Sweet Water(112)

It was a legal point that I didn’t understand, but Finn hadn’t hit Yazmin with anything that had caused her death. He’d been defending himself against an unprovoked threat after being drugged, and she’d fallen when she was forced backward. It was a sticky situation, and the community wasn’t thrilled with the verdict, and I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it either.

I’d agreed to the lawyer Martin wanted only if he arranged to pay for counseling for Finn, because he still hadn’t come back to us. At least not the boy I knew. I understand traumatic events can change a person, but I still catch Finn staring absently out the window sometimes, and it worries me.

Cash revealed in his statement that Yazmin had hung on Finn’s back to stop him at one point once she figured out the attacker was her brother, but Finn was so startled by the masked man and the drugs, it hadn’t registered. At least that explains the nail marks.

I’ve never been happier to be wrong about something in my life. Finn didn’t assault Yazmin.

I still worry about the drugs, even though Finn promises he won’t do them anymore. The fact that he’s chosen to stay with me for the rest of the school year and not his father tells me that he’s taking a step in the right direction.

It’s also promising that Finn confided in me that he’d hidden Yaz’s journal from Martin because he knew he would destroy it. I can never really know for sure—is Finn more Denning or Ellsworth? Only time will tell. Right now, I’m just focused on getting him well, improving his mental health enough so that he might go off to college a seminormal kid.

Alton was the one to give the journal to Finn, but only after he’d begged and promised to keep it hidden. Alton probably thought no one would press him for it. That he was above the law.

Doesn’t surprise me. He’s a dirty cop.

Dad is still healing. We had to attach a handicap ramp to get him into the house, but I’m happy I’m here to help.

“You don’t think a little house fire could take Vic Denning down,” he said the first time I was able to visit his hospital room. When I told him the heinous details of Yazmin’s death, he didn’t seem surprised. “I told you long ago—rich people keep the best secrets.”

Boy, was he ever right.

He’s been a tough bird to care for since, but he seems to really like the visiting nurse—Elena—so there’s something. I’ve invited her over for dinner next weekend.

I still struggle with what happened to Yazmin and our part in it, but at the same time, peace falls over me now at the end of each day because the Ellsworths’ time of terror is over.

I walk outside of my father’s house to the little bench that sits by the babbling brook where I used to play as a child, the same body of water that streamed past Stonehenge.

Turns out I’ve always lived by the sweet water; I just never knew it.

A touch of red grabs my eye, and my breath catches in my throat as I realize what it is.

Yazmin’s journal with a rose sitting on top.

I drove by the music store just yesterday to thank Josh again for saving my father, fully conscious and off all my meds this time. I parked out front, but I could already see the FOR SALE sign strung up where the flower boxes used to hang.

He’d sold the store and left without saying goodbye. Of course he did.

But he left me this.

He told me in one way or another in the hospital room, but I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed it. I thought maybe Alton had the journal in his possession or it had been lost in the blaze.

But here it is.

I palm the brown leather book in my hand. Josh obviously took it from Martin’s Lexus before the police could confiscate it. Maybe it was to protect Finn. Maybe it was to protect himself. It doesn’t really matter to me why he did it, only that he did.

My eyes fill up with tears as I open the book—backward—because Yazmin’s journal is nondescript and leather, and you can’t tell the front from the back.

I rotate the book.

A cool breeze touches the back of my neck.

I hear Dad’s walker crunching on the ground. I turn around, and he and Finn are walking toward me. Dad is holding matches. “Are we having another bonfire?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I say breathlessly. I hold up the journal.

Finn stops walking. “Where did you . . . ?” His face goes ashen, like the remains from the fire ring.

Like the remains from our house.

I’m tired of that look of shock. It needs to end here.

The fire ring brims with leftover charcoaled debris from the bonfire Dad made last night. It reminds me of Stonehenge.

Returning to my home after the fire was one of the worst days of my life.

“A kingdom fallen,” I said aloud, staring at the mess of stone, charred wood, and broken glass. Stonehenge was shattered. It could no longer keep me safe. It never really did. It was all an illusion.

But my boys are real.

My love for them is real.

My house can burn to the ground, but nobody can take them away from me.

Dad settles in beside me with a little growl. “What’s that?”

“Yazmin’s journal. We’re giving this back to Yazmin’s mother,” I inform Finn.

Finn exhales and nods, and there’s an unspoken truth exchanged between us.

He knows that I know he had it, but he watches me to see what I’m going to do next.