Sweet Water(47)

“Text her back, dear. Don’t be rude,” he says. “Just say—”

“Don’t tell me what to say!” I yell.

Finn drops the cereal box on the table, fear flittering across his face, and then puts it back in the cupboard.

Damn it. Strike two. This kid is never going to eat.

Martin puts his hands up in the air. “Okay.” But he watches me as I type. Probably to make sure I really do it.

Sarah: Okay. No problem. Sewickley Hotel. Noon?

Alisha: Yes. Come alone or I’ll leave.

Martin can hear the ding from my text message. He approaches, and I hold my hand up this time. I don’t need to be any closer to him. “I’m meeting her at noon, and she wants me to come alone.”

Martin’s smile falls right off his face. He can’t coach me, control me in any way, if he isn’t there, and he should be worried.

Finn looks worried too, and I don’t want him to be. “Finny, I was thinking of having Grandpa over for dinner; what do you think?”

His look of alarm twists into a pout, and I think he might cry. “No. I hate Grandpa!”

Martin steps forward now, and I allow him in my space.

“Finn, you haven’t seen Grandpa in months,” Martin says.

Finn lifts his head to meet mine, and it’s then I see the sunken half circles beneath his eyes and the slight tremor in his eyelid from no sleep. Yaz’s death has robbed us all of so much, but Finn has lost the most. “Oh, I thought you meant Grandpa Bill.”

“Well, what’s your problem with Grandpa Bill?” Martin says of his father.

Finn’s lip quivers, and he looks a little crazed. “He wasn’t nice to Yazmin,” he says with venom in his voice.

I hate Grandpa Bill too, but even I think Finn is acting extreme.

Martin tries to defend the old goat. “It was my understanding she’d insulted—”

“That’s all bullshit!” Finn yells.

“Hey, son.”

“Hey, yourself. It’s all bullshit! This whole family.”

Finn storms away, and Martin goes to run after him, but I grab his arm. “Let him go.”

Martin stops and drops his head. “What was that about?”

“William can be a cantankerous old prick,” I say flatly. “You know it didn’t go well when Yazmin met him.”

Martin looks at me, startled. “It didn’t go well when she met you either,” he says, and I wonder if he’s trying to say we’re one and the same, but he wouldn’t dare. Then he whips a checkbook out of his shirt pocket, and I wonder if he always keeps one in there—just in case. “Bring this with you today.”

“Why?” I ask him, breathless, but I think I know.

“If she has something on Finn, offer her whatever she wants.”

“Martin.” My blood seethes beneath my skin. “We cannot pay her off.”

This was his plan all along, wasn’t it?

“Offer to help with her expenses for having to take off work since Yazmin’s death. If it’s over five thousand, tell her you’ll get the rest in cash so there’s not a long paper trail. Just give her what she wants and get out. Make her aware we don’t do blackmail. She saw what happened to her daughter.”

“What’re you suggesting?” I ask, feeling ill.

“It’s in your hands, Sarah. Get in, get it done, and get out.”

Martin walks away, goes in his office, and shuts the door. He expects me just to accept his marching orders, no questions asked. He’s closed the topic for discussion, and of all the things I signed up for in our marriage, this isn’t one of them.





CHAPTER 13

A whip of wind stirs up leaves beneath my boots, the sunlight touching everything around me. My late-model Infiniti is caked with leftover rainwater and a crust of autumn debris.

The car keys shake in my hands. This is my first day out of the house since the night we left the woods.

The light is where the truth lives. The light will shine a beacon on what we’ve done.

After our showdown in the kitchen, I’m a jittery mess. My husband has transformed into an unrecognizable sociopath, my son a mentally fractured young man who will no doubt have long-standing psychological issues from this incident, and none of it seems remotely worth it.

I don’t think the bulk of Finn’s issues will stem from his girlfriend’s death but from our reaction to it. My years of dealing with trauma victims have taught me that those abuses that occur in the home are typically the ones that most profoundly affect a person later.

I turn before climbing inside my vehicle. Martin is watching me from the office window, his eyes like laser beams, flickering in and out with the sunlight, homing in on me through the blinds—“stay the course,” I can hear him say in my head. I’m so fortunate that I’m allowed to borrow a couple of hours of daylight under the circumstances.

Being away from him feels good, but I’m fearful of leaving my haven.

This house will keep me safe.

Once I leave it, though, I’ll have to face what we’ve done.

My hands hurt as they grip the steering wheel, chapped from so much washing, but I’ll never wash her away. My body is rocked with tremors of guilt as my car tires grind along the gravel path. My heart thumps along with the stones.