Sweet Water(27)

Finn is our sensitive kid. He made it all the way to second-degree black belt in tae kwon do. He can spar like an MMA fighter, but I’ve never once seen him show aggression outside of the dojo.

I remember the positioning of Yazmin’s body again on that river rock, her arms up like a block, and wonder if it means anything. My first thought was that she’d been attacked. And now I’m fairly certain she was, after what he’s told me, but I can’t believe it unless he tells me himself.

“Well, honey”—my voice shakes—“we didn’t know what happened, if maybe there was an accident. We wanted to talk to you first, but you were so out of it.”

His face drains of all color, and he leans forward and places his hand over his mouth. I grab the utility bucket beside the couch and place it in front of him. He yacks up something brown and foul, food and drugs, most likely. I turn my head but hold the bucket steady.

“I’m so sorry . . . ,” he groans in between heaves.

I give him a tissue, and he wipes his face. “About the drugs, she said it was just a joint. But it wasn’t.” He’s shaking. “It definitely wasn’t.” He’s in withdrawal, but I only feel sorry for him right now, not angry.

“We’re not mad about the drugs.”

He looks at me strangely, one eye shut because he can’t open them both the whole way.

“I mean, we’re not happy, but that’s the least of our worries.”

Finn is chugging the bottle of water I’d set overnight on the end table, nodding at me for believing his story, his skinny arms shaking on his six-foot frame.

“Finn, what happened last night?” Now I’m desperate to know, because the not knowing or talking about it will kill us both.

He stops mid-drink and places the cap back on the water. “I don’t know. Yaz got the drugs from some guy in town, just some pot. I told her I didn’t do that stuff, but she teased me, said it’s practically legal.”

“And then?”

He sighs. “We hiked, then fought about a stupid Instagram post. The next thing I remember, I was waking up in the woods, Dad was there, and I knew something bad had happened, but I couldn’t remember what.”

The air is sucked from my chest. Finn’s words are so lucid, too raw to be those of a liar.

And Martin is right. The drugs were Yazmin’s idea. Of course they were. They’d been laced with methamphetamine and roofies, and she’d sold Finn on a tale that the weed was as safe as medicinal CBD oil. Whether she knew it was doctored or she didn’t really doesn’t matter.

Yazmin’s smart—the school treasurer; she should’ve known better. Every other week, kids were dying in the area from laced drugs, usually heroin cut with fentanyl, but none of it was safe. And now it got her killed. Not Finn. Not my son.

They would’ve blamed Finn whether he’d fled the scene or not.

Martin is right. I hate that his side of the story is starting to hold up.

I shake my head, though, because it still doesn’t make it right.

“You need to shower. The cops will be here. You need to tell them that you smoked the joint with Yazmin, you two got into a fight, and then you came home. Your dad is going to cover for you that you were home all night and that you went straight to bed before nine o’clock, slept all night. I was at the shelter.”

“So you want me to lie?”

I inhale, the stench of vomit and sweat and teenage mistakes meeting my nostrils with regret. I made mistakes in this very house. I was just lucky none of them came back to bite me. It’s my job to protect Finn from his mistakes. We need to make him promise to do better in the future. Now that I have most of the facts, I decide this is a learning opportunity, but not one that he should go to jail for. I wasn’t sure until I talked to him, but Finn has been misled, and I will help get him back on the right track, no matter what I have to do.

Too late to change our course now.

“Only about going into the woods. Please get in the shower.” I pat down a piece of Finn’s slick hair. He’s far from Martin’s version of presentable.

If Finn was at the scene of the crime and on drugs but couldn’t remember what happened, it could be cause for them to charge him with involuntary manslaughter. There is a whole Netflix series based on people wrongly accused of crimes and not proven innocent until years later. This quiet community won’t settle until Yazmin’s life is accounted for, and Finn is the easiest person to point their finger at. They’ll nail him to the wall if they can. I still don’t know exactly what happened, but I know enough to deem Finn innocent.

Finn shakes his head. “But—”

“Finn, they’ll stick you in jail. Dad says they can’t arrest you if they can’t place you at the scene of the crime. If Dad says you were here, you were here. All night. And they can’t take you away in handcuffs.” I stress “Dad,” but I realize I’m just as complicit in all this and the one giving him the exact instructions on how to lie. It’s the distorted reality that we’re trapped in. Why am I including Finn in it?

Finn blanches. Reality has set in.

This is why. Because he won’t survive if we don’t. He can’t even stomach the word—jail. Finn covers his mouth again, and I raise the bucket, but instead, he looks at me angrily and throws off the blankets. His limbs involuntarily shake, and I think he might fall off the couch, but he successfully makes it upstairs and into the bathroom because I hear the water running.