Sweet Water(50)

Her pain—the death of her child—how can she stand it?

“I’ll do anything I can to help you.” Anything that’s within my husband’s warped definition of right. But maybe if you ask me just the right question, I’ll do all the things he doesn’t want me to do too.

My stomach is cinched with nerves, and I think this might be the day I splinter.

“Good. There is something we’re missing.” She implores me with her dark eyes, the lining around the edges thick and uneven. Alisha’s complexion is patchy too. I imagine it was beautiful like her daughter’s before she lost her husband, beaten by the grief of his death and now her daughter’s.

“We are? What’re we missing?” I ask, terrified of what this might be.

Her lips undulate again, then stop. Alisha shields her face slightly beneath her hand, and I feel my own tears begin to stab again, ripping a hole in my chest where my heart used to be. We are mothers, and I try not to think about the reverse situation, Finn left for dead in those woods, but I do, and it makes my breath stop. I gasp.

“You know, with all the trouble Cash has gotten himself into, Yazmin was the only bright star in our life.” She looks at me as if I’m supposed to know this already.

“I didn’t realize Cash was in trouble. Yazmin was lovely. It’s such a shame, Alisha.” What do Cash’s troubles have to do with Yazmin, or Finn for that matter? Maybe her son being in trouble will exonerate Finn somehow.

Alisha sighs. Tears trickle out of her eyes, turning her makeup into dark smears. “Yeah, well, none of us has been quite right since Jimmy died, and Cash has had the worst of it. But I think we both know what I’m after here.”

I have no idea.

Whatever she’s looking for must be important, and I want to give it to her if I can, but what if it’s something that ties Finn to Yazmin’s death? My breath rushes out in a deep exhale, and I cup my face with my hands. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I reach my hand out to cover hers again, a mark of solidarity between mothers, but she pulls it away. I’m reminded of how her daughter recoiled from me when I tried to embrace her. “I’m not here for your support. I want my daughter’s journal back.”

Yazmin’s journal?

I look at her, confused and afraid. This could be bad. If a journal exists, it could have incriminating things about Finn inside. Bad things. “And you think we have it?” I manage.

A flash of the fingernail marks on Finn’s neck fills my head. Finn isn’t violent, but then again neither is Martin. But after seeing them both in the kitchen this morning, I wonder whether they’re both capable of harm.

She shakes her head, and she’s clearly angry now. It’s my suspicion that she thought I knew both about her son’s troubles and Yazmin’s journal. It saddens me because maybe Yazmin spoke to Alisha about Finn, and maybe Alisha spent more time with him when he was over at their house making campaign signs for student council, but Finn rarely talked to me about Yazmin. And when he did, he called her Yaz, which made her sound more like a one-name enigma than an actual girl. I met her only that one time before she died. Does Alisha realize this?

“When I asked the police if I could have it back, they said they never received a journal into evidence.”

My heart beats into my throat. Where is it? I try to remember if Finn had a backpack on him that night in the woods.

No, he didn’t.

They’d just come from school. But if that were the case, where were their book bags? Do the police have them? Has Alton “cleaned” them?

Martin couldn’t have the journal, could he? “Are you sure the police took the journal in the first place?”

“Yes. When they came to our house, I watched them put it in a plastic bag and mark the outside. It’s all I have left of my daughter. It’s her last thoughts. I just want it back.” Alisha has a grouping of bangle bracelets on her wrist that keeps jangling around as she speaks. By the way they clang together, I can tell she isn’t going down without a fight where this journal is concerned.

“I’m so sorry, but I don’t know where it is.”

“Sheriff Pembroke is your husband’s cousin, no?” Her voice is laced with accusation.

There’s a clawing horror stretching up my arms. I know why she can’t find it.

I fumble with my answer. “Well . . . yes.”

“He’s the one who took it.”

Alisha locks eyes with me, but I look away, my fears confirmed. “I’ll ask him about it,” I say, but I know she doesn’t believe me. She’s already decided we’re covering something up, and she’s right. How stupid of Alton. If he has it, he needs to give it back to Alisha. It belongs to her.

But it could also implicate Finn. These lies are like a falling stack of cards I’ll never climb out of. I should fold. The weight of her words is killing me. Crushing me. Because they imply that Finn is involved and everyone knows but me.

But even worse—that Finn could’ve killed Yazmin. My son—a murderer. The implication lets something loose inside me, an internal gear that’s been spinning too fast.

I’m overworked and out of breath.

If she asks the right question, I’ll cave. I’ll collapse.