shocked she must have looked.
Evidently, while Jeremy and Enid had somehow managed to abduct Cynthia and Grace and get them up here above the quarry, they had not bothered to bring them up to speed.
“Son,” Clayton said to Jeremy, “you have to put an end to this. Your mother, she’s wrong to drag you into this, make you do all these bad things. Look at her.” He was telling Jeremy to look at Cynthia. “That’s your sister.
“Dad,” said Jeremy, still crouched around the front of the Impala, “why are you leaving everything to her? You don’t even know her. How could you be so mean to me and Mom?”
Clayton sighed. “It’s not always about the two of you,” he said.
“Shut up!” Enid snipped.
“Jeremy!” I called out. “Get rid of the gun. Give it up.” I had both hands wrapped around Vince’s weapon and was lying there in the grass. I didn’t know the first thing about guns, but I knew I needed to hold on to it as tightly as I could.
He rose up from his hiding spot in front of the Impala, fired. Dirt kicked up just to my right, and I instinctively rolled left.
Cynthia screamed again.
I heard fast-moving steps along the gravel. Jeremy was running, closing in on me. I stopped rolling, aimed up at the figure closing in on me, fired. But it went wide and before I could shoot again Jeremy kicked at the gun, the toe of his shoe slamming into the back of my right hand.
I lost my grip. The gun flew off into the grass.
His next kick caught me in the side, in my rib cage. The pain shot through me like a bolt of lightning. I’d barely registered that pain when he rammed his foot into me again, this time with enough force that I rolled over onto my back. Bits of dirt and grass stuck to my cheek.
But that still wasn’t enough for him. There was one last kick.
I couldn’t catch my breath. Jeremy stood over me, looking down with contempt, as I gasped for air.
“Shoot him!” Enid said. “If you won’t do it, give me back my gun and I’ll do it myself.”
He still had the gun in his hand, but he just stood there with it. He could have put a bullet in my brain as easily as dropping a coin into a parking meter, but the resolve was not there.
I was starting to get some air into my lungs, my breathing was returning to normal, but I was in tremendous pain. A couple of cracked ribs, I was sure of it.
Clayton, still using the trunk to support himself, looked at me, his eyes filled with sadness. I could almost read his thoughts.
I rolled over onto my stomach, slowly got to my knees. Jeremy found my gun in the grass, picked it up, tucked it into the back of his trousers. “Get up,” he said to me.
“Are you not listening?” Enid screamed. “Shoot him!”
“Momma,” he said, “maybe it makes more sense to put him in the car. With the others.”
She thought about that. “No,” she said. “That doesn’t work. They have to go into the lake without him. It’s better that way. We’ll have to kill him someplace else.”
Clayton, using his hands, one over the other, was moving up along the side of the Impala. He still appeared on the verge of collapse.
“I…I think I’m going to pass out,” he said.
“You stupid bastard!” Enid shouted at him. “You should have stayed in the hospital and died there.” She was having to move her neck around so much, trying to keep track of what was going on, I thought it might snap. I could see the handles of her wheelchair rising above the sills of the back door windows. The ground was too bumpy, too uneven, to bother getting it out so she could move around.
Jeremy was forced to choose between keeping an eye on me and running over to help his father. He decided to attempt both.
“You don’t move,” he said, keeping the gun pointed in my direction as he backstepped over to the Impala. He was about to open the back door so his father could sit down, but it was filled with the wheelchair, so he opened the driver’s door.
“Sit down,” Jeremy said, glancing from his father to me and back again. Clayton shuffled the extra couple of steps, then slowly dropped himself into the seat.
“I need some water,” he said.
“Oh, stop complaining,” Enid said. “For Christ’s sake. It’s always something with you.”
I’d managed to struggle to my feet now, and was coming up alongside Cynthia’s car. She was in the driver’s seat, Grace next to her. I couldn’t quite tell from where I was standing, but they were sitting so rigidly, they had to be tied in somehow.
“Honey,” I said.
Cynthia’s eyes were bloodshot, her cheeks streaked with dried tears. Grace, on the other hand, was still crying. Damp lines ran down her cheek.
“He said he was Todd,” Cynthia told me. “He’s not Todd.”
“I know,” I said. “I know. But that is your father.”
Cynthia looked to her right at the man sitting in the front of the Impala, then back to me.
“No,” she said. “He might look like him, but he’s not my father. Not anymore.”
Clayton, who had heard the exchange, let his head fall toward his chest in shame. Without looking at Cynthia, he said, “You’re entitled to feel that way. I know I would, if I was you. All I can tell you is how sorry I am, but I’m not so old and foolish as to think you’ll forgive. I’m not even sure you should.”
“You get away from the car,” Jeremy warned me, coming around the front of Cynthia’s Corolla, the gun pointed my way. “You stand back over there.”
“How could you do it?” Enid said to Clayton. “How could you leave everything to that bitch?”
“I’d told the lawyer you weren’t to see it before I died,” Clayton said. He nearly smiled, and said, “Guess I’m going to have to look for a new lawyer.”
“It was his secretary,” Enid said. “He was on vacation, I dropped by, said you wanted to take another look at it, up in the hospital. So she shows it to me. You ungrateful son of a bitch. I give up my whole life for you and this is the thanks I get.”
“Should we do it, Mom?” Jeremy asked. He was standing by Cynthia’s door, preparing, I figured, to lean in through the window, turn the ignition, slap it into drive or neutral, pull himself back through the window, and watch the car roll over the edge.
“Hey, Mom,” Jeremy said, more slowly this time, “shouldn’t they be untied? Won’t it look funny if they’re tied up in the car? Doesn’t it have to look like my…you know…like she did it on her own?”
“What are you blathering on about?” Enid shouted.
“Should I knock them out first?” Jeremy asked.
I couldn’t think of much else to do but rush him. Try to grab his gun, turn it on him. I might end up getting shot myself, would probably end up dead, but if that meant saving my wife and my daughter, it didn’t seem like that bad a deal. Once Jeremy was out of the way, there wouldn’t be anything Enid could do, not without the use of her legs. Eventually, Cynthia and Grace would be able to free themselves, get away.
“You know what?” Enid said, ignoring Jeremy and turning her attention to Clayton. “You never appreciated anything I did for you. You were an ungrateful bastard from the moment I first met you. A miserable, useless good-for-nothing. And on top of that, unfaithful.” Enid shook her head disapprovingly. “That’s the worst sin of all.”
“Mom?” Jeremy said again. He had one hand on Cynthia’s door, the other still pointing the gun at me.
Maybe when he leaned in, I thought. He’d have to turn his back to me, at least for a second. But what if he managed to knock Cynthia and Grace out, put the car into gear before I got to him? I might get the drop on him but not in time to stop the car from rolling off the edge.
It had to be now. I had to rush him-
And then I heard a car starting.
It was the Impala.
