Sweet Water(37)

“Where did she get the drugs?” Monroe asks.

“I don’t know.”

“So you didn’t go with her to buy them?” Monroe’s questions are fast, unflinching.

Finn grips the handle of his coffee mug. “No.”

The detective leans forward into the quartz breakfast bar. “You don’t know where your girl got the drugs. Come on, kid. Sure you do.”

“If he says he doesn’t know, then he doesn’t. He wasn’t even dating her that long,” Martin defends.

“Just a month or so,” I confirm. It is an insignificant amount of time to be together. Although I fell in love with Joshua in much less time than that when I was Finn’s age. It sure hadn’t felt like we’d been together for only the last month of the summer. Human connections can’t be gauged by length of time, but for Finn’s sake, I’ll let this logic ride.

The detective glares at Martin. “We can do this here, or we can do it at the station.”

Finn sucks in a deep breath, and I squeeze his hand. I’m so torn with playing both sides of the fence right now, I’m stilled in the middle, taut, like the center of a tug-of-war rope.

Should we just come clean? Would it be better for all parties involved?

I look at Monroe and think that it definitely would not. Monroe will take our admission of lying about Finn’s whereabouts as a confession to murder. And so will everyone else. I’m trapped. We’re officially trapped in the lie that we’ve spun, and we must remain suspended here until everyone believes it.

“On what grounds? He was here last night. With me.” Martin’s speech is clear and concise, without an ounce of doubt or pretension. My husband knows his rights. He’s likely received legal advice from William on one of their hushed calls. He would likely have a lawyer present if it didn’t look suspicious. It would mean we knew about Yazmin’s death with enough notice to retain an attorney.

“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t at the scene of the crime before he came home,” Monroe argues.

Martin shifts in his seat. “That would be highly unlikely, considering he came home almost right after school. As soon as he took that stuff and realized it wasn’t what she said it was, he left.”

I don’t like that Martin is victim blaming. Finn took the drugs of his own free will. They may have been Yazmin’s drugs, but it wasn’t as if she forced his hand. Martin’s determination to win at all costs has undermined everything we’ve ever tried to teach Finn about truth and morality.

Finn makes a rattling noise in his throat, and a tear runs down his cheek. He wipes it with his hand, and I wish I could take his pain away. I wonder how much he really cared for Yazmin. Teenage love can be an obnoxiously powerful, volatile thing. Or it can be something much more frivolous, fodder for an Instagram post, a label on a Facebook status. Something easily changed, disposed of, like what Joshua did with me. I’m not sure what Finn’s true feelings are here—if he’s upset because he feels guilty, or if he’s upset because he really loved her.

“Is that what happened, Finn? Did you come home after you realized your girl was doping you up with some bad stuff?” Monroe asks.

“Yes, sir,” Finn answers.

“If you don’t smoke pot, though, how would you know it wasn’t what she said it was?”

My heart loses gravity.

Damn it, Martin. The cop doesn’t know we did a blood draw, so Finn shouldn’t know the drugs were laced with anything.

Monroe is trapping Finn. And he’s trapping us.

My face burns with the remorse that if we’d just come clean like I knew we should’ve, Finn might be okay.

“I meant, I did it once or twice, and this was nothing like the other two times,” he confesses, looking at us for mercy.

I exhale in relief, not because I’m happy that Martin’s coaching has worked but because Finn is not incriminating himself. That’s the goal, I try to remind myself, as we suffer this inquisition. To survive without cracking.

“But you said you didn’t do it before. Were you lying?” Monroe asks.

Martin clears his throat. “He just clarified his answer. Is this necessary? He was here most of the night.” Martin keeps driving home the piece of information that will keep Finn safe.

The false piece of information.

The lie.

And I’m sitting here letting it happen.

But. This. Is. My. Son.

“It is,” Monroe says, glaring. Martin backs off. I take a sip of water from the glass I placed on the table before we started.

Finn sighs, frustrated. “I tried it a couple of times with the Coulsons. You can ask them for proof. Matty and Joel. I didn’t like it and then decided I wouldn’t do it again, is what I meant. This was nothing like those other two times. I felt horrible, dizzy, my mind was racing, my skin was itchy, and then I couldn’t keep my eyes open.”

“Sure. Got it,” Monroe says. But it’s clear he isn’t convinced. “Any idea why your girlfriend would go for a walk in the woods alone after you left? Was she meeting someone else?”

“No. She didn’t like to be alone, especially in the dark. Her father was killed in an accident at night. She was in the car and survived, but I guess she was stuck there for hours before they found the car.” His voice trembles.