Stasia turned her face toward her grandson. "You said that?"
"Yeah," Mick said, and shrugged one shoulder, and looked at the floor.
"Hm," said Stasia Kostka. She closed the book and held it in both hands. "And your father? Dell? You told him?"
"No."
"MichaΕ."
"He's got Frackville Monday. Babcia, he's got the second interview. He hasn't slept. I can't put this on him right now. I can't."
His grandmother was silent for a while.
"Your father," she said finally, "was nine years old and he stood in the lamp house with me and watched them carry Andrew Dombrowski up and lay him on the bench. He watched his father go back down. He has not said one word about that day in twenty-six years, and you think that's because he is ashamed. I know you think that. I know what they said to you at school. I know about the Chesko boy." She held out the book toward his voice. "Your father is not ashamed of his father. Your father is waiting. He has been waiting since he was nine for somebody to say it out loud where he could hear it. Take this to him."