Page 229 of Secrets Along the Shore

But Tabitha took out a large pair of trimming scissors and approached a bush on the other side of the porch railing. She smiled up at me as she cut twigs as though my words meant nothing.

“The bushes need to be pruned, or they won’t produce. I won’t be long.” Tabitha snipped.

“That smell,” I thought I said to myself, but I must have spoken out loud. “What is that smell?”

Becca pulled me back inside and closed the door. “I don’t like that woman. Stay here until the sheriff arrives.”

“What’s wrong with Tabitha?” I asked. “Becca, you’re afraid of everyone. That’s why you haven’t left your house in fifteen years. I need to know what that smell is. Let me out. Tabitha’s not going to hurt me.”

Becca backed away, still holding me back and shaking her head.

I pulled free and reopened the door. “What is that smell?” I asked before Becca yanked me back inside.

Tabitha snipped while locking her gaze on me. “Don’t you remember, Scarlett? Why, it’s rosemary. Mr. Scanlon’s favorite.”

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

Tabitha Rooney trimmedthe rosemary bushes with quiet determination, the blades of her shears reflecting the piercing morning sun. The pungent scent lingered in the air, sharp and sweet, and I paused at the porch, overcome by a strange familiarity. There were more of the bushes than I realized—tucked under windows, lined along the walkway, sprouting in the overgrown garden bed that wrapped around the lodge house.

The dream came rushing back: the sting in my ears, the needle gleaming gold in the man’s hand, the same pungent smell. Rosemary. It hadn’t just been a dream. My body remembered it as the fresh cut herb wafted up, reaching the olfactory space in my cerebral cortex, awakening memories through my powerful sense of smell.

I stepped down the stairs as if in a trance, inhaling deeply to bring every detail of my past back. The sense of sound wouldn’t do it for me, but smell unlocked my brain to everything suppressed.

Including my name.

Katherine Nieves was me.

I was Katherine Nieves.

I knew it as though it was a part of me, because it was—all the way to birth. I hadn’t been abducted from the school, as the article stated. My name had just been erased—from the school, the world, and almost in my mind.

Why?

Sheriff McNealy’s cruiser pulled into the driveway, stealing my search into my resurfacing memories. He stepped out with a wary expression, eyes narrowing as they swept over me, Tabitha, and the surrounding property.

He said something I couldn’t make out because of the distance between us…or because my brain couldn’t read lips while it was also reading my memories.

I met him halfway. “I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?”

“You said there was a body,” he replied.

I nodded, suddenly dragged back to the present danger when all I wanted was to figure out the danger of my past. But I let the last twenty-four hours pour out of me.

“In the basement. Under the stairs. After someone slashed my tires, they then destroyed my electrical panel. I had no power and had to go down to the basement to try to fix it. I lost my phone light when I fell on a boot. A leg. It was so dark, I don’t know who it was. But the guy didn’t move. I managed to run out and saw a man standing by my car. I escaped in the rowboat over to Becca’s house and stayed there last night. I also want to show you a secret room.”

Sheriff McNealy turned and studied my car.

“The tires are fixed now. I think Evan must have come over and fixed them during the day yesterday.”

“I see,” Sheriff McNealy said, but from the way his brows raised, he wasn’t sure I was telling the truth.

“They were all slashed. All four. I’m not making it up.”

He lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m not saying you are. But all this happened with the dead man last night? Why didn’t you call immediately? When you got to Becca’s?” He opened the front door, standing back to let me in first.

Becca stood by the fireplace, fear in her eyes.