Sweet Water(11)

“I have my men on the scene now, but we need to work out a few details,” Alton informs us. And I want to think that “men on the scene” means other officers doing right by Yazmin, but this circle makes me think otherwise.

“Absolutely. Just tell us what we need to do,” I hear Martin say.

“I don’t think—” I begin, but I’m cut off by a quick rap on the office door.

I jump. My heart races in my chest and chokes my speech. It must be the police! I clench the cushions of the chair and turn my head in Martin’s direction, but he remains faced forward, stoic.

“Martin?” I whisper. He holds his finger up—wait—and won’t make eye contact with me. This isn’t like Martin. He always acknowledges me, eager to please, but then again, we haven’t been faced with a situation like this before.

Alton gets up and strides quickly to the door, then opens it. A man dressed in all black hands him bundles of plastic. “Thanks,” Alton says. The man takes off, and I’m not sure who he is or how he got into my in-laws’ home, but they don’t seem the least bit surprised at his intrusion. I’m shocked. Who is this guy? I thought our part in what happened tonight was confined to this little room, and now that it’s reached outside these walls, I want to crawl out of here and cry for help.

“Aunt Mary Alice,” Alton says, and there seems to be an unspoken system going on here.

My mother-in-law rises again and takes the parcels from Alton and then kneels beside Finn.

I stand up. “What’re you doing?”

Mary Alice doesn’t answer me.

“Sit down, Sarah. She’s examining him again,” Martin says.

She doesn’t look like she’s examining him. Mary Alice removes syringes and surgical tubes from the bag and takes Finn’s arm, the same one she used to check his blood pressure. She then plunges a syringe attached to a test tube into the underside of it.

I gasp, horrified. “No. I didn’t agree to this.” But Mary Alice only shakes her head, and everyone else remains quiet. “Martin?” I try to summon my husband, but he won’t look at me. “Martin!” I try again, but he holds up his hand, quieting me, and I want to scream and grab my son and run.

It’s all so disturbing—the random midnight courier, the on-site phlebotomy session, the fact that Finn hasn’t flinched a bit from the brief examination or the sudden needle prick.

Martin grabs my hand. “We need to know what he’s taken, Sarah. Sit down.”

I sit in the chair, stunned, and turn to my husband, who doesn’t seem like my husband at all, his normally gentle face a mask of urgency. “Martin, we need to get him to a hospital if we’re concerned about what he’s taken.”

“We’ll have the results back quicker this way,” he reassures me.

I give him a bewildered look, and he turns back to face William, the side of the gargantuan chair blocking his face. I suddenly wonder what they’ll do to me if I completely lose it and call the police. I’ve never acted out before, but then again, I’ve never had reason to. Then I realize Alton is the police, and this scares me even more, because it means there’s no one I can turn to with the law sitting right here.

Mary Alice glances at me as she bags the blood, her thin lower lip twitching with disgust.

When the boys were younger, I tried so hard to be the type of mother I knew she expected me to be. I didn’t know what normal was, so I did what I could to appease her, treated her grandchildren in ways I thought she’d find pleasing. Even when I had a minor case of the baby blues, I didn’t let her see, afraid of the judgment and the feeling of failure that I knew would follow my admission. Bill Jr. and Martin were her pride and joy, and there was no way she’d excuse my depression after having two perfect little boys like Spencer and Finn.

But I couldn’t care less what she thinks of me now.

Because real mothers cry for their children.

I’m here asking the Ellsworths for help tonight only because Martin has assured me they’d “figure it out.” That’s why I followed Martin out of the woods and into the car, holding Finn up beside me, his body a limber mess. Martin always figured things out for us, and I desperately wanted to do what was right for Finn, so I followed Martin like always. But it all feels terribly wrong now.

After Mary Alice is finished extracting blood from my son, she hands Alton the specimens in a plastic bag. Then Alton walks to the office door and taps on it once. It opens, and I’m shocked to discover the man in black is still waiting behind the door. I see the long black arm of his jacket reach in and grab the bagged tubes of blood, and then he’s off. To where, I don’t know. The secret lab, perhaps.

Are they taking my son’s blood to be quickly analyzed for drugs so they can find the chemical in his system and help him? Who would even do that this time of night? Or are they using his blood for something else, to plant it somewhere? I swallow hard. “Martin, who is that man?”

He just pats my hand. “Don’t worry—he’s one of the good guys.”

“Who does that make us, then?” I ask, pulling my hand away from him.

Martin shoots me a look of disapproval, eyes wide behind his glasses. William clears his throat. I’ve clearly offended the other people in the circle, but someone needs to tell me what the hell is going on here.