CONTAINS MATERIAL SOME MAY FIND DISTURBING.

SEE MY PROFILE FOR SOME INFORMATION THAT I WAS UNABLE TO PUT HERE (BECAUSE I CAN'T TYPE LINKS TO WEBSITES HERE.)

At a red light, in the sunshine, on a Sunday

Nothin' to say, don't even try

Some are comin' home, some are leavin' town

While my world's crashing down

On a Sunday, in the sunshine

At a red light

-Red Light by David Nail

Red Light

Nathan kept Jess's words in mind, and a few days after she had confronted (screamed at) him at the nature park, he knew she was right, well, partly right. He still couldn't accept the truth about his sons' victimization, but he knew he had to restablish fellowship with them. He decided to spend some time with his boys. They spent the whole day together, going to the park, out for lunch, to the museum, and then an early dinner. The sun was still shining as they climbed in the car to go back to the relative's home they were staying at.

"Daddy, can I sit in the front?" little Nathan asked.

"Just this once. Don't tell your mother."

Toby glowed as he climbed in front.

xxxxx

That same day Nicole and Gloria had brought Heather to Julia Reilly's office to give her statement. On the way back home Heather uttered something that was so shocking to Nicole that she had to pull the car over. She opened the back door and knelt on the ground to be eye to eye with Heather in the backseat.

"Honey, tell me again what you just said."

"There was a policeman who asked us if anyone was hurting us."

"And this was the day you spent in Zachary's class?"

"Yes."

"What did the policeman say?"

"He asked if the teachers hurt us or if we saw them hurt anyone else. I'm sorry I lied, Mommy. Am I in trouble?"

"No, no. I am so proud of you for telling me this. What else happened?"

"Nothing...He told us not to tell and then he went."

"He told you not to tell that the Halls hurt you?"

"No, he told us not to tell that he asked that. He said 'don't tell your parents or the teachers that I asked this'."

xxxxx

Nathan's car stopped at a light less than a mile from their destination.

Toby and his father had spent the whole day together, talking endlessly. Since Joe never interrupted their coversations, Toby had his father's undivided attention. He felt so close to his dad that he felt he could tell him anything, even his deepest, darkest secret.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, son?"

"I wanna tell you somethin'."

"Shoot."

"Did Mommy tell you about the lady that kids tell secrets to?"

Nathan assumed Toby meant the psychologist. "Yeah, she told me. You don't have to worry about that. I know you said what they made you say. Forget about it."

"No, Daddy, I said the truth. Roger really did take the boys to the bathroom, except he didn't take Jordie, 'cause he wears diapers. But he took the other boys. And then he took our underwear off. I saw him do it a lot to the other kids, but he only did it once to me...And one other time."

Throughout that disclosure, Nathan felt faint. He couldn't speak because his throat was too dry. His heart was pounding. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. All he could do was stare. The upside was, his stare, caused by shock and near-dissociation, looked to Toby like a patient father listening to his son.

Relieved that his dad was taking it so well, Toby went on.

Nathan looked at the red light. It seemed to be painted. Would it ever turn green?

In the backseat, while his brother was continuing his complaints that had been held in for too long, Joe was sure his brother would be taken from him. If their father didn't kill him, Deborah surly would. Joe and Nathan (and Madison and Zachary) had all been told repeadedly that Deborah was dead. But the permanence of death doesn't resentate well with young children. They all still feared her. All except Toby, who felt his father could keep her from him.

xxxxx

Nicole and Antonio's family took the children out to dinner. Carla, Gloria, Nicole, and Antonio were the only ones who stayed behind to talk to Julia when she came over. She had rushed to their home when Nicole called her and told her what Heather had said—and what Zachary confirmed when they got home.

Now that the children were gone, Nicole could let her fury fly. "He knew about this in July. July! And didin't notify a single parent!"

"Does Heather know how the Levi P.D. came to suspect the abuse?" Julia asked.

"No. She told me everything she knows. Officers came to the class, asked to speak to the Halls, Two of them left with Roger and Deborah and one stayed in the class. He asked if they were being hurt, they said no, and he told them not to tell anyone he was there."

"How many laws broken is that?" Antonio wanted to know.

"One," Julia answered. "He was supposed to notify CSD of any suspicions. Ethically, he should have informed the parents, and interviewed the children properly, but not doing that isn't illegal."

"I want every parent who had a kid in that class to know about this." Nicole said to no one in particular. "I wanna file a class-action lawsuit—against the department, against the officers, against the library, and against this rotten town."

"All of those are one and the same," Julia replied, "if you sue anyone of them, you sue the city. As long as we're talking about broken laws, here's something else for you to chew on, the Levi Library Daycare also broke the adult to child ratio. That class should have had one adult for every four children."

"Shit!" Carla snapped. "You're telling us that if the library had followed the ratio laws, Deborah and Roger never would have been alone with those kids in the first place?"

"Yes. But don't worry, I intend to prosecute them for this."

"It would be a slap on the wrist. I'm filing suit, against Levi, and CSD for not checking in on how that daycare was run."

"And while you're at it," Gloria suggested, "go after the city of San Francisco too. They are the governing force of CSD."

xxxxx

Nathan didn't say a word the rest of the drive home. As soon as they came in, the other children got Toby engaged in what they were playing. Joe went off by himself. Nathan went to the upstairs bathroom to be sick, but he'd read his body's signals wrong. He couldn't throw up, so he went in the bedroom and laid down, hoping to pass out or fall asleep, anything to be put out of his misery.

Jess went up to see him not long after. "How was the day?...What happened?"

Nathan was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. Without looking at her, he answered Jess's question.

"Nathan told me."

Jess was anxious to hear what her younger son had said, but more anxious to hear how his father had handled it. She fired a million questions at her husband.

"Jess," he said weakly. "Enough, please."

The pleading tone in his voice answered one of her questions. He must have believed what Toby said.

"I guess you wouldn't be so upset if you didn't know he told you the truth," she said.

He sat up and she wrapped her arms around him.

"You shoulda heard it, Jess. It was like he was telling me about a boring movie, something unpleasant, but not really a big deal...How can he talk about that without being furious?"

"It's all there. The pain, the rage, the terror, is all inside him. Kids are just really good at keeping that stuff hidden when it comes to sexual abuse."

For the first time since she entered the room, he looked her in the eye. "I'm sorry. You were right."

"I wish I wasn't."

"So it happened to Joe too?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am. I'm sorry, hon. I know you wanted this to all be a lie. So did I."

"What do we do now?"

"Like I told you, when we get back home, they will all start counseling. Tori, Nicole, and I all made arrangements for her to see all four of them twice a week, and two additional private sessions for Joe."

"This not talking thing he's been doing isn't a phase is it?"

Jess shook her head sadly, empathy overflowing for her son and her husband. "He's sick, Nathan. It's called Elective Mutism. The form he has is Reactive Mutism, a response to trauma. Tori said there's no way to know when he'll start talking again.

Nathan wept and, seeming to be as good a time as any, Jess joined him.

xxxxx

A few days later, Nicole invited the parents of the victims to her home for another parents' meeting. This one's guest speaker was a lawyer, who agreed this case warranted litigation.

"We can't do anything," the lawyer said, "until after the trial. If he's found guilty, then we have a case. If the jury says he's innocent, the worst the police did was not notify CSD about suspected abuse. No harm, no foul. The department will probably only be fined."

"No harm?" a parent said. "Are you kidding?"

"No. If he is not found guilty, then for all intents and purposes, as far as the law is concerned, the children were not harmed. But if he's convicted of even one crime, you have a good case against Levi and San Francisco. You have my number. Give me a call if the jury votes in your favor."

As Nicole was seeing the attorney to the door, the doorbell rang. After feigning calmness and seeing the lawyer off, she popped her head back in to tell Antonio to keep their guests entertained for a while. Then she closed the front door, leaving herself and Colin alone on the front porch.

xxxxx

"Here's my number." Colin handed a post-it to Nicole. "When Jess gets back, tell her to call me. I would like to do this without lawyers, but that will be up to her." He walked off, still as angry as he was when he arrived.

After the parents left, Nicole told Antonio who had been at the door.

"How did he find out?" Antonio wanted to know.

"Jess worked a case with an agent several months ago. Last week that agent worked with Colin. He casually mentioned Jess and the kids. When Colin heard about how old Joe was, he just did the math and figured it out. Then he had some people do some digging and somehow he was able to see that his name is on Joe's birth certificate."

"So he wants to be in Joe's life?"

"He wants joint custody." Nicole's fist slammed the counter. "Damn it! Do we have some kind of fucking curse on us or something! This is the last thing this family needs! We might as well just move into the damn San Francisco court house."

xxxxx

As much as Nicole and Antonio loved seeing their families again, after two months, they were all more than ready to get back to their "normal" lives. Antonio and Nicole said goodbye to their relatives on New Years 2012.

That last week of December 2011 had been a good one. The doctors had told Faith's parents and family that she would live.

"I love this quiet," he said. The house was empty of everyone but Zachary and his parents, who were downstairs resting after a tiring holiday season.

"It's nice," she agreed.

"When are Nathan and Jess coming home?"

"I talked to her this morning. She said they were catching a flight on the third. If only she knew what's waiting for her back here."

"Maybe it will be good for Joe to have his dad in his life."

"Nathan is Joe's dad, the only one he has ever known. This is the worst time to drop something like this on that little boy."

"Did you tell that to Colin?"

"He doesn't care. All he's thinking about is himself. He just wants to get back at Jess."

"That doesn't sound like him."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore, Antonio. God knows it's all we're gonna be talking about soon. Let's just enjoy some peace while we got it."

"Okay. Have you given any thought to when you'll be going back to work?"

Nicole had thought about this a lot. She had known the answer for a while now. "I'm not."

"You mean not any time soon?"

"I mean not at all. I'm tired of this guilt, Antonio."

"You can't blame yourself for what the Halls did."

"Yeah, I can. And it's not just the Halls either. We've tried everything, a nanny, a daycare center. Both failed abysmally. The only way I can't know for sure that those five kids are safe is if I am the one taking care of them. I actually wrote out my resignation a couple of weeks ago. I'm gonna give it to Haslett when she gets back from visiting her family in a couple of days."

"I thought you decided long ago, back when Zachary was a baby, that you could never be happy staying at home."

"That was before. Before a crazed Russian murdered my nanny, before I found what I thought to be the two kindest people on earth to watch them, only to learn they abused my son and those three kids that I love just as much. This isn't the world you and I grew up in, Antonio. Did you know that one in every four girls and one in every six boys is sexually assaulted before they become adults? I know because I was looking it up last night, trying to convince myself that this would never happen to them again, that they would be safe in another daycare."

"Sexual abuse in daycare is rare these days. The odds of this happening again are extremely, almost astronomically, unlikely."

"But not impossible. And I'm not going to chance it anymore. Until they go to kindergarten, Zachary, Faith, Toby, and Madison will be home with me."

"Will you consider going back after they are in school?"

"If Levi Day School has an after-school program by then. But I am absolutely done with daycare centers. Besides, somebody has to take the kids to counseling during the days. I've made up my mind. I'm quitting."