Page 224 of Secrets Along the Shore

“She went to meet you. And she never came back,” she signed.

I nodded slowly. A thousand shards of that memory pierced me. Livvie’s face lit by fear. Her tears. The message not to come over. I swallowed hard.

“You left her,” Becca added. “You let her row back alone.”

“She told me not to come. She was scared,” I signed, my movements slow, each letter stabbing through the air. “She didn’t want me here. Said it was unsafe.”

Becca’s jaw tightened.

“And you still let her go.”

I looked down. The guilt was a wound that was still so fresh because I had blocked her presence from that night. “I don’t remember,” I signed. “What happened that night? Why weren’t you with her?”

Becca leaned forward. “She was hysterical,” she said. “She saw me with someone, and it made her angry and scared.”

“The boy?” I asked slowly. “People are telling me you had been with a boy. Was that true? Did Livvie know him?”

“I found her journal,” Becca signed, not answering my question. “After. She wrote about dreams. About being in a room. Strapped down. Lights on her eyes. Voices she couldn’t understand.”

A chill swept over me.

“She said she wasn’t the same anymore,” Becca continued. “She said you were the only one she trusted…because you were there, too.”

I looked up sharply. “Me?”

Becca nodded. But her expression twisted, like the words hurt to form. “And you let her die. She trusted you, and you let her die.”

I flinched. The accusation in her silent words was louder than any scream. “Becca, I didn’t know.”

Her hands clenched. She stood.

I stood too. My knees shook. “I wanted to go with her. But she told me not to. She was trying to protect me. She knew something was wrong. That it wasn’t safe. Who was here?”

Becca turned to the window. Her shoulders hunched. She cut me off with her face turned away.

I stepped closer to see her lips. “What did they do to her?”

Becca turned to face me, her expression fractured, pain layered on fury.

“They changed her. She was bright. And so funny. Then she stopped laughing. She had to pretend. She was so scared. She told me they were watching her. That they would come for her if she said anything. Anything about Scanlon’s experiment. And she didn’t because of you.”

“Why me?”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. But her mouth twisted. “Because you didn’t believe her. And now I believe you need to answer for that.”

She turned and walked toward the front door, locking it.

“What are you doing?” I signed.

She didn’t look back but went to the back door and did the same.

Panic surged through me.

I ran to the door, but didn’t make it before she hit me from behind, knocking me to the floor. Becca grabbed my hands and put handcuffs on before I escaped her grasp.

“Let me go!” I yelled, feeling the panic rise in my chest. What was she doing?

But at the same moment, a flash from another time of feeling the same wrist constriction came to mind, leaving me to wonder how and when.