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And assume that because of this stumble in time, some footfall on future disaster is averted. Such things happen: The delay in traffic means missing the collision head-on; a late airplane departure translates time and you arrive just after the bomb explodes.

Or maybe the delay isn't so monumental. Say it is only a minute or two inhabiting and inhabited by a little peace, a slight tripping of the dark. Maybe Teddy stays at our house later than he intends.

So he isn't on the scene when his gang sets fire to a car. He's late, he's simply not there, not for the arrest, nor for arraignment, the trial and sentencing. He isn't sent off to DYS for the rest of his adolescence. And after his release, more arrests, more sentences.

Nor will his friend Alex disappear, living child or body never found. We will never see Alex's face on posters around Brookline, later on milk cartons. What was waiting out there for Alex has left. He missed that bus.

Say something slides into civility.

When you can see a long way you think it is the future.

I move to our windows above the street to see a small dark-clad figure walking up the hill, head down against the cold.

“Well, here comes Steve!” I interrupt the conversation. I'm a little mad these days, I know. My voice comes out of me shrill and too buoyant.

Stephen walks directly up the flights of stairs and into his room. In the wake of him the night air stirs the fire.

In a minute he appears at the end of the hall and signals his friends to join him. Sitting next to their mothers, Teddy, Alex, and Jason look at each other. I sense that they are enjoying the fire, the good food, this stab at pretending almost realized.

Then they get up and go to Stephen. Left in our ring, the adults are silent. Jason's and Alex's mothers begin to speak to each other in Spanish, gather their skirts around them and stand.

“I'll go see,” says Charles, but he reappears pale, his face rigid. The mothers shout commands in Spanish to their sons down the hall. They nod to me and get their coats.

No telling what's coming, what's going on. But I am amazed that the boys obey their mothers. Teddy, Alex, and Jason appear outside Stephen's room. They are members of a gang. They steal cars, drive them around all night, then shove them off a cliff into a quarry. They run drugs, rob places, fight with knives, hurt some and plot to hurt others.

Tonight, obviously, there has been some kind of trouble outside, something that has caused Stephen to attempt to rally forces, but caught between the gang and their mothers, these boys choose, at least for now, the latter. They ready themselves to escort their mothers home.

I'm stricken with envy at this shred of respect.

“Merry Christmas!” I sing too loudly and head down to Stephen's room to find him unwrapping a gun, a real gun, maybe a forty-five, the bullets spilling out of the brown paper bag.

“It's not mine,” he sneers, “in case you're wondering. Back off.” Stephen waves the gun and grins at my fear. “I'm just keeping it for a friend …”

Before I can respond there's yet another knock on the front door. And at this moment—his first appearance of the evening—Stan comes up behind us. Surprised by his presence, I understand suddenly that he has been lurking, listening outside Stephen's bedroom.

“Give me that gun!” Stan swoops in on the brown bag and heads toward the door.

The gun's owner, a boy of about fifteen, waits in the entry. Behind him his own mother waits in the street, her car idling.

Stan bursts past the boy and heads out to the car. He leans down to the mother and exposes the gun.

“Your son just gave this gun to Stephen …” Stan is pale. “Take it now. Please take it out of our house.”

But the mother speaks no English. She misunderstands. She thinks that Stan is pointing the gun at her. She speeds off, leaving her son, Stan, the gun, and now Stephen and me in the street.

Nine years later, I can't remember certain details of the evening. What happens to the kid? Soon the police arrive. They have been summoned by the mother from