Page 201 of Secrets Along the Shore

I nodded slowly. I swallowed, unsure of what to say. “I…I had to.”

“You shouldn’t have,” she snapped back. But her eyes didn’t hold anger. Maybe something closer to…resignation. She’d had years to come to grips with the truth and chose to hide herself away.

“I think you know why I did,” I said. “I think you know what I’m trying to find. I need to know what happened to Livvie. To me.”

She exhaled slowly and looked away. Her hand gripped the stair rail…and trembled.

Looking back to face me, her eyes now held a deep sadness. “So, it’s true. You don’t remember.”

I felt my stomach tighten. “Remember what?”

Her expression cracked—not much but enough to show something underneath.

“You should leave, Scarlett,” she said. “Go back to your life wherever that it is now. Live it, blissfully ignorant. You don’t want to know. Trust me.”

“I need to know. I can’t leave until I do. Too much has happened.”

Her jaw tensed. A long pause followed. Then, at last, she stepped down fully and walked past me toward the living room.

I followed.

She pulled a blanket off an armchair and sat, covering herself like a child but also poised like a queen, reluctantly reclaiming her throne. She motioned to the sofa across from her.

I sat too.

“You want to know about Livvie,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll tell you. You killed her.”

“They said it was an accident,”Becca continued as I sat dumbfounded and in denial, shaking my head back and forth. I could barely focus on her lips while my mind blared with inner turmoil. It couldn’t be true. “They said she drowned after her boat capsized. A witness said she was racing against another rowboat when it tipped. But she was a strong swimmer. You know that. You both were.”

I nodded, a lump rising in my throat. “She went out alone. I remember seeing her, I think. I don’t know what’s real anymore and what’s a dream.”

Becca hesitated, her gaze flicking to the window that looked out over the lake. The storm raged, splattering drops against the window and producing a bubbling cauldron on the water’s surface. “Nightmare. It was a nightmare.”

The word hit like a stone.

“Who else was with her?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I had three heads. “Just you.”

I felt the world tilt beneath me.

“I—no. I don’t remember that. I waited for you both during the entire fireworks display. You never showed. Livvie rowed out after to tell me not to come. She’d lost her flashlight, so couldn’t signal me. I gave her mine. Then I left…I think. It was so long ago, I don’t remember what came after.”

I rubbed my temples where I felt an ache settling in.

Becca gave a sad laugh. “That’s what they wanted. None of you were supposed to remember anything. But Livvie did. She knew what they did to her and kept it a secret.”

I backed up on the couch, heart in my throat. “What? What did they do?”

Becca stood, trembling more now. “He showed up here. After school started that year. Scanlon said she’d been selected. A genius in kindergarten. He invited her to his lodge for the summer gifted program before you even arrived. She was already there. Already starting on his…program.”

Becca sneered at the word while I processed all she shared.

“I remember her. On the stairs, I can still see her…I thought it was in my dreams, but now, I know it’s my memory. Bits and pieces of her.”