Sweet Water(95)

Mary Alice pulls me aside. “Hello, dear, hopefully you feel better about everything after the coroner’s report.” Her voice is persnickety, as if I should be thanking her for her amazing foresight at drawing Finn’s blood on the spot.

“It doesn’t tell me everything I need to know,” I say.

She places her arm on my shoulder, cold to the touch. She doesn’t often handle me. We’re about the same height, and I turn my head to meet her eyes. They’re so blue, they’re almost clear, and I imagine I can see to the back of her warped brain, rotten and dulled from years of life with people just like her. “You have to be careful about who you let into your circle, Sarah. Best to give Finn the same advice. That girl wasn’t one of us,” she says.

I don’t want to be in her damn circle anymore, but I have to tread carefully. These people are dangerous.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I say.

She sips her fluted glass of something sparkling. “You’re having trouble catching on tonight, dear.”

“Oh, I think I understand perfectly. You’re only content to let people in your circle who can benefit you. They either serve you in the courtroom or they serve you tea.”

Mary Alice sucks in a breath as if I’ve just slapped her, and William grips his drink like it might run away from him.

The band starts playing, thankfully, and people are dancing all around me. The Sugarmans have taken to the floor, slow and steady, and you can’t dance like that if your marriage is going along poorly. They are in love and living the dream, the same one I lived just last year. It’s funny how fast things can change.

Dallas spins Camille around, and she rolls back to him, practically nuzzling him on reentry. They look so happy, it makes my heart split like firewood beneath the sharpest of axes.

I was much happier when I was naive—when we were Martin and Sarah Ellsworth of Blackburn Road.

“There’s a new ballroom dance studio in town. We should take lessons,” Martin says.

“Shut up, Martin,” I say. Martin shrinks away from me and sighs.

Mary Alice makes an awful sound in the back of her throat. It’s likely tight back there, just like her ass.

William looks to his front and his side, Mary Alice standing on the other, a nice buffer to my rebuke. “That’s no way to talk to your husband,” William says, but I have a feeling he’s more embarrassed that others might have heard me.

I’m the only one who actually ever cared about Martin’s feelings, and I want to believe he’s a good person, but all the years of poor nurturing by these people have poisoned him at the core.

“I’m only responding to the way he’s been talking to me for the last few days, William, and the way you’ve been talking to me my whole life. I’m done. With him and with you.”

I try to walk away, but William slyly grabs my arm and manages to wheedle me back his way. We’re in a dark corner of the room, closer to the band, and not even those walking in and out of the nearby restroom can possibly overhear us.

We’re all facing each other, Martin and Mary Alice pressed to one wall, the gaudy pink-and-white wallpaper making them appear like two horrible dollhouse figurines.

William’s face smells of aftershave and liquor. He leans in and says, “Now, listen here—we’ve given you everything, despite the fact that you were the janitor’s daughter. You’re not a special snowflake, Sarah, and you will not upend this family.”

Martin’s mouth drops open to speak, but I beat him to it.

“Is that right? Well, if you never thought I was good enough for your family to begin with, then why did you approve of the wedding?” I ask, flustered but wanting answers to the question I’ve held on to my whole life.

“Because, dear, it was the only way to make sure your father would keep quiet, even after you graduated, about the little accident Martin had in college. As long as we had you in our pocket, we had the best collateral there was. Don’t you see?”

Martin’s face drains of all color, and he tries to reach out to me, but I’ve unstuck myself from the wall.

“It was all a lie?” I ask. “You never loved me?” I ask Martin, but it’s not a question; it’s a realization.

“Yes . . . I mean no! I did,” he tries. “I do.”

“No. Stay away from me,” I say, my legs taking flight.

William’s laugh is low and contemptuous, and Mary Alice smiles for the first time in forever. All the flowers on the gaudy wallpaper shift and whirl, pink and white and black and gray, the world’s most mottled candy cane. There will be no Christmas brunch at the country club this year with the Ellsworths.

Martin is reaching out to me, but I’ve already started running.

Running through the dance floor, past every person in town watching me as I do, champagne flutes tipped on trays. One glass lands all over me, but I keep running for my purse at the table, because Martin slipped his keys in there. Either he didn’t have room in his dress pants for them, or he had hopes he’d be going home with me tonight. I’m running out the door to his vehicle, still partially registered in my name.

And then I’m driving—to find Cash Veltri and figure out why he drugged my son.

Because no good can live in a house of lies. I realize I finally have to give back this borrowed life that was never mine. I also realize why I’ve been so sick to my stomach with worry ever since Yazmin Veltri’s toxicology screen came back different from Finn’s. Martin was so sure it meant that she drugged him, never figuring in a third party.