"Easy for you to say," said the man. "But I'll give it a shot and see if he wants to talk to you."
It seemed less than a minute-yet such a long time-before the phone rang. Step picked it up so fast it barely had time to echo.
"What have you got on Christmas Eve, Mr. Fletcher?"
"I had the list before, Mr. Douglas, and that wasn't a fake, right? I told you the truth, right?"
"Right."
"Come now, come quickly. I have all the answers here. But no lights, no sirens. Because you'll frighten them and they might go."
"Them? Who?"
"The boys, Mr. Douglas." Step hung up, trusting that Douglas would have faith enough in him to come.
He got there before the boys had finished telling all their memories. He came in quietly, and when he saw them gathered there, Step could see the hope in his eyes, the wonderment that they were not dead after all. But then he saw Step's face, and Step knew that it was no secret that he had been grieving, and then Douglas began to understand. "Your boy really did see them," said Douglas.
"All along," said Step.
"But why is it that we can see them now?"
"Because Stevie showed them how. And he kept them here so you could see them."
Douglas walked slowly, carefully, to the center of the room. "Ah, boys. If only I could have found him sooner. If only I could have stopped him before ... But I can stop him now. Just tell me who it is."
So Stevie told it all again, and this time with more details. The deep place under the house. How he didn't really understand what had happened to his friends until he saw that place and then he made them tell him, and he made them tell him who it was, too. "Bappy" he said.
"Boy," said a couple of the others.
"Baptize Waters," said Step. "Our landlord's father. He used to live here. I wrote down his address and phone number for you while you were on the way."
"Boys," said Douglas. "I'll tell you something. I don't think you should ever see that man again. I don't think any children should ever have to see him again."
They nodded.
"So I promise you that if you stay right here in this room for just a little while longer, you won't ever see him again. And if you wait, I'd like to call your parents. I'd like your parents to have a chance to see you."
"They'll be mad," said one of the boys. "I didn't stay where I was supposed to."
"No," said Douglas. "I've talked to all of them and I can promise you that not one of them will be mad. Not one. Can you stay just that much longer?"
"It's hard," said one of the boys.
"Then I'll hurry."
Douglas left the room, went into the kitchen. Step could hear him phoning, speaking quie tly. Later he would learn how the phone calls went. We have found where the bodies are hidden, and your son is one of them. But there's also something else, a chance of something else, to say good-bye to your son, if you hurry.
Tell no one. Come quickly They didn't understand, of course, but they came. And soon they had spread out through the house, the grieving parents, the boys, shy at first, and softspoken, for none of them was as strong as Stevie.
And while they talked inside the house, the policemen worked beneath it and outside it, and the bodies were brought out one by one on pallets and were laid under the bright lights on the lawn. Bappy was brought to the house on Chinqua Penn, he and his son and his son's lawyer, furious at first about being dragged out here on Christmas Eve. But then they saw the bodies on the lawn, and the son turned to the father, and in a voice rising steadily to a shout, to a scream, he said, "You told me you stopped. You told me you were too old to want it anymore. But you didn't stop, you old son-of-a-bitch, you went on doing it only now you killed them!" Weeping in shame and rage and terrible memories of his own, the son shoved his father to the ground and then he kicked him until the police grabbed him and held him, and he stood there sobbing. "He said he stopped. I would have told you about him if I'd known he was still doing it, if I'd known he'd do this, I would have told you."
"So why didn't you tell us anyway?" asked Douglas.
For a moment he couldn't think of how to say it. And then he could. "He's my father."
"It wasn't me," said Bappy.
"Yes it was," said Douglas.
"It was Boy," said Bappy. "I never wanted to. What do you think I am, anyway? I'd never do anything like this. It's always that Boy."
All of it was on videotape. The son. The father. The grim- faced lawyer urging them both, far too late now, to be quiet, to say no more. All on tape, and so there was no need for any of the men outside the house to see or even know about what was happening inside.
As Bappy was led away, as the bodies were brought out of their hidden graves and under the police lights of that bitter cold Christmas Eve, one by one the boys inside the house no longer had the strength or the need to keep trying anymore, and they said good-bye, and they were gone. One moment there, the next moment not there. Then their parents left, weeping, clinging to each other, with just a whispered word or two from Douglas.
"Tell no one," he said. "You don't want your boy's name in the press. Just go home and thank God you had a chance to say good-bye. One small mercy in this whole cruel business." And the parents nodded and agreed and went home to the loneliest Christmas of their lives, the Christmas in which questions were answered at last, and love was remembered and wept for, and God was thanked and blamed for not having done more.
Inside the house, Stevie was the last to linger; he had been the strongest all along. Robbie and Betsy were both asleep, and Zap also was asleep in DeAnne's arms. So Stevie was alone with his parents at last, as he had been alone with them when their family was just beginning.
"Ah, Stevie," said Step. "Why did you face him by yourself? Why didn't you make us believe you? Why didn't you explain?"
"I was the one the y came to," said Stevie. "It was my job. Isn't that why we moved here?"
"Not to lose you," said DeAnne.
"I just did what you taught me," said Stevie. "I didn't mean to die. But I didn't know how to do it until then.
Did I do wrong?"
"Oh, Stevie," said DeAnne, "what you did was noble and good and brave. We knew that's the kind of man you would be, we knew it all along."
"We just thought we'd have a chance to know you longer," said Step. "We thought we'd die long before you. That's how the world is supposed to be."
"Nothing was how it was supposed to be," said Stevie. "Nothing was right, but now it's better, isn't it? I made it better, didn't I?"
"For all the mothers and fathers who won't have to grieve," said Step, "because you stopped that man before he found their sons, yes, you made it better."
"And you're not mad at me for breaking the rules?" asked Stevie.
"No, we're not," said DeAnne. "But we're sad."
"Stevie, will you forgive us?" said Step. "For not understand ing? For not knowing that what you said to us was true?"
"Sure," he said. "I could see them and you couldn't. I was only mad at you until I figured that out." Then Stevie sighed. "It's so hard, staying here like this."
"I don't want you to go," said DeAnne.
"It's so hard," he said again.
"I love you, Stephen Bolivar Fletcher," said Step. "I love you more than life. I'll miss you so much."
"I'll miss you too, Daddy. I'll miss you too, Mommy. Tell Bobbie and Betsy bye for me. And tell Zap about me when he's bigger, because I'm still his biggest brother."
"I love you," said DeAnne. She wanted to tell him what that meant. What he meant to her, how it felt to carry him for all those awful months of sickness and how it all was worth it when she held him in her arms, and more than worth it as she watched him grow and saw what a fine boy he was, so much better than she could have hoped for. She wanted to tell him of all her dreams for him, of all the children she wanted him to have, children lucky enough to have him for a father. She wanted to tell him how she had once dreamed of lying on her own deathbed, knowing that it would be all right to die because Stevie was sitting there beside her, holding her hand, and she dreamed that he said, Good-bye, Mother. And then: Be there waiting for me when I come.