Sweet Water Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Cara Reinard.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542024938

  ISBN-10: 1542024935

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  For Justin, Jackson, and Charlotte,

  the water is sweeter wherever you are.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  I reach for my phone inside my purse slung around my neck. It’s dangling behind my back because I had nowhere else to put it while examining the body.

  “Sarah, is she breathing?” Martin asks. I turn my head to find him, but it’s too dark.

  I stumble, disoriented under the canopy of trees. We’re somewhere off Fern Hollow Road, the closest turnoff to Finn’s pinned iPhone location.

  “I d-don’t know,” I sputter, still shocked we found her and not Finn when we parked the car and hiked the rest of the way into Sewickley Heights Park.

  “Check her—now. I need to find Finn.” Martin’s voice fades into the forest, and all I want to do is follow him, but I just spoke to my son on the phone. His speech was slurred, and his girlfriend is . . .

  “Oh God.” I open my mouth and let out a strangled breath, so sick that I sway to the side.

  My eyes water as I kneel beside Yazmin Veltri, a girl I’ve known for only the briefest period. The wetness soaks through the holes in my jeans, settling into my bare kneecaps, ice on bone.

  “Yazmin?” I shine my phone’s light in her direction, but I’m stopped by the certain hint of marijuana.

  Shit. All these years working with at-risk young women, and I couldn’t see that Finn was dating one.

  “Please,” I beg the starlit sky peeking through the trees. “Let her be breathing.”

  I sniffle and inhale the truth through the rotting leaves. Something terrible has happened here, and I’m too late. The autumn mist snakes in through my nose, out through my mouth, emitting tiny white puffs of air. The forest ground is slippery, a feathered blanket beneath my knees, slathering the tops of my shoes.

  I hear more hurried footsteps. Martin sounds like a mouse lost in a maze. Has he found Finn? I need to go to him, but my husband told me to stay here.

  The branches scratch the tops of my feet as I move closer to her, the fallen leaves collecting between my knees. Yazmin could still be alive. A bitter taste rises in my mouth as I bite my tongue, and I’m close enough to touch her now.

  My arm trembles as I place two fingers on the cold flesh of her neck. Not only cold—wet. I can’t see what I’m touching, but I can feel her absence. Right below her jawline, in the space beside her trachea where I know a steady drumbeat should exist, there’s nothing.

  No pulse. My heartbeat quickens and plummets. Oh God.

  My blood is rushing. Pounding. I’m sweating despite the near-thirty-degree temperature. I dip my head closer to Yazmin’s chest, careful not to tangle my hair with hers. I’ve checked on my kids enough times in the middle of the night to know this girl’s not breathing. I shut my eyes and listen anyway.

  Sure enough, the steady whoosh of Yazmin’s breath is absent along with her pulse.

  “She’s dead. We have to call the police,” I announce, loud enough for Martin to hear, but not nearly as loud as the screaming in my head.

  Call somebody! Help!

  I hear Martin crunch closer, and I turn my back on the girl.

  I scoot up on my legs and use my hands to push myself into a crouching position. My breath is heavy, and everything on my body—my hands, my knees—rattles with fear. I hear a cry in the distance.

  My son’s cry. And then Martin’s rustling footsteps. Beside me again.

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  “He’s okay, but . . .” Martin nods to the right. “He’s injured. We need to get him out of here, Sarah.”

  “Okay,” I say, but I close my eyes because my head is a ringing bell of stress even though this wooded area is one of the things that drew me to this town. The park is near the country club where we’re members, where Martin’s family have been members for years, and things like this just don’t happen here.

  “Let’s go, Sarah!” Martin urges.

  My eyes snap open, and I hold up my phone. “Wait. I’m calling 911. For her.”

  “No.” Martin swats my hand away with the flick of his strong knuckles. The blood on my palms makes everything slick, and my cell phone goes flying across the forest like a bar of soap in the shower. I slip sideways into a bramble of branches and land on my left hip, staring at my husband’s garish face in the moonlight. He looks unfamiliar, that expression one reserved for when he loses business at work, a rare occurrence. Martin is an innovator, his causes noble. Sometimes I don’t approve of how he does things, but I usually approve of why.

  “Damn it.” Martin scrambles to find my phone. Right now, I don’t approve at all.

  “Why did you do that?” I ask, but I’m more surprised that he’s hit me than I am by the fact that he doesn’t agree with my decision to call the police.

  “It will get reported tomorrow. We need to leave with Finn. Now.”

  “What? That makes no sense.”

  Martin retrieves my phone, and I’m trying to get his attention, but he’s looking right past me at the gas pipeline in the distance, a clear-cut, inclined path free of foliage about a thousand yards long in the mountainous terrain. Martin and I messed around with sleds one winter on a protected slope of land just like it, and I think maybe Finn and Yazmin planned their own adventure out here tonight and something went terribly wrong.

  “Martin.” I try to get up, but my foot slips on a mossy rock.

  He grabs my arm. Then drops it. “Watch yourself,” he says, but he doesn’t help me rise. He’s too busy texting.

  It’s then that I hear water rushing nearby. The river rocks are indigenous to this area, like everything else woodsy and serene in Sewickley.

  Sewickley, the Shawnee word for sweet water, derived from the tribe’s belief that the borough’s shores were a little sweeter on that stretch of the Ohio River, the maple trees that grow at its shores only part of the saccharine story.

  “Who’re you texting?” I’m crying and my hands are still wet, but I can’t wipe them. There’s blood all o
ver my palms, and I can’t remember how it got there; head wounds bleed the worst.

  “Hold on!” Martin is standing with his back to me now, holding his phone in the air like he’s trying to decide what to do with it, a six-foot silhouette of trepidation. He scratches his dark hair and rubs his cell phone on his sweater-vest, but he doesn’t use it to call anyone, only texts.

  “I’m getting legal advice from my father,” Martin says.

  His father?

  I picture William Sr. texting back from the comfort of one of his high-back chairs inside his home, one of the few estates that make up Sewickley Heights like a richly woven patchwork quilt—the expensive kind sewn together with colonials surrounded by alabaster columns and mile-long driveways.

  “Martin?”

  William’s house is a fat-thatched Tudor hiding behind manicured bushes, a peek of white here, a slip of brown there, but there’s no hiding from this.

  “Of course you have to report it!” I look again—at her—and the blood is already congealing around her open head wound, her neck bent at an awkward angle, a matchstick snapped in half. The rushing water streams just behind her.

  Martin’s tugging on my coat. “Get up, Sarah. We have to go.”

  “We can’t leave her.” Yazmin’s long black hair is covering the expression on her face, although the one I imagine is stuck there will haunt me more than the one I cannot see. She rests on her back, and it would be an odd way to fall, backward instead of forward, her hands crossed over her chest as if she were thwarting an attack. It reminds me of a tae kwon do block from when Finn used to take classes. We’d enrolled him when he was a child because he was painfully shy, whereas Spencer, his older brother, was frequently mentioned by his teachers as boisterous or exuberant, adjectives used in private schools to describe disruptive overachievers. I might expect Spencer to get into trouble with a girl like this, but not my poor Finny.

  I turn toward Martin. He’s speaking, but I’ve stopped listening.

  His eyes are pleading. “She’s dead. We can’t help her. Finn was the last person with her.”

  “But—”

  “He’s on something, Sarah. Drugs.” Martin shakes his head furiously. “This looks bad.”

  I can hear what he’s saying, but I’ve retreated into my own body, and I don’t even know who we are right now.

  We used to be Martin and Sarah Ellsworth of Blackburn Road.

  We were the couple sitting at a corner table at a fancy restaurant, splitting a bottle of wine. Laughing at each other’s jokes.

  “We have to do something for her.” My voice is swallowed by the humming sounds of the forest and the flapping of the leaves on the trees, the river. She’s already dead, but we need to make sure she’s at least taken to the hospital so her parents can identify her. Bile rises in my mouth. My heart is beating so fast, drowning out everything else, but I faintly hear Finn’s voice again nearby.

  “I’m sorry.” Martin extends his arm to help me up, but I waggle my finger in the air at him, pointing to my hands, reminding my brainy husband that I’m bloodied and pulling me up isn’t a good idea. I must’ve made the mistake of touching Yazmin in the wrong place.

  “Right.” He draws his palms back.

  My legs won’t work. I gaze up, silently praying. The large enveloping trees of Sewickley Heights tower above us like old wealthy gatekeepers winking in the night.

  “I need your help. I can’t move him on my own, Sarah,” Martin reveals.

  I close my eyes, wishing it all away. It’s all a bad dream.

  “Can we just make an anonymous call from a pay phone or something? For her parents’ sake, at least?”

  “You can’t. They’ll try to interview Finn, see the drug use, and assume the worst. He’ll go to jail.” His voice is thick with desperation. “Sarah, this will ruin Finn’s life. This isn’t his fault!” Martin kicks a stone with his worn loafer, a product from one of the posh boutiques that line downtown Sewickley, a mishmash of overpriced things people don’t really need displayed in windowed storefronts on cobblestone streets. There’s a place to reupholster old furniture with patterns better left to die with their original owners, a claw-foot-tub specialist, an herbal spa with enough fresh fruit remedies to double as a bakery, the imported-leather-shoe store.

  I bought Martin the shoes he has on now, and he’s worn them down to the soles. He’s practical, a computer engineer and CEO of a robotics start-up in the Strip District. He does things that make sense. But right now, he’s not making any.

  “Maybe she slipped.” My voice is shallow like the night air sneaking away from my lips, but the idea of an accident fills my heart with hope. “We’ll leave an anonymous tip.” If I had my phone, I’d call myself.

  I’d explain this is exactly how we found her. She wasn’t even near our son when we discovered her body. Unless . . . we’ve messed with the scene of the crime so much that we’ve hurt Finn more than helped him. I look down at my bloody hands and cringe. As far as we know, Finn is the last one who saw Yazmin alive. This could be very bad for him. “Shit.”

  Martin grabs me by the arm. “We have to go, Sarah. Get up.” I can’t see much of Martin’s face but the stringy blue vein in his forehead that only comes out when he’s upset.

  It’s been only minutes, but we need to move—faster.

  “We need to go to him,” I say.

  “Yes.” Martin nods.

  I’m in shock. That’s what’s wrong with me. I blindly follow Martin, adrenaline fueling my limbs. Finn is off the beaten path, and I feel as though I’ve already failed him for taking so long. He’s huddled over a pile of leaves, his knees tucked into his chest like he used to do when he was a little kid. He looks so small right now.

  So young.

  A little boy who fell off his scooter and skinned his knee. I wish this problem were as easy to fix.

  I wipe my hands on my jeans and throw my arms around him.

  “I’m here. Mom’s here.” Finn’s crying and I don’t know how to make it better for him. He obviously didn’t mean for the girl to get hurt, but this was no accident either. He’s made a terrible mistake, gotten himself into a horrible predicament. So Finn did what we always told him to do if he was ever in trouble—he called us.

  CHAPTER 2

  Before—2000

  Martin is spinning me so fast, I think I might be sick. “Stop. You must!” I’m laughing and my bladder is full, not to mention I get motion sickness.

  “We’re not quite ready,” Martin says.

  He’s giggling in a way my gruff father refers to as “effeminate,” but I love everything about my new husband, including his laugh. However, the spinning could stop any moment and I’d be okay with that.

  “Who is we?” I ask.

  Martin hugs me this time and twirls us both around. “I can’t tell you that or it will ruin the surprise.”

  “At least stop spinning me if you can’t take off the blindfold.” It’s not so much the spinning that’s got me in a tizzy as it is the combination of the circular motion with the darkness. If he lets me go, I will surely fall on my ass.

  “Fine.” Martin stops and points me in one direction.

  I wobble. “Whoa!” He steadies me at the waist. I’m wearing a spring dress even though it’s early March, because Martin told me we might be taking photos today and to wear something nice. Although I’ve come to understand that his idea of nice is not the same as mine. I laid out two options before him, a comfy Banana Republic knit dress that I preferred and a J.Crew, A-line dotted number with tiny blue flowers on it that I thought was kind of ugly, but it cinched my waist so nicely, I purchased it anyway. Martin chose the floral one, and I can barely breathe.

  “Come on, I have to pee.”

  “Of course you do,” he says. I laugh harder, which doesn’t help my situation any. “Does that mean you’re almost done?” I inhale Martin’s cologne, and he’s not wearing his everyday Polo but the Calvin Klein fragrance he reserves for special
occasions.

  “I’ll have a wonderful bathroom for you to use soon,” he says in a singsongy voice.

  “What?” I giggle again and nearly grab myself so I don’t spring a leak, so unladylike. Dresses aren’t my thing. I was raised by a single father, and pants-less clothing still feels foreign to me.

  “I can’t take this, Martin. I’m starting to sweat under here.” I’m blind, but my other senses are starting to take over—the feeling of the sun burning into my shoulders, the crinkling of the leaves whirling around me, the tickle of the wind pulling my hair from its headband, the babble of a nearby brook. So much unseen beauty. I try to tug on the handkerchief tied around my head, but he won’t let me. My college-sweetheart-turned-husband has always been a pleaser, but I wish someone would tell him he didn’t need to try so hard anymore. He already has me.

  “Don’t you dare,” he warns, subtly taking a piece of my earlobe in his mouth and drawing my offending hand behind my back.

  I’m a little turned on by the ear nip coupled with the blindfold. I’m wondering if this is some sort of crazy sex-capade, because things in the bedroom have only gotten more interesting since the honeymoon, but I rule it out. I hear other people milling around, and as adventurous as Martin is, he’s not that adventurous.

  The only endeavor Martin has invested in more than keeping our marriage interesting is the odd hours he’s been working at his side gig with the hopes of striking it rich. I’m wondering now if this surprise has anything to do with it.

  I’d lucked out with a college internship in the public relations department at St. Jude Children’s Hospital, sure to score a full-time position upon graduation. Martin says he’ll support both of us so I can help save the world, because even though his job may be more lucrative, mine will always be more important.

  It doesn’t matter to me if Martin hits it big, but I know he’s bound and determined, sure to be a family failure if he settles for middle class. He also has something else besides a big brain and an entrepreneurial spirit to keep him motivated—a trust fund that would make the Kennedys weep. Those with financial safety nets have more power to dream.

  I was fortunate enough just to attend Carnegie Mellon University, my father’s position as maintenance supervisor my free ride, although everything I’ve taken away from that place still feels like it’s on loan—my borrowed life.