Sweet Water(80)

Finn won’t make eye contact, and I can’t believe he wants to stay here, surrounded by all these lies.

“You know your family will try to stop me if I go to the cops, Martin.” And I could end up no better than Yazmin—dead. I’m scared of the lengths the Ellsworths will go to keep their secrets.

I grab my suitcase and struggle down the stairs with it. They both follow me.

“Come on, Mom. Stay,” Finn pleads, and it breaks my heart. My son is begging me not to leave him.

“I can’t,” I tell him, and it pains me. I swing open the front door, and Martin tries to grab my arm. “Don’t you dare.” I pull it away from him. They continue to follow me. All the way to my car. I chuck the suitcase into the trunk.

“Sarah, please,” Martin says.

I stumble before getting into my car. “I have to run back in and get my charger.”

“Just stay,” Martin says, but it sounds like a whisper in the wind as I run back into Stonehenge. Finn is beside him. It’s as if he ran as far as the car to stop me and then changed his mind. He wants to come, but Martin made him feel as though he’s tethered there.

Maybe Martin’s so distressed, he’ll think my phone charger is what I’m really after.

I jet up to Finn’s room and run over to his bookcase. I grab the brown leather-bound book off the shelf and flip it over—no title. I knew it. And I feel sicker than before.

Finn didn’t come with me because he’s just like his father. He’s taking his stance. I’ve let him become contaminated with the Ellsworths’ ways, and I need to find my way back to him.

I swallow the bile in my throat. I need out of the house.

I run down the stairs, and the steps make awful groaning noises. Groans of disapproval for sure.

“Sorry I have to leave you, old girl,” I say through a mask of tears.

The journal wasn’t in the safe after all.

I crack it open just to make sure, and I see the owner’s name printed on the title page—Name: Yazmin Veltri.

I shove it in my oversize purse, not wanting it to be true.

Not wanting to believe that I asked Finn the question time and time again, and that each time he so freely lied to my face that he didn’t know where the journal was. It had been right in the same room we were both standing in. He’d been reading it.

What is he so afraid of?

The door has never felt so heavy as it slams behind me. It echoes in my chest, my ears, my soul. Stonehenge is angry, yelling at me.

I don’t know if she’s shouting at me to leave or stay, but I need a break from this place and these people.

I walk to my car, where both Martin and Finn are standing. I kiss my son on the cheek. “I love you.”

And I do. I love him. I just can no longer hide his guilt or his lies.





CHAPTER 21

As I lie curled up in my childhood bed, I’m sadly nostalgic for the girl I used to be. When I was Yazmin’s age, I used to lie here and dream of helping the world.

Yazmin’s thoughts are very different from mine.

At one quick glance, there are pages and pages of hurt in her journal. And if I had all the time in the world to read them, I would, but I have to find out if there’s anything in there that could possibly link Finn to Yazmin’s death before it’s too late. Once Martin realizes I have the journal, he’ll sic Alton on me and I’ll be hunted down, journal confiscated and likely destroyed. But if I don’t get it back to Alisha, she’ll go to the media and expose us and whatever ties Finn has to her daughter’s death.

Terror fills every cavity of my body. My ears and mouth burn with dread. I heard Alisha’s warning loud and clear.

“Return my daughter’s journal—or else.”

She didn’t say the last part, but I felt it. And as a mother, I understood it, but I need to read the pages first and determine Finn’s involvement and decide what punishment fits the crime before I return it. It’s what any mother would do, I try to tell myself, looking at this situation with the lights on instead of just through the filtered ones I’ve chosen to keep on.

I’m skimming for any mention of my son or his school or conflicts that might lead to discovering how Yazmin died and how it could connect to Finn.

I start at the back of the journal, but not the very back. I need to ease myself into what I might find. The very back has a page ripped out anyway, and I dare not think what that means or who tore it out. I don’t need Yazmin’s whole story; I just need to discover how it ended.

I wipe away tears, a wave rocking my body, like the ones that do when I think about how we left Yazmin, the end of her story cut way too short. The waves that hit after I wash my hands or after my fingers touch any water, for that matter—I’ll never wash her away. It’s when I can feel the grime of leaving this girl, a child, really, all alone—dead in the woods.

When the thoughts unfurl in my mind, they’re like angry stabs at my soul. I feel the fresh wound each time, and I don’t know how the Ellsworths don’t feel them too.

They must be soulless. My husband and son included, if Finn did hurt her. Martin is lost to their ways, but surely there’s still time to save Finn. I just need to figure out what happened to his girlfriend.

Who were you, Yazmin? What happened to you?