“You can tell me anything,” Gwen whispered. Mimi was always so cheerful and optimistic. It was awful to see her battling tears. Gwen rubbed Mimi’s back. “Please tell me how I can make it better.”

Mimi lifted her head. Her lower lip trembled furiously, but she was finally able to stammer out a reply. “My walker got broken.”

Gwen glanced at the metal frame with wheels that Mimi depended on to walk. It looked all right from here, but Jake was inspecting it.

“Yup, Miss Mimi, it looks like the bracket on this wheel got bent. How did that happen?”

Mimi’s lip started wobbling again, and tears spilled over. “Some boys on my street took it away from me. They put it up in a tree, and I couldn’t stop them because I couldn’t walk. They left it up there, and when my mama came to get it down, it fell, and the wheel broke.”

Gwen stared, aghast.

“What are their names?” Hiram demanded.

“I don’t know who they were, but they were mean,” Mimi said. “They laughed at how I got stuck on the ground and couldn’t even stand up without my walker.”

“Okay, so what did they look like?” Hiram pressed.

Gwen pulled Mimi tighter in her arms. “Don’t make her relive it,” she murmured to him, but Hiram was just as adamant.

“I’m going to find out who they are,” he whispered fiercely. “No bratty kids are going to gang up on Mimi and get away with it.”

But they would get away with it. Even if Hiram figured out who those boys were and scared the daylights out of them, children could be cruel, and there would be more who would find an easy target in Mimi’s thick glasses and malformed legs. Mimi was only just beginning to understand that she was different, and the coming years were going to be hard for her.

Jake was more pragmatic as he examined the damaged wheel. He cautiously rolled the walker forward. It still worked, but the wheel made a knocking sound as it rotated. “I’ll bet Professor Jenkins can fix this in short order. He’s an engineer and can probably have it repaired before lunchtime.”

“I don’t think it will ever be the same again,” Mimi whispered, and Gwen’s heart split wide open because it wasn’t the walker Mimi spoke about. She scrambled for a way to make the girl feel better.

“Why don’t we go over to my house for a snack?” she suggested. “I have a pan of brownies, and I can’t eat them all myself. I think the three of you deserve a treat.”