Sweet Water(113)

Finn’s breath escapes his throat in a huff, a tailwind of mistakes he was too afraid to tell me about.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” He stares at his hiking boots.

“I know. You want to tell me how this story ends?” I open the book and run my finger over the jagged edge of the missing page.

He shakes his head and slips his wallet out of his back pocket. He pulls out a piece of computer paper. “Dad wanted me to destroy the whole thing, but I convinced him it was just the last page that tied me to anything. So he made me rip out the page and burn it. He said he’d keep the journal in his safe.”

“But you made a copy of the page first?”

He nods, tears in his eyes.

“And took the journal out of the safe without asking your father?” I ask, putting it together. Martin probably hadn’t noticed it was gone until Alton tipped him off.

“He grilled me for it after you took it, but I told him it was gone, and he was so mad at me.”

I frown, and I’m so happy my marriage is over. “Can I see it?”

He hands me the paper, and Dad doesn’t say anything, only watches.

I run my finger along the edge. Yazmin’s final words.

My stomach sinks, and I collapse on the bench.





10-20


The day after tomorrow is the big day, but tonight I have a horrible feeling.

My head is spinning, my stomach a mess.

Finn is going to go along with Cash’s demands. Cash wants a million.

I was shocked when Finn agreed to help, but he said he can only get us $250,000 for now. In exchange, he doesn’t want us to turn in his family, but that’s all he has in his trust. He’ll get us the rest later. He hates his grandfather for what he did to us, but he’s afraid they’ll take his parents too. And even though he doesn’t like Cash, he wants to make it better. He’s going to take the money his grandfather put in his trust for him and give it to us.

He LOVES me. He told me so tonight. I’M SO HAPPY.

We’ll ditch school, go to the bank tomorrow, make the withdrawal.

Finn will do ANYTHING to help me, whether Cash likes it or not. Cash has to let me have my treasure once I give him his.

Everything will be fine now.

My heart churns in my ears. “No,” I whisper.

The realization of what this means is unfathomable.

“You knew,” I whisper. My vision goes sideways, and I squint through the sun, clutching the journal. Finn knew they were extorting us for money. He just wanted to help. He hated William for what he’d done to them. I couldn’t blame him. His lies were to protect her. And us.

He was in on the whole thing. Well, part of it anyway. He could’ve prevented her death if he’d just told me. I would’ve given them the money. Is this criminal? Attempted extortion that resulted in death? It could be. The press would turn it into something malicious, something that could overturn the court ruling, new evidence.

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

But this will. This could. This could take Finn away.

Finn knew that William killed Yazmin’s father, and he chose to say nothing. He withheld information about a murder. And then he offered Yazmin $250,000 so that the Veltris wouldn’t say anything about it. The word—exchange—is right there in Yazmin’s journal entry. Finn was paying Yazmin and Cash for retribution for their father, but he was also paying them for their silence. The journal entry is evidence of a bribe to cover a murder. I want to be angry at Finn’s poor judgment, but he was trying to do the right thing here. He just didn’t want to lose his whole family while doing it. Finn didn’t want to implicate his father, who he could only assume was aware of the accident, in the mess. Finn probably blamed himself because he’s the one who took Yazmin to William’s house, which must’ve been the day she was triggered by the family crest and figured out who the driver of the car was who hit her father.

An old threat takes over, and a sweat breaks on my forehead. I close my eyes and wish the page away.

It explains so many things.

Why the kids didn’t have their book bags that night in the woods even though they’d come straight from class. They were planning a little trip. They didn’t need schoolbooks where they were going—to ditch school the next day and withdraw money from Finn’s trust. The missing backpacks were something I’d thought about in the Sewickley Hotel when I met with Alisha, but it didn’t seem like a major detail then.

My belly churns. What does this mean? What do we do now?

“And you never withdrew the money?” I ask.

He won’t look at me, tears collecting in his eyes. “No. We were going the next day, but what I had in my trust wasn’t enough for Cash. He wanted a million, so he surprised us in the woods and tried to kidnap me.”

“So he was going to use you for ransom?”

“Yes.” Finn sniffles. Finn is not the villain here. He was put in a terrible spot. He was trying to pay his grandfather’s debts and protect his parents. “I should have let them take me. They wouldn’t have hurt me, but Cash was masked. I didn’t know who he was until it was too late.”

I try to see in my head how this played out. Finn high on something he’d never taken before, ambushed by a random man in the woods. Yazmin screaming. Her hanging on Finn’s back to stop him once she realized it was her brother, then switching to her brother’s back once she realized Finn was no use. Cash was smaller than Finn, and when he kicked Cash, he fell backward, falling on Yazmin—accidentally killing her.