Sweet Water(24)

“You’re tough,” I say.

“Only as tough as I have to be.” He winks, and I feel my face creep with a blush. Hopefully the paint is covering the parts he’s making color hot and pink. “You should come by the SAE house for the party, Sarah.”

“How do you know my name?” I ask.

He looks right at me. “I would be remiss if I didn’t find out the name of the prettiest girl on campus.”

It’s so cheesy, the pickup line, the formal use of the word—remiss—but he says it so confidently, it makes my whole face break into a reluctant smile.

“Oh yeah?” I slap the paintbrush I’m holding back onto the fence, because I’m a nervous wreck. More paint splats on my face.

Marty laughs, jogs back, and picks it back out of my hair.

“Thanks.” I laugh.

I look over and notice Tushar Patel, the first of his potential new recruits to make it to the fence, in his red boxer shorts littered with tiny saxophones on them. Tush waves at me with that gorgeous smile, and I wave back, embarrassed that I’m in my underwear, hoping the paint acts as a good concealer from that far away. There are other would-be pledges still running, but Tush is the smallest and the fastest, apparently.

“My best potential pledge,” Marty says, as if he’s going into battle and these are his troops. He says it in this completely silly manner, though, and I love a guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously.

“Why the saxophones?” I ask of his best pledge.

“Well, in addition to his brilliant mind and stunning body, Tush can also play the fucking saxophone. How remarkable is that?”

I’m laughing hard now, and I want to give Marty an answer, but before I can respond, he’s rounding up his boys and telling them to hightail it back to the house. “See you later, Sarah. Hopefully tomorrow.” He points at the advertisement for the party on the fence and then darts away.

I wave and can’t help but notice his perfect ass in his boxer briefs as he shouts obscenities at the other boys. “First one back to the lion statues gets first bid!”

“He’s showing off for you,” Hanna says.

As they all take off in a dead sprint in the middle of the night, all I can think is—God, I hope so.





CHAPTER 7

Present

Everything is not clearer in the morning.

I fill the K-Cup coffee machine with water, but my hands shake fiercely. I can still see remnants of wet leaves stuck beneath my fingernails.

I’ll never wash her away.

She’ll always be with me.

Recurring images of river rocks matted with dark hair flash before my eyes, along with reimagined episodes of my son submerged and half-conscious in bathwater.

The hiccupping spasms came in waves last night, moments of temporary peace followed by a shaking sensation that gripped me at the chest and percolated out through my mouth in ragged breaths. I never slept, but while ruminating under the sheets waiting for morning to come, I did doze off a couple of times, only to wake with a start. Strangely, my first reaction was to run to the bathroom to make sure Finn hadn’t drowned, only to find him sound asleep downstairs on the couch. I checked his breathing each time to make sure it hadn’t stopped, a fatal side effect of certain narcotics, I know. But each time I checked on him, his breath was steady.

Sometime during the night, I opened the window to take in the fresh air, only to be disturbed by the melody of a guitar from under the pergola. I was inanely sure it was Joshua, but when I looked out over the lawn, it was just the wind.

Madness is what has become of me now. All the while, Martin slept soundly in bed next to me, which made me hate him in a way I never thought possible. How dare he sleep when Yazmin will never wake again? I thought last night he was at his absolute worst. But watching his breath slow, how his callous heart could fall into a soundless sleep after all we’d done, was so much worse.

To be able to rest while another mother stayed up all night waiting for her little girl to come home—how could he?

His soul was poisoned by the Ellsworths. Maybe he tried to be good, but when it came down to it, he was just like them—evil.

I should leave him and take my boys with me.

These were the spiraling thoughts that hit me from every angle as I lay next to the man I’d called my husband for two decades, and it was devastating.

Martin runs into the kitchen, freshly showered with tailored jeans on and a button-down shirt suitable for work, even though he announced earlier this morning that none of us was to leave the house. He throws his iPad across the quartz countertop, and it slides too fast.

I drop the plastic container of water for the coffee maker—“shit”—and catch the iPad before it skids off the end of the counter. “What’re you doing?”

The headline on the screen stops me cold. Yazmin’s body has been found by a man walking his dog through the park about an hour ago. The discovery of a young girl and the closing of the park make the breaking news, although they haven’t identified the body yet. The breath drains out of me. Yazmin’s mother must’ve seen today’s news report too.

She is likely praying all the way to the morgue that maybe it could be someone else but knowing deep down after hearing the description that it is her daughter. I can’t imagine the agony of that car ride.

These are the true injustices of what we’ve done—the pain we caused others and are still causing.