Page 232 of Secrets Along the Shore

Tabitha turned to me, her eyes sharp now, clear. “What are you getting at?”

I swallowed hard. “It wasn’t for our wellbeing. Livvie was going to tell.”

She frowned. “Sweet girl. Too smart for her own good.”

My pulse quickened. “Too smart about what? What do you know that you refuse to tell me?”

Tabitha stood, brushing dirt from her knees. “That girl had always been troubled after her time here.”

“Troubled? Or trouble?” I wasn’t sure I read her lips correctly. “Are you saying she killed herself?”

Tabitha shrugged. “Like I said, these kids were…disturbed. Death brings peace.”

Air expelled from my lungs in a shocked rush. I stared out over the lake that took her life. The surface rippled gently in the breeze, but the picture Tabitha painted was uglier than I could have imagined.

Suicide?

I refused to believe it.

“I’m going to find the truth about what happened to her. To all of us. I’m the last one alive, you know.”

Tabitha nodded once. “They’re all resting now, free as they should have been.”

“You don’t think I’m free?” I demanded an answer.

Tabitha paused mid-snip. “Do you feel free?”

I thought of my dreams, never ending with no answers. But if the alternative was death, I didn’t want that either. I was faced with one choice only.

Walk away and forget it all.

My answer to both questions was the same.

“No.”

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

I satcross-legged on the dusty floor of the secret study, old leather-bound journals and cracked medical volumes strewn around me like a madwoman’s nest. I remembered the dream—the man with the syringe and now had more information to study Scanlon’s notes.

Scanlon had written everything down. All of it.

Each leather journal was filled with charts tracking changes with each student before and after treatments. At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. I skimmed one page that described an auditory canal measurement procedure. Another, with tiny precise drawings, showed detailed anatomical sketches of the ear. But the further I read, the clearer it became. Scanlon had been experimenting with a rosemary-based tincture designed to stimulate hair growth deep within the inner ear. The fine hairs there, he wrote, might regenerate in Deaf individuals, altering the canal’s structure and possibly restoring partial hearing.

It was unethical. Horrific. Brilliant, if it had worked.

But these weren’t voluntary test subjects. These were children. Deaf children. Abandoned children like Katherine Nieves. Like me.

One journal described what he called Phase Two testing. The dosage had been increased. The side effects were…disturbing. Headaches. Nosebleeds. Memory gaps. Mood swings. One entry mentioned a girl who cried for hours every night. Another reported a child who forgot their own name for a full day.

And then there was Livvie.

Scanlon wrote about Olivia Bishop the following:Patient displays remarkable response. Reports auditory success. Progress satisfactory. Will attempt memory restructuring again. The last hypnosis did not take. Patient continues to remember treatments.

Memory restructuring…hypnosis.

I sat frozen, the journal trembling in my hands. So that’s what had been done to us. Hypnosis? Drugs? Conditioning? All of it beginning with the potential effects of rosemary.