Page 99 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

CHAPTER

FIVE

The morning sun bled through the pine trees like blinding fire, warming my face as I lifted it to its rays.

I stood barefoot on the back porch, a mug of reheated tea in my hand, watching the lake ripple in the breeze.

The surface was calm, comforting, even as its history said anything but.

The lake took a life, but as with any story, there was more that lay beneath.

The lodge loomed around me—massive and still. You’d think the work to be done would keep me busy, but suddenly, I wasn’t in a rush to complete the project. It was as though the house had things to tell me first, and I was now listening.

I couldn’t hear the old truck pull up, but I saw it come around to the back and braced for an unknown visitor.

The beat up turquoise Chevy parked by the garden, and the door swung open.

A woman in a wide-brimmed straw hat stepped out, holding a spade and mint green gardening gloves. She wore matching boots.

She looked to be in her late sixties, but she had the sort of upright posture that made you think she could outwork someone half her age.

Her white hair was braided down her back, and her skin tan and lined from a lifetime in the sun.

She wore denim overalls and a yellow flannel that clashed with her gardening boots.

I took the steps down to the landing, instinctively staying alert to anything that could happen. I’d come to expect the unexpected now .

She waved and approached with a slow, unthreatening pace, her expression open. “You must be Scarlett McBride,” she said, signing along with the words. Her signs were slow and deliberate like someone who’d once known the language and was trying to remember.

I nodded. “And you are?”

“Tabitha Rooney. I live just down the hill—closest neighbor this place has on this side of the lake. I used to wave to you girls when you played out there on the water.” Her eyes scanned the property, wincing a bit at the gnarled branches.

“The place is looking a little wild. I thought I’d come by and offer to help clear some of the overgrowth.

These flower beds used to be my pride and joy before Mr. Scanlon had me stop coming up.

The rosemary shrubs have taken over, I’d say. He always had me cutting them back.”

“You worked here?” I stepped up to her.

“For years. Summers mostly. I maintained the grounds and did some light housekeeping for Mr. Scanlon, especially after the divorce. He liked things tidy. Hated mess.” She smiled and elbowed my arm. “Even the kind made by you children.”

I studied her weathered face. “I don’t remember you. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. You were young and busy running wild with the Bishop girls.” Her grin softened. “They adored you.”

I swallowed, unsure if the growing lump in my throat stemmed from sadness…or guilt. “Becca and Olivia?”

She paused, eyes narrowing just slightly. “You don’t sound so sure.”

“I remember only bits. Flashes. Her name came back yesterday. Livvie.”

Tabitha nodded. “She loved it when you called her that. She said it made her feel grown up.”

I smiled despite the guilty feeling.

“I was surprised to hear Scanlon left the place to you,” Tabitha went on. “He wasn’t one for sentiment. Cold man. Calculated. But you…you were different to him.”

My spine stiffened. “Everyone says that. ”

“Well, they aren’t wrong.” Her choice of words cut sharp. “You were the last student he ever brought here. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“After that summer—the one where Olivia…well, the summer we lost her—he never brought another student back. Locked the place up, let the flowers die, and didn’t come back himself for a long time.”

I blinked. “But…he said I was done with the program. Not that it was over.”

“Program,” she repeated with a slight sneer to her lips. “That’s a generous word for it.”

“You’re saying it wasn’t just a summer reward for outstanding students?”

Tabitha’s eyes glittered beneath the brim of her hat. “It was a reward, all right. But not for the students.”

The implication hit like a cold splash of lake water. “What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “If you want to understand what really happened those summers—why Scanlon chose you—start by looking at who else he brought here. The ones he favored.”

My heart thudded so loudly, I could practically hear the sound in my head. “I don’t remember their names.”

Tabitha moved toward the edge of a flower bed and crouched, stabbing the soil with her spade. “You will. You find the study yet? The one hidden behind the bookcase?” Her eyes cut up to me.

I froze. “How do you know about that?”

“The cleaning lady finds things. Scanlon always thought his secrets would outlive him. Maybe they did…but it’s up to you for how long.

” She dug into the bed again, then after a moment looked up and said, “What I think is someone like him doesn’t leave a place like this to someone unless he meant for that person to find something. ”

“Why me?”

“Maybe you were his favorite. Who knows? Or maybe you were the one person he had the most hope for, and he wasn’t finished with you yet.”

That flipped my stomach. I looked away.

“Don’t be ashamed,” she said, standing. “You were a child. We all missed things we shouldn’t have. I should’ve paid more attention to what he was doing when I worked here. But we get good at looking away from the ugly things when we want to keep our jobs.”

Tabitha dusted off her gloves. “If you want help with the yard, I’ll come by in my free mornings. It’ll make the place look less abandoned, at least. Show better, if you plan to sell.”

“Okay,” I tried to say, but was sure no sound accompanied the word. “Thank you.”

She gave me a long look. “Start with the files. The students who were chosen. The ones with initials and dates. That’s where the cracks in his work start to show.”

With that, she headed back toward her truck, her boots crunching the gravel. I stepped onto the porch, her words twisting through me like a cold wind.

Start with the students.

As if summoned, a flash of Livvie—her pink nightgown glowing in the moonlight—filled my mind. That last night. The boat. The fireworks. The empty lake that came after.

I shook the memory off like water and turned toward the door.

I had work to do, if I could figure out where to start.

I stood on the threshold of the study for a long moment, phone flashlight in hand despite the daylight creeping in through the small window. The room was too big for the light to reach the corners, only the desk below it.

I didn’t know if I should trust Tabitha Rooney.

She had appeared kind, almost too conveniently.

A helpful neighbor at just the right time with just enough memory of me to strike a nerve.

Still, when she said to start looking at the students who were chosen, I couldn’t shake the words. They repeated over and over in my mind.

Chosen . That word again.

Inside the study, I headed straight for the filing cabinets and tugged open the top drawer to skim names.

Paper, yellowed with time, flicked under my fingertips.

Each manila folder was labeled in a bold, block- letter script.

Some names I recognized right away—Caleb Price.

Dena Alvarez. Jonah Bell. Names I hadn’t thought of in over a decade, faces suspended in memory like insects fixed in amber.

But all of them had been invited to the lodge. Just like me.

I pulled out the oldest folder and sat on the floor, knees stiff in protest. The scent of old glue and paper rose as I opened it. Inside were charts. Medical charts on the student’s deafness and illnesses before and after.

I flipped through one page after another—height, weight, age when they lost hearing, family background, even notes on their behavior. At first it looked like any standard medical record, except the school should never have had access to this much information. Not like this.

And then, scribbled in Scanlon’s unmistakable handwriting: Subject appears to retain residual auditory memory—schedule Phase II by mid-July.

Phase II?

I kept going. The next student, and the next—same patterns. Notes about brain response to sound waves, treatments involving low-frequency vibrations, strobe light therapy, and oils. And then: behavioral conditioning. Electro-aural stimulation.

I froze.

I had read about these experiments before.

Once. In college, during a seminar on medical ethics.

Cruel, outdated trials that had been used on Deaf children decades ago.

The belief had been that hearing could be forced—or conditioned—into someone.

Electrodes strapped to foreheads. Bright light punishments.

Teaching through pain and reward. The goal was to erase deafness, not understand it. Not respect it.

These weren’t students. They were subjects.

And the lodge? It hadn’t been a reward. It had been a control group setting.

My fingers trembled as I moved on to the next file.

One by one, they all blurred into the same story: a summer of testing masked as a getaway.

No wonder the students hated me. Maybe I had been part of it and didn’t even realize it.

Maybe I had been too young, too flattered by being chosen to ask why.

But something must have happened to keep me from experiencing any of the treatments .

I closed the final file and leaned against the wall, bile rising in my throat. It was too much. Too ugly.

Across the room was another filing cabinet, heavier, taller, the kind you needed a key to open. I tried the top drawer. Locked. I tried the next. Same.

I knew what was in there.

Everything about the experiments, under lock and key.

There had been no data in the files in the unlocked drawer, just the history of each student. I needed to know what Scanlon’s results were…and why I was also the only student he kept bringing back. I wasn’t just any student.

My head ached. The pounding behind my eyes throbbed like I was underwater. There had to be a key. Somewhere. He wouldn’t have left it far. But deep down, I already knew that inside that locked cabinet was the answer to what happened the summer Olivia—Livvie—drowned.

What Scanlon had done to me.