Sweet Water(18)

“Shit. I forgot to double-check with you. Did you place Finn’s bloodied school clothing and shoes in a plastic bag and the clothing and shoes you wore tonight in a separate bag?” he asks, and I can’t believe how calculating he sounds when speaking of things like bloody clothing. Who is this ruthless maniac and what has he done with my husband?

“Yes,” I answer woodenly.

“Oh, good. Those are the cleaners,” he says plainly. Quietly.

I look at him sideways, and he doesn’t flinch, and if I could picture myself right now, it would be a reflection of the most haggard woman on the planet, bags under my eyes hanging to my jawbone, greasy blonde-brown hair matted in a knot on my head. The lies early on were clues that this could happen, that he had it in him to say one thing and act a completely different way, but this is a whole new level. This is terrifying. “Our cleaning people come on Thursdays, and they drive a van.”

“Not those cleaners.” Martin clears his throat as if I should just be okay with this answer.

It takes me a moment with my eyes shut to figure out exactly what he means.

Cleaners? As in the Ellsworths not only have hired servants to clean up the dirt on their floors, but they also have cleaners to mop up the spilled blood of the dead bodies they leave behind?

I grip the door handle of Martin’s Lexus and contemplate jumping out and running, but my son is in the back seat. “What are they going to do with our clothes?” I ask. And what will the Ellsworths do to me if I run and tell?

Darkness settles in around us, the kind that cloaks desolate back roads under starless skies. I wonder if Martin is in shock, too, and if that’s why he’s acting so calm in the middle of this horror story. Perhaps his pragmatic engineer brain is running on autopilot, and he’s operating in a strictly process-driven fashion.

Dead body—dispose.

Bloody clothing—dispose.

Frazzled wife—keep calm.

It’s much like he behaved when I had a minor case of postpartum depression. He fluttered around doing task-y things like making sure baby bottles were washed and organized and picking up the cooking and cleaning when all I really needed was a hug.

“They’re going to burn them,” he says in the same even tone.

“Oh,” I reply back, but my chin begins to wobble with fear. I think of my favorite pair of jeans with the tiny holes at the knees and my favorite Tory Burch flats all going up in flames in a rancid burning barrel in a back alley somewhere. Those articles can all be replaced, but the real loss lies in the fact that any evidence linking me to the crime will burn with them. It’s just what the Ellsworths want—to make it all disappear.

I was the last one to touch Yazmin’s lifeless body. I should be held responsible for leaving her there. It isn’t fair to Yazmin and it isn’t fair to her parents.

Martin pulls up to the garage, and I open the door and fall onto the driveway. My stomach is knotted, and I place my hands on the damp concrete. I try to retch on the sidewalk, but nothing comes out.

Martin walks over and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Everything is going to be all right, Sarah. It’ll feel better in the morning.”

“How can you say that?” I’m weeping, and terrible sounds are leaving my mouth, all the terror I suppressed at my in-laws’ house coming out in bits of saliva and sick.

Fuck the morning. I’m going to have to turn us in in the morning.

I can’t see Martin’s face, but his hand retreats from my shoulder, his warmth leaving my body like a blanket slipping off my feet in the middle of the night. “I have to take care of our son now,” he says.

The driveway is wet and cold. It bites into the bruises left on my knees from kneeling on the river rocks.

“This isn’t about you and all you’ve been through tonight, Sarah. It’s about protecting Finn. Someday you’ll see it that way too.”

“This isn’t about putting my needs before Finn’s; it’s about doing the right thing.”

Martin is hovering above me but doesn’t offer to help me up. “Finn didn’t hurt that girl, and they will demonize him for her death. He’s eighteen. They’ll try him as an adult. Finn won’t survive prison. It. Will. Kill. Him.” Martin drives home every last word as he walks away.

He’s probably right.

We held Finn back a year in school because he was a late birthday, born in August, of all the dreadful months. Painful decision, but he was emotionally unfit to go to kindergarten, still clinging to my leg when I dropped him off at preschool, crying when he was pushed or teased—hence tae kwon do classes. So he is eighteen, whereas many of the other seniors are still seventeen. Adult prison could be a possibility for him.

He’d get eaten alive.

Martin is right. Martin is always right. Maybe things will look better in the morning.

He’s opening Finn’s car door now. I hear Martin huff as he picks up our son. He wrestles with his limp body as he carries him to the front door—our baby boy. I remember when we brought him home from the hospital. He slept the whole way, hardly made a peep, a gentle kid from birth.

No, he didn’t hurt that girl. But something or someone did.

I think about the marks on Finn’s neck. What else could’ve caused them? Perhaps they were an opponent’s soccer cleats that had gotten him good when he’d fallen down during a game. A cat that hadn’t played fairly was a possibility too.