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“I just don’t feel like talkin’, Angie.”

She decided to risk it. “You heard us talkin’ last night, didn’t you, Jason?”

There was a long silence. “No.”

“About your mom.”

“No.”

“About what happened to her.”

There was another long silence. “He killed her. I heard him say so.”

So Roy was right. The kid had heard.

She opened the door and went in. He lay on the bed. He still had his sneakers on. A Spawn comic book lay across his chest. Sunlight angled in through the dirty window on the west wall and picked out the blond highlights in his hair.

She went over and sat down next to him. The springs made a noise. She tried not to think about her weight, or how her bikinis fit her. She was definitely going on a diet. She was going to be a kept woman, and one thing a kept woman had to do was keep her body good.

She said, “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, what he did, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“And I also wanted you to know that your daddy isn’t a bad man.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Sometimes he is. But not all the time.”

“He broke your rib, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t mean to hit me that hard. He was just drunk was all. If he’d been sober, he wouldn’t have hit me that hard.”

“They say in school that a man shouldn’t hit a woman at all.”

“Well,” she said, “you know what your daddy says about schools. That they’re run by Jews and queers and colored people.”

He stared at her. “I’m gonna turn him in.”

She got scared. “Oh, honey, don’t you ever say that to your daddy.” She knew that Roy was looking for an excuse, any excuse, to kill Jason. “Promise me you won’t. He’d get so mad he’d—”

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. She sensed that the kid knew what she was talking about.

She said, “Is that a good comic book?”

“Not as good as Batman.”

“Then how come you don’t get Batman?”

“I already read it for this month.”

“Oh.”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. She’d never done that before. He was a nice kid. “You remember what I said now. You never say anything in front of your daddy about turnin’ him in. You hear me?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You take a nap now.”

She stood up.

Her mother had once said, “You give a man plenty of starch and a good piece of meat, he’ll never complain about you or your cook-in’.” Angie had told this to Roy once and he’d grinned at her and pawed one of her breasts and said, “All depends on what kind of meat you’re talkin’ about.” At the time, Angie had found his remark hilarious.

There was nothing to smile about as she made the Kraft cheese and macaroni while the pork chops sizzled in the oven. He was going to kill his own son. She couldn’t get over it. His own son.

Forty-five minutes later, the three of them ate dinner. As always, Jason said grace to himself the way his mom had taught him. While he did this, Roy made a face and rolled his eyes. Little sissy sonofabitch, he’d drunkenly said to Jason one night, sayin’ grace like that.

Roy said, “Guess what I found today?”

Angie said, “What?”

“I was talkin’ to the boy.”

“Oh,” Angie said, irritated with his tone of voice. “Pardon me for living.”

She got up from the table and carried her dishes to the sink.

“Guess what I found today?” Roy said to Jason.

“What?”

“A real great spot for fishin’.”

“Oh.”

“For you and me. I always wanted to teach you how to fish.”

“I thought you hated to fish,” Jason said.

“Not anymore. I love fishin’, don’t I, babe?”

“Yeah,” Angie said from the sink, where she was cleaning off her plate. “He loves fishin’.”

Angie knew immediately that Roy had figured out how to kill the kid. He hated fishing, and even more he hated do anything with the kid.

After supper, Jason went into his room. Most kids would be out playing in the warm spring night. Not Jason. He had a little twelve-inch TV in there and he had a lot of X-Files novels, too. He was well set up.

While she was doing the dishes, and Roy was sitting at the table nursing a Hamms from the bottle and watching some skin on the Playboy Channel, she said, “You’re