Sweet Water(84)

“Those were much different times,” Josh says. I notice his fingers are white-knuckled on the countertop.

“Yes. Yes, they were.”

Josh raises his eyebrows. “So what brings you in?”

“Finn told me you know the guy who sold Yazmin the drugs.”

Josh nods as if he expected this. “I do. You know I smoke. I don’t know why this is important. I’m not the dealer.”

I laugh in his face. “Way to pass the buck, Josh.”

“Sarah, Yazmin was walking the streets of the north side to get her stuff from some very bad people. She could’ve been killed. I was doing her a solid.” He leans forward, flexing his palms on the counter.

“Doing her a solid? You’re so fucking cool, Josh. These are just kids,” I say, but I do swish his logic around in my head, the same explanation Finn used last night. If Yazmin hadn’t gotten the drugs from Josh’s guy, she would’ve gotten them from somebody else. If Josh’s guy was the safer choice, and if Yazmin was going to do drugs regardless, then maybe it did make a little sense.

But Josh’s guy hadn’t been the safer choice in this case.

“My guy would never harm a kid.”

“Then why did he sell her laced drugs?” I reveal. There was always the chance that Yazmin laced Finn’s joint herself, since her tox report was clean and Finn’s was not, but after reading her journal, I can’t see her doing this. Why would she “dope him up with some bad stuff,” as Monroe said, if she really cared about Finn? Maybe Finn is innocent and he’s just protecting Yazmin for some reason. The boy I raised would’ve willingly given the money to another kid in need, and Yazmin had to have known that about him, so what was all this plotting about with Cash?

Josh shakes his head. “I don’t think he sells anything but straight-up bud. He didn’t poison those kids, Sarah. They poisoned themselves.”

I’m leaning on the counter. “That’s bullshit! Who is he? I want his name. I want to talk to him.”

“Wait a second.” Josh takes a sudden step back from the register, his eyes traveling up my body, head to toe. He comes around from behind the countertop to where I’m standing and grabs me by the arm.

“Ow, what the hell are you doing?” He doesn’t answer me.

His green eyes are angry and lucid. He’s definitely not high right now, but I can’t pinpoint a reason for his reaction. I’m not used to serious, adult Josh, and I don’t like him.

“Come with me.” He drags me to the back, to the storeroom.

“Stop it—what’re you doing?” I’m a little scared.

When we make it into the storeroom, he flips on a light. My sinuses are overcome with dust. There are boxes everywhere, and a disorganized mound of twisted metal occupies the center of the room.

Music cases hang open on shelves like caskets waiting to be filled, and death is all around me—on my hands every time I wash them, ingrained in everything I see. I stumble over a trombone as Josh closes the door. I untangle it from my boot and hold it up, the mouthpiece caked in dirt. “Ugh. What a mess.”

He takes the trombone from me and lightly tosses it.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Lift up your shirt, Sarah.”

I almost laugh in his face. “I think you’re having a wicked flashback. You no longer have rights to that property.”

He crosses his arms in front of him. I notice he has a scar on his wrist too. “I just want to make sure you’re not wearing a wire. Did you find Yazmin’s journal? Is that what this is about?”

“What? No, Josh, I’m not wearing a wire. I’m just trying to find out what happened to that poor girl.” I don’t want to tell him about the journal just yet, because I’m not sure whose side he’s on here. I need to protect Finn until I figure this out.

“Then show me,” he says. “You’re an Ellsworth, and I don’t trust you. I didn’t come back to this town to get caught up in this shit, okay?”

“Then why did you come back?”

“My mom got sick.” He pauses, and I try to remember the last time I saw Catherine Louden in church. She always sat in the back—by herself. “I had to take care of her. There was no one else.” He looks down at his Vans shoes, and I think his answer is odd, because he hated his parents. He takes a step forward and makes a gesture with his finger for me to lift up my shirt.

I’m wearing a long tunic sweater and skinny jeans. It would be an easy up-down for me and nothing he hasn’t seen before, ground he’s traveled well. He takes another step toward me. “I swear to God, if you’re trying to get me into trouble after everything I’ve done for you, Sarah.”

“Everything you’ve done for me . . .” I’m speechless. Like what—supply my kid with drugs? Get his girlfriend killed? Lie to me about your involvement? The thoughts are like fireworks on my lips I can’t properly launch.

He crosses his arms again. “You like your house, Sarah? I used to like it too.”

I close my eyes, the pain that rests behind them like a migraine that’s been brewing for two decades. He’s talking about Stonehenge. Of course he is. He thinks I’ve taken it out from under him, the place promised to him in his parents’ will before they sold. And maybe he’s right, but it wasn’t my doing. It was Martin’s. He’ll never know how hard it was for me to raise my kids there knowing he ran those same halls as a child, especially after I had my first son. By the time Finn came along, it’d settled in a little better, but Joshua’s ghost was always present.