Sweet Water(59)

But Josh has his facts wrong. Doesn’t he?

Josh makes a face I can describe only as painfully sympathetic. “Wow, how could you not know? You were there, weren’t you? At the same college? Do you know what I’m talking about? The kid who was hazed and died of alcohol poisoning?”

“Yeah, I remember. It was my first semester freshman year. I was . . . I was focused on other things.”

“You were too busy to notice a student’s death at your school at your boyfriend’s fraternity? That seems pretty attention grabbing.” Josh is absentmindedly straightening out items in the store that don’t seem to need straightened.

“The headlines read differently from what you’re suggesting.” I cough, but his words are slicing right through me, and I can’t figure out why. I was there when it all went down; Josh wasn’t. I was at the party the night Tush died, and Martin wasn’t even there. Josh has it all wrong.

The dust in the store is making my sinuses itch, and a familiar sensation in my lower abdomen pains me, along with the burning in my eyes. I shift my weight from one suede boot to the other.

“The bathroom is around back.” Joshua points to the corner of the store.

“What?” I ask.

“I know that look. You have to use the loo, no?” The loo? At least I know he made it to London and tried out the Brit-pop-rock thing he’d idolized as a kid, too cool to jump on the alternative-rock bandwagon.

“Yeah.” I sigh, frustrated that I’ve proven to be so predictable and boring compared to the girl who made love in every dark corner of his house.

Of Stonehenge. My house. His house.

Ugh. I wonder if he knows. My bladder continues to nag at me. “Thank you, excuse me.” I practically run to the back of the store.

I was so anxious to see Joshua, and now I’m eager to run away from him. Ironic, since he’s always been the one good at leaving.

As I wash my hands, I think of Yazmin and the sweet water that ran beside her, and the wave hits me. It’s so sudden, the tremor of horror and grief that rocks my body out of nowhere. She’s never far from my mind. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. I take in a deep breath to quiet my nerves, and there’s a scent in here that’s so familiar, if I close my eyes, I can picture myself smoking it in the backyard—marijuana.

Joshua still smokes. Big shocker. And he wants to come down on me for my life choices? If he teaches his students high, I’m sure the community will have something to say about that.

I rub my hands on the threadbare white hand towel and glance in the mirror. I look like . . . “Shit.”

I open the mirrored cabinet on instinct and find it—Josh’s vaping pen—but I’m positive there’s more than nicotine in there. I quickly shut the cabinet.

There’s a bulletin board up in the bathroom, which is odd, but this place is so small, I doubt it has an office. I see a thumbtacked paper with FOR M. JANE—JAY and a phone number scrawled on it. M. Jane sounds like a person’s name, but I know it’s Josh’s code for pot—Mary Jane.

Instinctively, I take a picture of it with my phone and then realize I’m doing this because marijuana is what connects Yazmin’s case to this bathroom and Josh’s vaping pen.

Lots of people smoke weed, and they even use it for medicinal purposes, but there’s a tiny niggle in the back of my brain that won’t let up. Josh knows something about what happened to Yazmin, and he doesn’t want to tell me. He was tense when I asked about her, turning his back on me. And he relayed information to Alisha that he hadn’t told the police—why?

Maybe he doesn’t feel comfortable telling me because I married Martin Ellsworth and he thinks my husband is a scandalous bastard. But maybe if I can convince him I’m on his side, he’ll help me.

I exit the bathroom and find Josh busying himself with the odds and ends of the store.

I walk up to him. “Josh, I want to help find out what happened to Yazmin. I’m not here on Finn’s behalf or Martin’s. To be honest, I’m not really on Martin’s side at all on this one.”

Josh stops what he’s doing and lifts his chin up at me. “I’m not stupid. You’d never sell out your own son.”

“Of course not, but I do want to do what’s right. Alisha told me what you didn’t reveal to the cops.”

Josh looks up at the ceiling, then back at me again. “I don’t know why she’d do that.”

I walk over and place my hand on his arm. Touching him again feels good, a zip of warmth up my arm, the kind I haven’t felt in weeks—the sort of tingles I haven’t felt in years. “It’s just me, you know.” He looks down and searches my eyes. I hope he can find me in there somewhere. “Why didn’t you tell the police that you heard Yazmin tell her brother that she intended to go for a walk with Finn after your lesson and that Alisha thought he was with her when she died?”

Josh’s arm stiffens, and there’s something there. Something more he doesn’t want me to know.

“Did you know your son’s girlfriend at all, Sarah?” he asks.

“I tried to get to know her, but she didn’t like me. Refused to talk to me, really.”

“Yeah, well, she was very troubled. Her family spiraled after her dad passed away. Yaz was trapped in the car with her father for hours before someone called in the accident.”