it was knew Step better than DeAnne-but that didn't really leave anybody out, because it seemed as though Step had made all the enemies they had anyway. Who, after all, would want them to think that they were being watched? It might be Lee Weeks, of course, punishing them for the baptism thing. Or Gallowglass, after the Fourth of July pic nic-he had been cool and distant at work ever since, and who knew what might be going through his mind in response to the clear accusation in Step's actions that day?

There were others who might harbor ill feelings, too. It might conceivably be Mrs. Jones, who had missed her last month of teaching and, according to Dr. Mariner, would not be coming back next year. Could she have sat at home, brooding, until she thought of sending that record to make the Fletchers suffer a little, too? It could even be Sister LeSueur, though that seemed beyond possibility- it was hard to imagine her ever hearing a rock song, let alone buying one, even as a satanic weapon.

Dicky? It couldn't be Dicky. He was a vindictive man, Step already knew that, and they had already had one confrontation too many. But surely Dicky would confine his vengeance to bureaucratic infighting at work.

Wouldn't he?

It was an appalling list, really: Lee, Glass, Mrs. Jones, Dicky Northanger, Sister LeSueur-these were the people who definitely felt they had cause to hate or fear or resent Step Fletcher after he had lived in Steuben, North Carolina, for less than five months. Just think how many enemies he could make by New Year's! Yet he hadn't set out to make any enemies at all. He had come to Eight Bits Inc. expecting to be friends with Dicky Northanger-he had liked him well enough during interviews. It was Dicky who decided to be Step's enemy. It was Sister LeSueur who intruded into their lives, not the other way around. It was Mrs. Jones who singled out Stevie and mistreated him-should Step have let it go on, in the effort to be a "peacemaker"? What kind of peacemaker would he be, how blessed exactly would he be, if he pursued peace at the expense of his children's happiness?