Page 202 of Secrets Along the Shore

“He studied her. Conducted tests. So many tests. More…things I didn’t understand. I was only ten then. Just like you when you arrived in that first summer—another chosen one. And more of you continued to come every year. But you, you came every year.”

Her words cut deep, reminding me of how the kids at school made me feel for always being selected. If they only knew it wasn’t anything positive. It was an experiment, and I was a test subject. There was nothing to be jealous about. When they went home to their families for summer break, us chosen ones were…what? What was happening to us?

“Did your parents agree to let Scanlon test Livvie? The rest of us were orphans. Scanlon had free range on us.”

“He made promises that he couldn’t keep. My father believed him. He believed Scanlon would make her hearing work again. He was embarrassed when Livvie signed. Slapped her hands when no one was looking.” Becca looked at a desk against the wall and stood to approach it. In the top drawer, she pulled out a faded notebook. “I found this in Livvie’s room years later. My parents moved away shortly after, unable to cope with their part in her abuse.” Becca handed the notebook to me.

I flipped through the pages—Livvie’s handwriting. Scrawled notes. Drawings of cochlear implants. Diagrams of the ear. Pages labeled with test numbers. Words likeMemory LockandPost-Hypnotic Recall. And finally,I remember everything. I can’t let them know.

My fingers trembled. “She remembered what he did to her. He hypnotized her to forget, but it didn’t take.”

Becca nodded. “She wrote it all down. There are other notebooks, too, with more details. She was going to tell. But then…the night she met you on the lake, she died.”

I closed the notebook gently like I was burying all she knew with her body. “Did she get to tell anyone?”

Becca paused, studying me with intense scrutiny. “I don’t know. Did she tell you anything that night?”

“I think she was trying to,” I said. “But I don’t know. I was so upset that you didn’t come for the fireworks. I felt rejected.”

“Enough to hurt her?”

“No,” I said loudly, signing the quick retort to end the accusation immediately.

“You wouldn’t remember if you did. That’s the point. You’ve blocked it all out. Just like Scanlon trained you to do. You were malleable. The perfect specimen.”

The room spun in the opposite direction of my swirling stomach. Could I have hurt Livvie? Was I Scanlon’s puppet to cover his tracks? Was that why I was still alive while all the others weren’t? “Why would he do that to me?”

“Because he saw something in you,” Becca replied. “Same as he did in her. You were both once hearing. He thought he could…fix you.”

Lightning cracked across the sky outside the window, and the wind shook the windowpanes.

“I need to know the truth,” I signed. “All of it.”

Becca stepped back for the stairs, and for the first time, she signed something in return—haltingly, slow. “Then you’d better remember what happened that night.”

CHAPTER

EIGHT

The storm hadn’t broken yet,but the air had changed. Heavier now. Charged with the electricity zigzagging across the sky.

Becca hadn’t come back downstairs, leaving me to face all she had told me…and yet, I still had no answers to my questions. I still felt left in the dark.

I sat curled up on her old couch, knees tucked beneath me, the moving hands of a clock marking the strange passage of time. I’d been here for hours. Left to watch the curtains stir in the breeze from an open window somewhere in the house. I studied the dust patterns on the mantle, trying to distract myself from the gnawing unease that had crept in ever since she left me alone.

She said Livvie had remembered.

Not just flashes or dreams. Not just the vague sense of dread I carried in my bones. Livvie had remembered what Scanlon did to her. Whatever tricks he used to bury her memories, they hadn’t stuck.

Did she die because of it? Was she silenced for what she knew?

My mind ran in circles, looping over possibilities I didn’t want to believe. If she remembered, had she confronted him? Did she try to go to the police? Had she come to me for help? Was I the last person she trusted?

It appeared I was the last one to see her alive.

I stared at the cold, empty fireplace and tried to remembersomething—anything—about that night. But my memory was a locked door. I could press my palms against it, bang with fists, scream inside my head, but nothing opened.

Could he have hypnotized me, too? Did that mean I would never remember, no matter what I tried to recall the truth?