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“Yes, I am.”

“He’s your own flesh and blood.”

He came over and pressed against her. He had a hard-on. Seems he always had a hard-on. She didn’t have no complaints in that department. He groped her and kissed her neck and said, “We’re free kind of people, Angie. Free. And with the kid along, we’ll never be free. Especially with what he knows about us. One phone call from him and we’ll be in the slammer.”

“But he’s your own son.”

Jason’s door opened. He went to the john. Roy said, “You let me take care of it.”

Twenty minutes later, Roy and Jason, they left. She couldn’t think of any way to stop them without coming right out and warning Jason about what was going on.

She paced. She paced and gunned whiskey from a Smurfs glass. She was so agitated her heart felt like thunder in her chest and every few minutes her right arm jerked grotesquely.

And then she remembered the gun. She didn’t even know what kind of gun it was. One of her lawyer friends had given it to her once when one of her old boyfriends was hassling her. She’d shot it a few times. She knew how to use it. She kept it in the bureau underneath the crotchless panties Roy had bought her, his joke always being that he’d personally eaten the crotch out of them.

She got the gun and she went after them. Her only thought was the river. About half a mile on the other side of some hardwoods was a cliff and below it fast water that ran to a dam near Cedar Rapids. One time they’d been walking and Roy said it was a perfect place to throw a body. His cellmate, a lifer Roy had a lot of respect for, had said that while bodies did occasionally wash up right away, there was a better chance they’d give you a five-, six-day head start from the law.

The dying day was indigo in the sky, indigo and salmon pink and mauve spreading like a stain beneath a few northeasterly thunderheads and a biting wind that tasted of rain. Rainstorms always scared her. When she was little, she’d always hidden in the closet, her two older sisters laughing at her, scaredy-pants, scaredy-pants. But she didn’t care. She’d hidden anyway.

The way she found them, they were sitting on a picnic table near the cliff, father and son, just talking. Darkness was slowly making them grainy, and soon would make them invisible.

Roy said, “What the hell you doing here?”

“She can be here if she wants to,” Jason said.

She smiled. The kid liked her and that made her feel good.

“I guess I need to go to the bathroom,” Jason said.

He walked over to the hardwoods and disappeared.

“I was afraid you already did something to him,” Angie said.

He looked at her. Shrugged. “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

“He’s your own flesh and blood.”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess that’s it. I started to do it a couple times but I couldn’t go through with it. I mean, it’s not like shootin’ a stranger or anything.”

“Let’s go back.”

He shook his head. “Oh, no. You go back alone.”

“But if you can’t do it, why you want to stay out here?”

“I didn’t say I can’t do it. I just said it’s harder than I thought it was. It’s just gonna take me a little time is all. Now, you get that sweet ass of yours back home and wait for me. We’ll be pullin’ out tonight.”

“Pullin’ out?”

They could see Jason coming back toward them.

“Yeah,” Roy said in a whispering voice, “school’ll be askin’ questions, him not around anymore. Better off pullin’ out tonight.”

Jason walked up. “Dad tell you there’s twenty-pound fish in that river?”

“Yeah,” she said, “that’s what he said.”

“Angie’s got to get back home. She’s makin’ us a surprise.”

“A surprise?” Jason said, excited. “What kinda surprise?”

“Well, if she tells ya, it won’t be much of a surprise, will it?”

Jason grinned. “No, I guess not.”

“You head home, babe,” Roy said. “We’ll be up’n a while.”

She wanted to argue but you didn’t argue with Roy. You didn’t argue and win, anyway. And you got bruises and bumps and breaks for not winning.

“Guess I better go,” she said.

“I can’t wait to see the surprise,” Jason said.

She went back but she didn’t go home. She stood inside the hardwoods,