Sweet Water(83)

These ugly truths are payments for all the ugly ones I’ve ignored.

And now for the last page—before the one that’s ripped out, that is.

10-13

OMG, I can’t even fucking live right now. DEAD.

I went to meet Finn’s grandparents today, and I don’t know why I even try with these people, but I really should’ve stopped at his mother if I ever wanted this thing to work.

Finn showed me his grandparents’ car garage, which is bigger than my house, thinking I’d be impressed.

I wasn’t. Then his actual grandparents were the worst.

Their son has zoning initiatives on his political docket to turn Green House into an apartment complex. It’s one of the only state-funded mental facilities left in the county. They’ve been trying to shut it down for years, an eyesore on their sweet riverbank. Finn doesn’t know what Green House is. I do. I spent some time there. They helped me when we didn’t have insurance after Dad died.

When I saw Finn’s uncle’s political agenda to shut it down sitting on their dining room table, I lost it. I might not be here if it wasn’t for that center. I have the scars on my wrists to prove it. Green House made me want to try again. Now other kids like me won’t have a chance if this guy wins the election.

His grandmother is a witch, nothing like my gram, and I can’t ever imagine her baking them cookies.

When they’d had enough of my protests, the grandfather threw his arms up in the air, and I saw it. OMFG.

His watch said Bell & Ross, and the label stuck out just like his Bentley car. Wait until I tell Cash.

My fingers run along the jagged edge of the torn-out page, the same one I let my fingers graze earlier. I wonder who tore it out.

Possibly Martin, because it incriminated Finn?

Or Finn because it incriminated Finn? The watch meant something to Yazmin, and she seemed to hate the Bentley something fierce too, but it all seems a rant of sorts against her main issue—the fact that Bill Jr. was proposing to have Green House, a publicly funded juvenile mental health facility, shut down. This makes me angry because a great number of the women at the shelter who I’ve worked with were helped by Green House. Martin knew this would upset me, too, and he kept it from me.

It definitely isn’t below Martin to have torn the page out, but it could have also been Alton. Obviously that page has all the answers, and getting all the way to the end of this and not knowing what really happened is like suffering through surgery and not being sewn back up. The offender, the page ripper, is leaving my guts hanging open here, just like I left Yazmin split apart in those damn woods.

Serves me right.





CHAPTER 22

The door to the music store chimes brightly, and I wave the dust bunnies out of my face, but all I can see are the imagined faces of Yazmin’s dead father and her powerless beside him, waiting for someone to save them.

I try to blink them away and fail.

I take a step forward, and Joshua is standing at the register. It feels like the longest walk across the smallest room to meet him, the carpet gray and dingy, like the rest of the store. Joshua Louden is indeed the owner of the music store, and yes, he’s always been a no-frills kinda guy, but people in Sewickley expect more from their downtown storefronts. Maybe that’s why his is always empty.

The journal has filled in a few blanks but left more questions too.

Why did Yazmin vehemently hate the Ellsworths’ windows and watches and cars? It seems like it was something more than just a preoccupation with their ostentatious lifestyle.

It was as if she’d seen the family crest before.

I still need to know what’s written on the last page of that journal.

Just like I need to know why my son had laced drugs and Yazmin did not.

It’s hard not asking Finn what was on that page, but I haven’t seen him since I left home. I could’ve called and made Martin put him on the phone so I could ask him. But then Martin would know I have the journal and force me to give it back. The next logical step is to try to find out more about the drugs. Were they Yazmin’s or Cash’s? What didn’t they want Finn to remember? It’s the key to how Yazmin died, I’m certain of it, and Josh is the key to the drugs.

Josh is frowning at my arrival, and I’m upset with myself for being so disappointed he’s not happier to see me, especially after what I just read about him.

He’s the source for helping teenage kids acquire narcotics, and that makes him a bad human. Finding the source is half the battle when you’re a kid. Why doesn’t he look like a bad human, then, all snug up against the register in his three-button T-shirt, tattoos for sleeves, and ripped jeans? As I get closer, I realize he’s wearing a thin black rubber necklace, and I want to know what charm is attached at the bottom because it’s tucked beneath his shirt, but of course I don’t ask.

“Hi, Sarah,” he says.

“You know, you used to be a lot happier to see me.” I try to keep it friendly, even though I’m angry.

But something Martin said to me last night trumps anything that Josh could possibly do or say.

“Hell, maybe she did do something to you and no one knows . . .”

If there are any words to keep a mother up at night, those are the ones. I’m not okay with not knowing what happened to Finn during his time in the dark. I’m afraid he got wigged out on whatever he took and hurt that girl. The journal didn’t clarify it. In fact, it only worsened my suspicions that he was somehow involved.