Sweet Water(48)

I try to take in a deep breath, but the car heater blows in my face, and I begin to sweat as I make my way out of the woods, the world a completely different place than it was a few days ago.

I didn’t sleep in the same bed as my husband last night.

I didn’t run to my father’s house either. I couldn’t. He wouldn’t agree with what we’d done, and he wouldn’t let me continue on this path—one he’d know I was being forced to take.

My father is better than that.

Better than us.

He doesn’t have a fortune and a family name to protect.

He has only me. Martin’s ugly words about his character left me in a state of loathing, bottled with hate. I had a strong desire to see my dad, if even for a little dinner.

Martin has always been jealous of my relationship with my father. He knows when I was growing up, we were a two-person team he can’t replace. No matter how hard he tries, he’ll never be as close as we are. And he certainly doesn’t have the same relationship with his own parents.

This incident has changed Martin, made him a crazed man, but I’m more upset by how it’s changed me. Every time I comply with one of his demands, I’m chipping away at myself, who I thought I was, the foundation of our marriage, our family, becoming a kept woman—just like Mary Alice. She rules over the children, and William rules over Mary Alice, and that’s just the way things go in their family. It’s the way things have gone in mine too, I suppose, but I’m seeing the problem in the mechanics of how this family tree flourishes.

I wonder if Finn heard any of our argument last night. I had half a mind to call for a trial separation right then and there. I’ve had enough of the lies and yelling, but we share this awful secret now. What if one of us talks? We’ve birthed this monster as a couple, and now we have to stay together because of it. Plus, I think of Finn. He’ll think it’s his fault because our breakdown happened at the same time his girlfriend died.

Normally, Finn would report to the soccer field right after school on Friday, part of his weekly routine. It’s late October, only a few games left in his senior season, the last year to kick the ball around with all the kids he grew up with before college swallows them whole and turns them into men. Finn is stowed away in his room instead. Martin insisted on it. We had to stay indoors, away from the press and gossip. We had to protect Finn until he isn’t legally implicated in Yazmin’s case anymore.

Maybe I’m just as selfish as Martin, because I’m depressed that Finn won’t be able to attend soccer this evening, where I know he wants to be, in the place that will help him heal from all this, from his potential involvement in his girlfriend’s death. I tremble, and the gooseflesh won’t leave me, and surely Finn’s indifference is a mixture of exhaustion and shock. Finn isn’t super athletic like Spencer; the only two sports that he was ever into were tae kwon do and soccer. Although once he earned his black belt in martial arts, it was all about soccer.

Finn has a tall, narrow stature like Martin, the perfect build for a soccer forward. He can cut and run in between the other players in a swooping fashion that looks more like an art form than a running pattern. But as I lament over his lost soccer practice, I hate myself.

Because Yazmin will never run again.

She’ll never go to a soccer practice or strum her guitar or be any of the beautiful things the world had in store for her, because she had that opportunity taken away from her. When I meet her mother today, I’m sure she’ll remind me.

If Finn somehow had a part in it, is he not horrified by these same thoughts? How can he think about playing soccer?

I sigh and try to hold it together as I drive to the Sewickley Hotel—old red leather booths, brick walls, and western Pennsylvanian warmth down dusty basement stairs. It’s one of my favorite restaurants in the village. I park outside by the old awning, where a green scalloped curtain hangs over the window with the name plastered on it in a nondescript font. It’s the exact type of diner-esque atmosphere that spoke to my father years ago.

Most locals know the restaurant used to be a boutique hotel for the wealthy in the early 1900s, but few know about the separate bar that existed right next door. It burned down, and I know about it only because I’m invested in this community. I’m connected to this town, these people, a member of the PTA at the Academy. I’ll be sad that Finn will soon graduate and my work there will be done. But it doesn’t take away from the enrichment I’ve gained from the years I put in there. As much as I want to see justice for this poor girl, I’m scared about the threat to my own existence here too.

I don’t know who I am without this place. It’s the castle in the sky of my childhood, the enchanted reality of my adulthood, and parking here today, where it all started, to meet Alisha makes me feel like it’s coming to an end. It’s the same foreboding feeling that came with picking up the rose on the bench.

There’s only so much time I can borrow here before it runs out.

Is the house trying to tell me that if I turn myself in, I’ll have more time? When I woke up this morning, I noticed the rose was already beginning to wilt, and I had a scary thought that if I didn’t make things right with the Veltris by the time it died, I’d die too. The dark thoughts are demanding my attention.

Maybe this is my chance to end them.

I’m early, and I glance in my side-view mirror and see one of my treasured spots a few blocks from the restaurant on the opposite side of Beaver Street. It’s one of the last privately owned bookstores in the Pittsburgh area. It used to be managed by an old New York City editor.